‘They don’t care about you, me or anyone else’: populist storytelling in anti-lockdown protests explores populism and populist social movements based on go-along interviews and participant observation during anti-lockdown protests in three cities in the UK.
Their paper reveals how elements emerge organically from within the populist storytelling of a new wave of populist mobilisation, anti-lockdown protests, alongside identifying key narratives that collectively increase the ‘tellability’ of populist stories.
Their research identifies four key narratives informing populist storytelling in the protests:
- Protesters believed that they are truth-tellers, who wake the people up to the truth that the pandemic is the result of a plot;
- Protesters identified themselves as the heroes, who oppose the villain-elites enacting the plot;
- We are within a societal crisis – through the imposition of lockdowns and restrictions;
- While engaged in a moral struggle, the protesters were motivated by the promise of averting the crisis and returning to normality.
Their findings further an understanding of how joint grievances surrounding a threatening pandemic coalesced into a coherent populist narrative expressed by a protest movement.
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