The Sound of Power

For far too long, our politicians have been stifling necessary social debates about policy plans for the future with their empty words. Well, this tactic has now come back to bite them: political disenchantment has given way to furious rants against politics, a toxic counter-speech filled with defamation, baiting, and lies. One can only describe the established parties’ reaction to this development as utterly helpless as they hope to meet the people where they are by embracing the resentments of the populist agitators. In this book, political scientist Astrid Séville makes a plea for a new democratic culture of debate and calls on representatives to have the courage to stand up against the decline of civil political speech in Germany – even if that means they face the consequence of being voted out.