Are today’s “red lines” still institutional boundaries – or have they become moral performances of exposure and outrage? This lecture offers a new reading of contemporary polarization. Rather than locating its origins solely in the radical right, it argues that liberal institutions of judgement have been undermining themselves from within. It traces how neoliberalism has eroded these institutions, reshaping how truth is produced and politically mobilised. As institutional mediation weakens, truth increasingly appears not as something to be adjudicated through established procedures, but as something to be exposed – through testimony, conscience, and quasi-theological forms of revelation across the political spectrum. Focusing on whistleblowing, the lecture shows how liberal institutions tend to treat truth-telling as a liability rather than as a public good grounded in accountability. This shift signals a broader transformation in the status of truth: from an object of institutional judgement to a moralised practice of disclosure.

At stake is not only how truth is produced, but the very legitimacy and future of liberalism.

In the series “Ifs and Buts: Philosophical Questions on Time”, we discuss contemporary debates at the intersection of philosophy, cultural studies, and media theory with scholarly guests. In lectures, roundtables, and workshops with students, we aim to open conceptual space to pose the question – in the broadest sense – of how it is possible to establish the necessary distance to reflect on the now in an unclear present. A cooperation between KWI and the Folkwang University of the Arts.