Right wing populists talk directly to our spinal cords, by telling gossip stories. The stories spread incredibly fast. A story warning of an existential threat can spread to 390 000 people when retold 8 times. Gossip stories can ignite fear, anger and hate against a minority, and undermine the standing of a rival.
These stories spread no matter if they tell any truth. How are voters convinced ? We are inherently predisposed to pay attention to gossip stories, not to statistics and other facts. When a sufficient number of people share the same stories, they reach a critical mass, creating a right-wing power base. The extreme right has largely shortcut the gatekept media, by using gossip stories.
Right wing populism use an ancient broadcasting medium: Gossip Stories
Simply put, the mainstream and left use numbers and other facts, and the extreme right use individual stories. Aristotle described two opposite modes of persuasion in his foundational work “rhetoric”. The mainstream and leftist argumentation can be described as Logos, the Greek word for “word,” “reason,” or “plan.” It refers to the logical appeal of an argument—its internal consistency, use of evidence, facts, and rational structure.
Right wing populists use Pathos, mobilisation of emotions to win public support. It means “suffering,” “experience,” or “emotion.” The tool to achieve this influence is an ancient medium, that existed long before the written language; storytelling. The age-old format of storytelling is still very much alive today. Modern stories are like the pre-writing-age stories in form and content. They have the shape of the old folk tales, myths and legends that once were told from person to person.
Two step scapegoat strategy
The far-right’s playbook is clear: mobilise support through anti-immigrant sentiment. Their strategy begins by dismantling the distinction between refugees and immigrants, labelling all as “economic migrants.” This rhetorical sleight of hand, now echoed by mainstream politicians and media, strips refugees of their real stories, telling how they have had to run for their lives. Once their stories of danger and escape are erased, a critical barrier falls. It becomes easier to paint all newcomers with the same negative brush, reducing their complex reasons for migrating to a simple desire for material gain.
The second step, and their sharpest propaganda tool, is spreading stories that warn against violent individual crime. Refugees and immigrants are given the role as bad guys in these stories. This storytelling talks directly to our primal instincts, and triggers pre-judging, fear, anger and hate in the public. A fictitious or unrepresentative true story of a crime done by a single person, can lower the understanding for all refugees and immigrants, also for the vast law obedient majority. Such stories are used to reinforce demands for stricter immigration policies.
Political mainstream use numbers and facts, and lag behind
Since right wing populism and the political mainstream use different media for spreading their ideas, the two use different language. Right populism use a vivid and dramatic language. The mainstream and left use statistics and other factual arguments, and try to keep a argumentative, yet logical tone.
The political mainstream and left use editorially controlled media, mass publications and scientific publications. They use falsifiable arguments. They focus on macro political relations between large bodies, like institutions and states.
Written texts are precise. Published texts can easily be fact checked. They can contain much more, and more precise information than the spoken word can, because you do not have to remember them. Measurable concepts are based on written tradition. The ideals of democracy from the Age of Enlightenment became dominant when mass published written texts became common.
The concept of modern democracy rests on the assumption of the perfectly informed voter. Factual arguments are efficient in making means-to-end politics, and to govern a modern state. They are therefore often preferred by main stream politicians and administrators in modern democracies. Still, measurable facts do not awake strong emotions, and the public does not get easily aroused by statistics.
Even though academic knowledge is crucial for democracy, it can not guarantee ethical choices. The case of six U.S. universities, which eliminated their DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs under pressure from the Trump administration, proves this point. Human rights and democracy are not safeguarded by scholarship and logics alone—they must be fought for.
First on the battlefield, with a deafening barrage of noise
Gossip stories are fast to make or choose, circulate and understand. Right wing populists can be first on the political arena by using gossip stories. Long before the political mainstream and the left has reached to publish their analysis.
They can thereby create a deafening blizzard of noise that distracts the public attention from real scandals, pressing political matters and problems that needs to be solved. As put forward by Hannah Arendt, the pushing of gossip stories is also to create general confusion.
As expressed by former Trump aide Steve Bannon: “The Democrats don’t matter,- The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit”., quoted by Bloomberg.
Urban legends (wandering stories)
Modern tales 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 an alleged conspiracy of a secret powerful elite.
The Swedish folklorist Bengt Klintberg documented that folk tales are fully present and very much alive alive in modern Scandinavia. These modern tales are called “Vandringssägen” or “Klintbergare” in Swedish. These modern tales can find their own feet and wander around by themselves, when fed into the rumour mill. They are an important part of our culture today.
