Whatever the trajectory of this pandemic, we can say with certainty that a huge number of people will have reduced personal circumstances and will grieve for their losses. The opportunity for the far right is therefore to find a way to persuade the many victims of this outbreak that what they’ve lost was unjustly stolen from them, and distort this new reality so it fits their existing narratives.
The moment, the European Union closed all Schengen area borders in an attempt to stem the coronavirus pandemic, of which the Old Continent is now the epicenter. This drastic response, which some consider being the product of a weak and slow European administration, has also fed into the populist narrative of the far-right, fiercely in favor of inward-looking social policies and closed nations. The coronavirus health crisis is indicative of what has now long been a trend undermining the foundations and principles of the EU, as well as those of democracy.
The far-right have traditionally benefited from disasters. Their tactics rely on persuading people that something – land, wealth, identity – has been unjustly stolen from them by an ‘other’, an out-group usually defined by race, religion or political identity. People are therefore more receptive to those arguments when they have experienced a genuine loss or decline in living standards.
Simplistic by default, aiming to divide, and ignorant of facts, the populist discourse has attracted an increasingly large share of the European electorate in recent years. Europe’s democrats will also have to regain control of the narrative. In times of crisis, the pessimistic interpretation prevails, that life has become bad, that the economy is approaching collapse, and that moral and social relationships are at their lowest. It becomes easy to accuse minorities or migrants. Progressives will need to develop a narrative of the future, emphasizing the ideas of openness, pluralism, economic progress, and supranational cooperation. A new possible story could be, for example, that Europe is trying to make globalization responsible, by taking the lead in the fight against the coronavirus.
Whatever the trajectory of this pandemic, we can say with certainty that a huge number of people will have reduced personal circumstances and will grieve for their losses. The opportunity for the far right is therefore to find a way to persuade the many victims of this outbreak that what they’ve lost was unjustly stolen from them, and distort this new reality so it fits their existing narratives.
Conspiracy theories state that the COVID-19 is a Chinese bioweapon, with suggestions that the virus either escaped or was deliberately released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite the vast majority of experts believing that the virus emerged naturally in wildlife before making the leap to humans. This theory has received coverage in mainstream media outlets including an uncritical write up in the Daily Express, which cited claims made in an interview on Alex Jones’ Info Wars without mentioning the long history of bizarre conspiracies that the show has previously endorsed.
An existing conspiracy theory that has received a boost from the pandemic is the anti-5G movement, which believes that the radiation emitted by the upgraded wireless internet network has negative health impacts.
Suggestions range from the idea that the symptoms of COVID-19 are direct side effects of the radiation to the idea that 5G networks are degrading human immune systems and thus leaving people more vulnerable to the virus. Proponents of this theory use misleading or falsified maps to argue that the virus’ prevalence in countries that have begun upgrading to 5G as evidence for their claims, ignoring the many alternative factors that explain why certain countries and regions might be more exposed to a global virus, such as population density and higher levels of tourism and travel.
For the extreme right, those neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to see society destroyed and rebuilt in a more hateful image, the pandemic has aroused far more excitement and anticipation than denial. The extreme right does not believe in working within existing frameworks to achieve change, and so the immense economic upheaval and disruptive potential of the pandemic is something to be celebrated rather than minimized.
On platforms such as 4chan, 8kun and extreme right Telegram channels, the pandemic has generated a huge amount of excitement, with anonymous users reveling in the opportunity to indulge in anti-Chinese racism, conspiracy theories and gleeful expectation of social turmoil.
The FBI has reportedly warned police forces that white supremacists are encouraging their followers to deliberately spread the COVID-19 to Jewish communities and police officers. While such threats have undoubtedly been made, it is important to place them in the context of far-right tactics online. Alongside the very real terrorist threat posed by the extreme right, they also seek to create fear and attract attention that far exceeds their operational capacity. Such threats should be placed in the context of the stated desire on the far right of using the pandemic as a means to instill panic, rather than automatically taken at face value.
The far-right thrives on fear, alienation and desperation, and relies on misinformation and deceptive narratives to convert those feelings into fuel for their agenda. We cannot afford to ignore this threat.
Meral Musli Tajroska – Psychologist, Consultant on violent extremism and radicalization, activist for gender equality.
Source: Hope Not Hate, The Interpreter
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This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
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