Gergely Tóth

Gergely Tóth explores how irony, thanks to its inherently subversive, disrespectful nature, has become a major tool for online radicalization, propaganda and trolling. In doing so, he also unfolds deeper connections between the facets of irony: the trope, the disposition, the Middle European cultural tradition and the status of irony as a democratic value. His essay sheds new light on the rhetorical strategies of right-wing populism and the extreme right with the help of the so-called “theory of extensive irony.”