Right-wingers rush online to find common cause and comrades
THERE is a prominent narrative that the rise of the far right is due solely to the deliberate spread of false information online. This is a somewhat naive or at least limited perspective.
While Brexit and the Trump presidency are often seen as examples of the success of disinformation, those ‘earthquake’ events reflect only subtle changes of much less than 5pc in public opinion against longrun averages.
If disinformation had played such a prominent role in influencing public opinion, then surely public opinion would have changed significantly on these issues.
Political science paints a very different picture of the rise of the far right. It charts its steady and consistent increase in support in western Europe of 2 to 3pc per decade since the mid-1980s, an average of 12pc per country.
More than 10 years ago, I started a PhD on why there had not been any far-right party in Ireland. According to the academic literature, one of the principal features is that supporters of the far right are a relatively homogeneous subset of the population, with distinctive attitudes, values and psychological profiles. They also exist everywhere.
Among hundreds of different attitudes, the single best predictor across the European Social Survey is one’s attitude to the government’s response to refugees and asylum-seekers.
Those who tended to believe their government were too generous were far more likely to support those parties. Their attitudes could be summarised as a sense of disaffection with the system. Current scepticism of vaccines fits the general pattern.
Their attitudes reflect something deeper about those who tend toward the far right. Studies that focus on psychological traits reveal farright supporters tend to have a distinctive character.
Studies drawing on the OCEAN model of personality traits reveal supporters of the far right are significantly less likely to be ‘agreeable’ or ‘open to new experiences’.
Studies that draw on Moral Foundations Theory reveal they are more likely to emphasise the importance of in-group loyalty over caring for the vulnerable or fairness.
Other studies show them to be significantly more nostalgic.
In research of Irish public opinion, I can confirm it is the exact same here today.
What they have in common, when they emerge, is a shared opposition to the government of the day — and they tend to come from a demographic that is particularly disaffected, through economic disadvantage, with the status quo. In many countries they have emerged as tribal class loyalties have declined.
Far-right supporters are not a random subset of the population that happened across invalid information online. The internet has instead provided a mechanism through which these voters could find one another and organise.
Their failure thus far in Ireland has been notable. Our electoral system undoubtedly makes it more difficult, and those who would otherwise support such parties have tended to support Independent candidates, with a smattering of support within Sinn Féin and, to a lesser extent, in Fianna Fáil. Usually, however, these people often do not vote at all.