These modern folk tales spread through gossip in informal fora like friends or family groups, or through online gossip. These informal fora have absolutely no reality check. The stories therefore spread, no matter if they are false or true.
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 Active role of influencers: Spreading right-wing myths
Pro-Trump influencers have become a primary carrier for the active spreading of of conspiracy theories and urban legends (wandering stories).
Online influencers are todays storytellers, and they have growing audiences and influence. Social media and influencer postings has now overtaken edited news media as as the top way Americans get their news.
Influencer and social media are notoriously unreliable sources. In most cases influencers do not reality check before they share stories. Right wing politicians often rely on support from influencers. Influencers have the power to amplify controversial narratives, allowing politicians to maintain plausible deniability while benefiting from the publicity.
The gossip stories are today spread 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 repeated exposure of memes with short messages make them stick to your mind.
Stories sown by the old German Nazi propaganda: Still alive
Such stories can live on their own when set into circulation. Like the old folk tales, they can travel very far and live for a very 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 “Blood Libel” conspiracy theory.
Who dares say that the emperor is naked ?
The fairy tale about the Emperor’s new clothes tell us that it can be efficient to uncover a lie, and that fact checks should not be underestimated. In the story, two con men approach the emperor, claiming to sell clothes of the finest material. They say that the fabric is so delicate that only wise people can see it. Neither the ministers nor other people dared to tell that they saw no clothes, because they were afraid to appear as dumb. At least, the conformity was broken by a child, saying out loudly: “But the emperor has no clothes on”. Then all people realised the truth and started talking “But he has no clothes”.
Yet, the efficiency of exposing disinformation through fact checks in the editorially controlled mass media have been less than expected. One of the reasons could be that Americans, and especially Republicans, have little trust in editorially controlled mass media. Only 40 % of Republicans had some trust in the national news media in september 2024, before the presidential election.
Credibility is an asset the extreme right can not control over time, since their communication strategy relies on narrative over fact. Their storytelling-based claims are often debunked by the fact-seeking press, and the fact checks. Consequently, an extreme effort is put into sowing doubt about the general credibility of the mainstream media.
“Fake News” as a tribal howl
Donald Trump has systematically tried to discredit the mainstream media by commenting by establishing the symbol “Fake News“. “Fake News” becomes embedded as a permanent symbol for the in-group. The “Fake News” points to a misconception that the undefined “Fake News media” works synchronised to mislead the public.
The claims about “Fake News” from “The Fake News Media” circulates widely in the grass root of the MAGA movement, as suggested by two research reports from USA. They have become defining slogans for their subculture, a way for MAGA to distinguish themselves from “Rinos” (moderate republicans) and supporters of other political parties. The slogan signal allegiance the same way as wearing a red MAGA hat would, but less obvious.
The circulation of the “Fake News” and the “Fake News Media” within the MAGA would also construct a perfect echo chamber, where every critical voice and every correction and fact check of the presented stories would be actively dismissed.
Disinformation by cherry-picking stories about immigrant crime
It is arguable that these cherry-picked stories of individual crime can 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 sadly enough found in all nations and in any larger group of people. You can easily paint a negative bias of any larger group of people by systematically cherry-picking the worst examples.
The logic in the connection of individual murders to the claimed weak border control is at best marginal. Though, these stories are not effective because of logics. A defenceless victim or the victims family telling a story of a brutal crime 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 those of immigrants walking quietly to work, fail to stir strong emotions and fall outside the scope of storytelling.
A 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 than edited mass media. Disinformation spread by 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. Corrections by fact checks in news media can not keep up with 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”
Disinformation ? What to look up for:
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.
Conspiracy theories and other 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 controversial themes, and memes reflecting such narratives.
Conspiracy theories –The ideology of the hard core
Conspiracy theories are a type of stories where the alleged perpetrator is not an individual, but a secret group of an anonymous elite. The conspiracy theories are stories where an alleged secret elite is manipulating events and hiding the truth from people.
Conspiracy theories are closed belief systems, since they lack real sources. It is therefore not possible to fact check them. Instead of sources, they refer to an alleged secret conspiracy. Fact check are also often dismissed as a part of the conspiracy, and as a part of the “cover up”. You have to choose if you believe in them or not. This makes them ideal as a common code for subcultures of people who do not trust the political mainstream or left.
The narratives also claim to tell about amoral and dangerous conspirators. They are therefore also powerful instruments as core ideology for violent hard core right wing groups and terrorists.
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.
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.