Abstract
How should civil society deal with radical actors such as populists? Should democrats engage in an
open dialogue or avoid confrontation? Should they listen to them, let them speak and try to expose them argumentatively, or should they deny them any kind of public platform? Rather than providing a normative answer
to these questions, this article analyzes and systematizes responses that are already circulating in public discourse. In particular, we focus on reactions to the invitations of the AfD politicians Alice Weidel and Marc
Jongen to the Oxford Union (2018), the Zurich Theater Gessnerallee as well as the Hannah Arendt Center in
New York (both 2017). We will show that the debates gave excessive weight to fundamental questions of
democratic theory while marginalizing the specific context factors of the events. Because of this, the populists
eventually gained the moral victory.