Right wing populists are able to speak directly to our spinal cords, by telling dramatic stories of moral misconduct. A story of an existential threat can spread like a wildfire in dry grass. When gossip is spread in wide circles, it can ignite fear of and hate against a minority, and undermine the standing of a rival. Warnings of great danger can define the agenda on the political arena and divert attention from other issues.
Right wing populism use an ancient broadcasting medium: gossip
Right wing populism use an ancient medium that existed long before the written language, storytelling, to win public support. These modern stories are in form and content like the pre-writing-age stories, the old folk tales, myths, legends that once were told from person to person. Right wing populists today also spread stories on social media on the Internet. Just as the ancient epics framed conflicts as battles between good and evil, right wing populist stories paint minorities, immigrants, or refugees as villains.
In the days before written language, all information, from the tales about the gods to information on a personal level, had to be told mouth to mouth. Gossip is useful for social construction of community even today. It marks social norms and regulates what to do and not to do in groups of people.
Dramatic tales become effective tools for gaining authoritarian power in modern representative democracies because of their compelling power. We are genetically hardwired to react to cries of alert. Stories about alleged serious moral misconduct done by members of a minority, immigrants or refugees, can be used as arguments for dismantling the protection of the rights and freedoms of minorities. Even if they are unrepresentative, these stories awake great emotional response in the public. These stories hijack our emotions. We pay attention to these tellings, as they trigger strong emotions in us, releasing powerful hormones through our bodies. This emotional response enable the stories to go under the radar and bypass rational scrutiny.
Political mainstream use measurable concepts
The political mainstream and leftists use more literalist communication, falsifiable arguments based on empirical research and cause-and-effect effect explanations. on a macro level or societal level. Since right wing populism and the political mainstream use different media for spreading their ideas, they also use different language.
Facts are presise claims, that can be tested easily. Facts are sometimes manipulated, but can still be falsified. To use the term “classical rhetoric” about mainstream and leftist communication might be useful to distinguish it from right wing populism.
“The pen is mightier than the sword”. Published texts are precise because you do not have to remember them, and they can also be fact checked. They therefore contain much more precise information than the spoken word can. Measurable concepts rest on written tradition. The ideals of democracy from the Age of Enlightenment became dominant when mass published written texts became common. Measurable concepts are efficient in making means to end plans, and govern a modern state. But quantitative facts does not awake strong emotions, and the public does not get easily aroused by statistics.
The ancient stories were spread by telling and retelling them orally, directly from person to person. This shaped the form of the stories. Gossip is spread extremely efficiently mouth to mouth, as shown in chapter 2. Gossip stories arose long before the written language. Gossip stories are not falsifiable in the same way as facts.
Online gossip and algorithmic false prophets
The Skalds were the Old Norse storytellers. Online influencers are todays storytellers, and they have great audiences and influence. Social media and influencer postings has now overtaken edited news media as as the top way Americans get their news. These are not reliable. In most cases influencers do not reality check before they share stories.
The gossip stories are today spread even more effectively through social media platforms. The online spreading of rumours, slogans and memes referring to them often go viral by being published on social media platforms and by click-and-share. The repetition of the short memes make them stick to your mind.
Modern variants of the ancient stories are called “Urban legends” in North America, and “Wandering stories” in Scandinavia. Conspiracy theories are a kind of stories in the same category, where the claimed villains are a conspiracy of a secret powerful elite.
The Swedish folklorist Bengt Klintberg documented that folk tales are fully present and alive in modern Scandinavia. He named these modern folk tales “Wandering stories”. These modern folk tales are named “Vandringssägen” or “Klintbergare” in Swedish. Jan Harold Brunvand has documented such stories from North America. An example is an old story of Vietnamese immigrants eating pets, strikingly similar to the falsified story about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats that was used by the Trump campaign.
The two media, orally storytelling and online storytelling, have in common that there is no fact-checking or public transparency or other reality control of what is spread. These stories spread, no matter if they are false or true.
Cherry-picking stories about immigrant crime is disinformation
A main focus of right wing populists is spotlighting stories about individual immigrant crime to undermine a political rival. The idea they propagate is that there is a threat of terrible immigrant crime against defenceless victims, that their political rivals do not confront, or even enable.
Right wing populists spread a mix of false and true stories about immigrant crime. Some of the stories that make greatest political impact are the individually true ones. Selective storytelling is a commonly used tool in right wing populism.
Right wing organisations selectively gather and present stories with refugees and immigrants as perpetrators. Some of these stories might be factually accurate individually. Still, the telling of these cherry-picked stories of individual crime does not tell any truth about crime in general. Their total presentation is false, since the selection of information is unrepresentative. Cases of sexually motivated murder and other violent crime is found in all nations and in any larger group of people, and by cherry-picking stories you can paint a negative bias of any larger group of people.
The logic in the connection of individual murders to the claimed weak border control is very marginal. But these stories are not effective because of logics. A story of an individual committing a brutal crime against a defenceless victim evokes powerful emotions in the recipients – sympathy, fear and outrage. Some of the most used stories in propaganda are about sexually motivated murders committed by undocumented immigrants. These stories ignite an emotional spark that easily overwhelm statistical facts in the political debate, like data showing that illegal immigrants in Texas are less likely to commit murder than native-born US citizens.
