Rhetorik als Waffe – über Putins Reden als Mittel der Politik | Rhetoric as a weapon - on Putin's speeches as a means of politics

22 May 2025 | Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research, Eberhard-Lämmert-Saal, entrance Meierottostr. 8, 10719 Berlin

Vladimir Putin prepared the war against Ukraine rhetorically, escalated it and justified it with complex arguments. The web of legitimisation strategies may seem disconcerting and disturbing, but it deliberately ties in with the expectations of a broad national and international audience and guarantees a diffuse understanding of the Kremlin's positions. Riccardo Nicolosi dissects Putin's war communication in his book: From the parody of Western justifications for war to a paranoid causal logic in which Russia figures as the eternal victim of Western hegemonic aspirations; from the affect rhetoric of resentment to the mystification of the Second World War as a never-ending event; from the modelling of the Ukraine conflict as an anti-colonial, tectonic shift in the geopolitical world order to the elevation of war to the only true form of existence in present and future Russia. The power of words thus legitimises the martial use of force just as much as it plausibilises war as the solution to all problems. We present the book with the participation of Riccardo Nicolosi (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich) and Susanne Frank (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin).

The evening will be moderated by Anita Traninger (echo - Centre for the Study of Rhetoric between Old and New Media, Freie Universität Berlin).
A co-operation of the ZfL with echo - Center for the Study of Rhetoric between Old and New Media.

Admission is free, registration is not necessary.