Violent crime is present in all large groups of people. You can easily cherry pick stories telling about violent crime done by refugees, immigrants or any large number of people. Some of the stories most efficient in arousing emotions and political mobilising are the individually true ones. Right wing organisations cherrypick and redistribute stories about immigrant crime. The impact of a story of a violent crime is strongest on short term, as it is soon overshadowed by other stories. But it can temporarily lead to negative sentiments of immigrants. It is therefore often used by the extreme right to mobilise to political actions and to elections. The political mainstream and left are often baffled by these sudden demonstrations and other actions.
What happens when a story of crime committed by a member of a defined category of people is not entirely fabricated, but true, or at least partially true? These narratives pack an even greater political punch than outright lies. Crimes are committed by people of every social strata, colour, nationality, and religion, but selective storytelling transforms isolated incidents into a tool for inducing fear and antipathy.
Partially true stories are resilient. Unlike falsehoods, they are harder to refute. How do you counter a narrative when a victim publicly confirms its details? This emotional authenticity makes them powerful weapons in the arsenal of propaganda.
Combing through media for stories of immigrant crime
Right-wing organisations have perfected cherry picking immigrant crime stories. In Scandinavia, these groups have been known to comb through media reports, and encourage activists to collect and share such incidents about refugees and immigrants. These stories have then been spread online. Researchers Anton Törnberg and Mattias Wahlström studied the Facebook group “Stand Up for Sweden,” which boasted over 167,000 members. They found that group members selectively gathered and circulated stories about immigrant crime.
“External media sources were used by group members to demonstrate and criticise:
(1) that Sweden and Swedish values are under threat;
(2) that Swedes, especially Swedish men, face ‘reverse discrimination’; and
(3) the prevalence of a politically correct elite producing ‘Fake News.'”
The modern right wing never presents stories of crimes done by the majority, or of right-wing terrorism. This one sided presentation is a parallel to the means propaganda used by the old fascists. Psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer, who made a report for the US Intelligence agency OSS presented the way Hitler sketched negative stereotypes of his presented enemies. He described how Hitler presented only negative stories about enemies and minority groups, while deliberately omitting any positive portrayals. Any nuance or broader context that might allow for interpretation is stripped away, making it easy to sketch a one-dimensional villain stereotype. This also makes it possible to paint a stereotype of those who defend minorities—such as human rights activists, the press, and political opponents.
The crime of one individual belongs to that individual alone
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.
Although these stories might be factually true individually, their total presentation is disinformation since:
- The selection of data is unrepresentative. The careful curation of such stories leads to a statistically misleading portrayal. Violent crime is present in every large group of people. You can easily cherry pick stories telling about crime committed by refugees, immigrants or any category of people. Or by someone from the majority category, as demonstrated by the Epstein case.
- Just as a single pebble cannot explain a beach, the story of an individual crime cannot logically tell any general truth about refugees, immigrants, or crime.
- Social groups and social categories are different. A social category is built on a single trait—like being left-handed, skin colour, nationality, refugee status, or an immigrant. Unlike a social group, people in a social category do not necessarily interact or have contact. Someone from a national category can for instance not be held responsible for what another person from the same nation have done.
It is psychologically easy to make the misjudgment that two phenomena occurring close together in time or space are related. We tend to assume that events happening in proximity are causally connected, a cognitive bias known as illusory correlation. This bias can lead us to confuse a social group (a meaningful, interactive set of individuals) with a social category (a broader, often arbitrary classification that does not contain claims of social behaviour).
As a result, we may falsely generalise that all members of the social category “undocumented immigrants” share specific behavioural traits, simply because a single individual from that category committed a violent crime. For example, a psychological study by the University of Chicago found that “keeping other traits constant, subjects consistently believed that if someone committed crimes like rape or murder, they must be illegal.“
Donald Trump especially picked stories of sexually motivated murders done by undocumented immigrants. ABC News describes how Donald Trump repeated false claims that Kamala Harris had“over 647,572 migrant criminals for Kamala set loose to rape, pillage, plunder and kill the people in the United States of America” in rallies in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
An individually true story of a tragic crime are used to great effect in political campaigns. 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 consists a threat of violent immigrant crime against defenceless victims, that their political rivals do not confront, or even enable.
Right wing organisations selectively gather and present stories with refugees and immigrants as perpetrators as political campaigns. The individually true stories can spread more or less unopposed, since the fact checks will not object to them.
Trump’s playbook: Stories stoke emotions
The emotional responses are still far stronger than dry statistical facts, such as evidence showing that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens as shown in chapter 12. BBC states that the Biden administration forced out two million people from USA between January 2021 and 11 May 2023.
Reuters states that«Trumps attacks are from a well-thumbed playbook he has used repeatedly since first running for office in 2015 to cast immigrants illegally crossing the southern border as violent criminals.— He typically focuses on young, usually white, women allegedly killed by Hispanic.” For example:
- Jocelynn Nungaray: Trump used the story of the 12-year-old, allegedly killed by two undocumented Venezuelan men, to accuse President Biden of enabling rapists and murderers.
- Rachel Morin: Trump blamed Biden for the brutal murder of Morin by a man wanted for murder in El Salvador, connecting the crime to the administration’s border policies.
In both cases, the Trump campaign actively reached out to the victims’ families, incorporating their tragedies into campaign narratives. At rallies, grieving relatives called for stricter border controls, their stories stirring anger and fear among audiences.
We can easily identify with the victim of a violent crime. It is also easier to identify with a single victim than with a group of victims. When we hear a story about a defenceless person that suffer a brutal crime, it rises our hormonal levels.
Fear and anger makes you lose the broad perspective
A sexually motivated murder is an especially morally disgusting crime. The perpetrator deliberately deprive the victim of her body, her feelings, her dignity and finally her life.
The logical connection between these individual sexually motivated crimes and border policies of the competing political party is weak at best. Everybody who has been at a border control knows that it can be a a challenging situation with long queues, and that an individual error by a border officer can happen.
The Norwegian newspaper VG reports that the procedures were not followed, when the suspect of the murder of Morin was returned to Mexico instead of being held and DNA-tested. He should after the routines the have been extradited to El Salvador, where he was wanted. Instead, he managed to cross the border into USA on his forth attempt.
Yet, logic is not the point. The stories provoke strong emotional reactions and cries for action. The strong emotions easily drown out nuanced discussions, or if the cause of an individual crime in reality is the border control regime of the opposing political party. The emotions grab the attention of the audience, provides a political focus towards the portrayed problems and divert the attention from important political issues.
Tunnel vision or the bigger picture ?
Tunnel vision created by selective storytelling prevent us from seeing the broader picture. Selective storytelling is not about truth. It is about emotional impact. By focusing on individual tragedies, these narratives obscure broader realities and promote harmful stereotypes. These stories stir emotions, influence opinions, and advance political agendas.
To counter such tactics, it is essential to recognise the power of emotional narratives and to balance them with critical thinking and comprehensive perspectives. The truth is not just what is told, but also what is left out. If it is ment to be a general description of a social minority, remember the stories of all the people from minorities, immigrants and refugees who live their lives as peacefully as good citizens.