Statistics do not awake as strong emotions as dramatic stories. Stories of peace and harmony, like the stories of all the immigrants who walk quietly to work, do not awake strong emotions.
A good lie can travel from Baghdad to Constantinople before the truth can get its sandals on (Old Arab saying).
The reason why disinformation is so hard to counter, is that it spreads through other channels like oral gossip and social media platforms, much faster and to a much wider audience than traditional news media journalism. It has also been a shift in the public, from getting news from edited news media to unedited social media platforms as main source. A correction by fact checks in news media will probably not reach much of the public as fast as the disinformation on social media platforms.
By using these stories of violent crime on digital social media platforms, right-wing populist can outperform and bypass the influence of traditional, editorially controlled media. Right wing populism can thereby surpass the political mainstream, who focuses more on research, statistics and other falsifiable analysis. A key factor in Trump’s election win was the growing influence of online political communication over traditional news media.
“What are your sources”
When you hear a dramatic story about members of a minority group committing immoral acts, consider these questions:
Is the story true ?
- Does the story warn of the presence of extreme danger ?
- Does the story tell about dangerous moral misconduct by a member of a minority ?
- Sensational claims of imminent threat can spread fear and fuel hostility against marginalized groups (e.g., immigrants, minorities).
- High-impact stories should prompt fact-checking before sharing.
- Are the Sources Transparent and falsifiable?
- Reliable sources include:
- Most edited news media. Some news media have a political or commercial angle you should be aware of, but they are still better than social media postings.
- Peer-reviewed research
- Publicly available records
- Be cautious if sources are vague, obscure, or unfalsifiable.
- Reliable sources include:
- Can you access the Original Sources easily ?
- If the story relies on distant, unfamiliar, or hard-to-reach sources (e.g., “a village in another country,” “an unnamed insider”) or a marginallised group that you do not know, verification becomes difficult.
- Lack of direct access increases the risk of misinformation.
- Is the Source Trustworthy or Just Hearsay?
- Be skeptical if the story comes from:
- “A friend of a friend”
- If a story you hear from a friend comes from influencers.
- Influencers. 2/3 of influencers do not fact check before they share stories.
- Anonymous officials like an unnamed police officer or social media posts
- Unverified rumors
- Traceable, accountable sources are essential.
- Is the story formed so that it can be easily falsified or fact-checked? Are the claims presented in a precise form that makes it easy to check if they are false ?
- Does the story suggest a secret elite conspiracy hiding the truth?
- If so, it may be difficult to check the facts. Because the alleged elite is claimed to be secret, and any fact check can be rejected as a part of the alleged conspiracy.
Does the story tell the truth ?
When politicians highlight cases of misconduct within minority groups, even factually accurate stories can distort reality if they are cherry-picked to fuel prejudice. Ask yourself about the angle of the presentation:
- Is This Story Being Weaponised for Political Gain?
- Is a politician, party, an activist group or influencers aggressively promoting it to attack rivals or sway voters?
- Does its timing align with an election or controversial policy debate?
- Is It Part of a Selective Narrative?
- Are only negative stories about immigrants/minorities being amplified, while similar acts by others are ignored?
- Does the coverage overrepresent rare events as common trends?
- Is It Statistically Misleading?
- Even if true, does the story imply that the behavior is widespread when data shows it is an outlier?
- Are broader societal factors (e.g., poverty, discrimination) being erased to blame an entire group?
Does this story reveal a real pattern—or is it being used to manipulate perceptions?
Critical thinking means separating facts from agendas. Always check the broader context before accepting a narrative.
Half of U.S. adults report occasionally getting news from social media. The vast majority of regular news consumers on Truth Social (88%) and Rumble (83%) identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while about half of those on Facebook and YouTube also lean Republican.
Urban legends interlock together with other tools of propaganda such as memes. Storytelling is still a key element in right-wing populist propaganda, and what the memes refer to. A hint is often enough, as anyone familiar with the story will immediately understand the reference. The Trump campaign used social media to spread urban legends, conspiracy theories and other stories, and memes reflecting such narratives, so called “dog whistles”.
Conspiracy theories are a type of stories where the alleged perpetrator is not an individual, but a secret group. The conspiracy theories claim a secret elite is manipulating events and hiding the truth from people. Because the group is secret, the stories can not easily be falsified. And any attempt to fact check the stories can be countered as being a part of the conspiracy.
Big Tech platforms have offered right-wing populists powerful channels to the unopposed spreading of often false narratives targeting political opponents, and especially refugees and immigrants. Major social media networks have thus helped bring far-right ideas into the political mainstream. These narratives demonise refugees and immigrants, creating an atmosphere of fear and hostility.
Modern right wing populists use similar propaganda methods as the old German Nazi party
Such stories can wander around on their own when set into circulation. Like the old folk tales, they can travel long distances and live for a long time. Some of the conspiracy theories and other urban legends we see today are like stories set out in the propaganda of the old German nazi party NSDAP, like the “Pizza Gate” conspiracy theory which is strikingly like the old “Blood Libel” conspiracy theory.
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This project stands in solidarity with refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers.