ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on severe backlashes against democratic culture through exclusionary appropriations of public spaces that reflect growing nationalisms, racisms, and narrow cultural and ethnic perspectives in Europe. It discusses a conceptual framework to investigate anti-democratic tendencies in public spaces, before providing empirical research regarding forms of resistance seeking to overcome exclusionary spatial practices in Vienna. The analysis offers a conceptual approach to distinguish exclusionary activism from inclusive activism, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the altering potential of different forms of inclusive activism. The chapter discusses practices of "boundary drawing" which are an instrument frequently used by far-right-wing parties and their related movements to push anti-pluralist and racist expressions into the public sphere. In urban politics, forms of essentialization are frequently employed in the political programs of far-right-wing parties such as the Freiheitliche Partei Osterreich (FPO).
