Spreading stories that undermine others through the rumour can be an effective strategy for elevating your own position. Many people pay attention to and share gossip, as we think that there is “no smoke without a fire”. Once gossip spread in wide circles, it can ignite hate against a minority group or a rival.
Right wing populism use an ancient form of communication that existed before the written language “selective storytelling” and “urban legends” to win public support. These modern stories are closely related to pre-writing age stories like myths, legends, epics and folk tales that spread from person to person. The Swedish folklorist Bengt Klintberg documented that such folk tales are fully present in modern society. He named these urban legends “wandering stories”. These modern folk tales are named “vandringssägen” or “Klintbergare” in Swedish.
Hyped by the social media on the Internet, dramatic stories about individual moral misconduct, has now become a tool for gaining authoritarian power in a modern representative democracy. We pay attention to these tellings as they trigger strong emotions in us, releasing powerful hormones through our bodies.
Right wing populism and the political mainstream use different language. In the original form stories were spread by telling verbally. This shaped the form of the stories. The mouth-to-mouth gossip is an extremely efficient way of spreading a message, as shown in chapter 2. The political mainstream and the political left are more prone to use statistics and other attempts to present facts.
The stories are today spread even more effectively through social media platforms. The online spreading of rumours and memes referring to them often go viral by being published on social media platforms and by click-and-share. The repetition of memes make them stick to your mind.
The two media, orally 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.
Modern variants of ancient kind of stories of claimed moral misconduct are called “urban legends” in North America, “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.
Cherry picking stories about immigrant crime is disinformation
Right wing populists use a mix of false and true stories. 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. 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 is unrepresentative. Cases of sexually motivated murder and other violent crime is found in all nations and in 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 a brutal crime against a defenceless victim evokes powerful emotions – sympathy, fear and outrage. Some of the most used stories in propaganda are about sexually motivated murders. These stories ignite an emotional spark that overwhelm statistical facts in the political debate, like data showing immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens. Statistics does not awake emotions.
The social media congregation
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. Social media has also become more important because of a change of habits.
Most of us find it more interesting to read slander and gossip stories than to read news articles that refer to statistics, numbers or other falsifiable facts. 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.
The Trump campaign used social media to spread urban legends, conspiracy theories and other stories, and memes reflecting such narratives, “dog whistles”.
Right wing attacking the institutions of democracy
BBC cites Trump saying that the attempt to overthrow the election, where several people were killed, as a “day of love”. See more about the falsified “stop the steal” conspiracy theory and the capitol siege in chapter 7.
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 was set out in the propaganda of the old German nazi party NSDAP.
Conspiracy theories are a sort of stories where the narrative is about secret elite manipulating events and hiding the truth from people.
Urban legends interlock together with other tools of propaganda such as memes. Storytelling is still the 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.
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.
US officials claim Russian election interference
US Intelligence officials says in a joint statement that a viral video falsely depicting Pennsylvania mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being destroyed was “manufactured and amplified” by Russian actors. “This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans”, says the statement.
The Intelligence Community further warns that they expect “Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”
Antipropaganda.help is a website dedicated to countering right wing propaganda, including nazism, neo-nazism and racism. This non profit project addresses populist narratives and conspiracy theories. Please feel free to copy and share !
This project stands in solidarity with refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers.