“We’re the party of common sense" : conflicting appeals to “normal/ity” and “common sense” in the discourse of the Freedom Party of Austria

Wodak, Ruth (2025) “We’re the party of common sense" : conflicting appeals to “normal/ity” and “common sense” in the discourse of the Freedom Party of Austria. Social Semiotics, 36 (1). pp. 78-95. ISSN 1035-0330

Abstract

The political invocation of common sense dates to antiquity and has often been deployed to appeal to the alleged agreements of an epistemic community, rejecting expert knowledge in favor of intuition and “general knowledge” (endoxon), with implicit assumptions about shared values and policies (Boukala 2025; Rosenfeld 2011; Wodak 2024a). Yet these concepts are far from uncontroversial, as they are employed not only by far-right groups but also by progressive grassroots movements and politicians. These distinct meanings of common sense are not merely what Krzyżanowski and Krzyżanowska (2024) term “conceptual flip-siding”, “a process of strategic reversal of notions closely associated with liberal democracy or with its key values of freedom, equality, tolerance and the like, for pronouncedly illiberal gains”, but – as I postulate – a systematic, simultaneous and context-dependent mobilization of diverse meanings (and thus values and ideologies) by far-right and progressive/liberal actors alike. The struggle is thus ultimately over the hegemonic definition of these terms, a struggle which draws on meanings developed over centuries; moreover, both camps claim to propagate the “good” imaginary of a “new normal/ity”.