In politics, the word normalization is often abused as an excuse for taking "extraordinary measures" to "bring things back to normal." Alas, the term "normal" depends on who is hailing the normalization process.
Dictators, both on the left and the right end of the spectrum, have overused normalization to justify murder and genocide, taking of political prisoners, destruction of economy, imposition or prohibition of religious beliefs and rituals, redefinition of morality, etc.
I have personally experienced this kind of "normalization" after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. Before that, Czechoslovakia was implementing socialism with a human face. After that, the word "normalization" was officially used to crush any semblance of human face in the Soviet model of socialism. Since that model had been forced on Czechoslovakia 23 years earlier in Yalta, it was now "simply the matter of returning back to normal." It took another 21 years to get rid of that "normalization."