‘They don’t care about you, me or anyone else’: populist storytelling in anti-lockdown protests

Abstract

This paper contributes to the study of populism and populist social movements by emphasising the centrality of Manichaeism and conspiracy theories for populism. It reveals how these 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. Based on go-along interviews and participant observation during anti-lockdown protests in three cities of the UK, we identified four key narratives informing populist storytelling in the protests: Protesters believed that they are the (1) truth-tellers, who wake the people up to the truth that the pandemic is the result of a plot, as well as the (2) heroes, who oppose the villain-elites enacting the plot – a societal (3) crisis – through the imposition of lockdowns and restrictions. While engaged in a moral struggle, the protesters were motivated by (4) the promise of averting the crisis and returning to normality. Our findings further our understanding of how joint grievances surrounding a threatening pandemic coalesced into a coherent populist narrative expressed by a protest movement.