How the radical right uses emotions for political gain

[Celerity]

Individuals prone to feeling shame, humiliation and resentment in their everyday life may be drawn to radical-right rhetoric.

https://socialeurope.eu/how-the-radical-right-uses-emotions-for-political-gain


Far-right supporters on the Independence Day parade in Warsaw (Cinematographer/shutterstock.com)

Radical-right politicians, in different national contexts, are adopting an emotional narrative which invokes shame and pride to garner political support. More and more studies in recent years have pointed to the role of emotions—such as fear, anger and resentment—in the mobilising rhetoric of right-wing populist leaders.

Yet perhaps because shame in particular is characteristically elusive, shame and its impact on the electorates of the radical right has remained relatively under-explored. People tend to avoid revealing to others their feelings of shame or embarrassment.

The precariousness of working life and a heightened sense of personal responsibility for one’s failures, however, as well as expectations of a certain standard of living in contemporary capitalist societies, facilitate feelings of shame and even humiliation. Right-wing political entrepreneurs seem to have recognised the mobilising potential of these negative emotions, as our recent investigation into the strategic use of emotions in radical right ‘countermedia’ in the United States and Poland reveals.

Countermedia, such as Breitbart in the US and wPolityce.pl in Poland, are outlets which explicitly oppose the ‘mainstream media’ and the political establishment more generally. They play an important role in managing the emotions of radical-right voters.

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