Making the Unacceptable Acceptable

Over the last days, England and Northern Ireland have witnessed a wave of racist violence and destruction. These riots, which have thrown the country into chaos, included attacking the Southport mosque, destroying cars and houses in Middlesbrough, and confrontations with the police in Plymouth. The racist nature of the events is made clear by the racist chants that are sung amid them, by posters shown by participants, and by the selective targeting of minorities.

Given how shocking these scenes are, one naturally wonders what is causing them. It is always hard to know why a specific event takes place, and there are often several causes for it. In this text, I want to discuss one cause that is likely to have contributed, and which I have studied in my academic work: elite rhetoric and how it can normalize far-right views and behavior.

Social norms, political stigma, and normalization

Human societies are full of what we often call social norms: unwritten rules that prescribe which behaviors are, and are not, deemed acceptable. Albeit unwritten, these rules are common knowledge, and individuals know that there will be social consequences if they break them.

In Western democracies, there are typically such norms against far-right behavior. For example, in an article recently published in the British Journal of Political Science, Amalia Alvarez-Benjumea and I surveyed a sample of Spanish individuals and asked them how they would feel and act if they were to encounter someone showing different political views. We find that individuals tend to see the display of such views as less acceptable than other political opinions. They also report being willing to punish those who show such views – for example, by not helping them if they so need, or by not engaging in a social interaction with them. Not only that, but they are also aware that this is how their co-citizens would react to someone showing far-right views. This means that, because it is at odd with established norms, engaging in far-right behavior is more socially costly than behavior that follows from other political views. This is what, in my work, I have called “political stigma”: a situation where individuals know that their political preferences are in tension with social norms, and that showing them can come with social sanctions.

Because the social costs of acting on stigmatized political views are known, even individuals who have those views may choose not to show them. Instead, they may prefer to hide them and act as though they support a norm that they actually do not agree with – a phenomenon which Timur Kuran has termed “preference falsification”. Perceptions of what is and is not acceptable, and the preference falsification that may follow, can significantly affect the political behavior of citizens. In an article recently published in the Journal of Politics, I find that, when forced to vote in public, Spanish citizens often stopped voting for the authoritarian successor party, which is stigmatized in the country. In the specific areas and election where private voting was impossible, the vote share for the party was lower.

Despite their important effects, however, social norms and political stigma are not fixed. They depend on what citizens think that other people in their society deem acceptable, which is hard to know for sure. For this reason, individuals often take cues from what happens around them to learn about what their peers view as desirable. If those cues make them feel that what was not acceptable has become more acceptable, those who previously were engaging in preference falsification may feel more comfortable showing their true colors. This process, where a given behavior becomes regarded as more socially acceptable than it previously was, is what in my forthcoming book I call a process of “normalization”.

Taking the first move in processes of normalization

When it comes to setting normalization in motion, political elites are key. Because of their prominence in society, what they say and do reaches most citizens. And, in so doing, it helps them form perceptions as to what is, and is not, deemed acceptable.

In the last few months, the behavior of British political elites has generated an environment that is very likely to have normalized far-right views and behavior. The electoral campaign that preceded the July election was dominated by the topics and rhetoric that are typical of the far-right. On the one hand, the far-right party Reform soared in the polls. Even though the party did not manage to gain more than 5 seats, it was the third most voted. This is an important point since once these parties enter parliaments, individuals come to feel that expressing far-right views is more acceptable than it previously was.

But the campaign also saw mainstream parties engage in rhetoric that is typical of the far-right. It is often a pattern that, as the far-right parties grow, other parties (both left and right) move closer to their position – as Werner Krause and Tarik Abou Chadi have shown. The July election in the UK was a textbook example of this pattern. The Conservative Party veered to the right, making migration one of its key topics and focusing on prototypical far-right policies and rhetoric – like the “Stop the boats” slogan or the infamous Rwanda plan. Even the center-left party Labour campaigned on migration reductions.

That the political mainstream moved closer to the position of the far-right is a crucial point when it comes to normalization. These parties are larger and perceived as more legitimate and, as such, their rhetoric can be very important in shifting perceptions of what is acceptable. Indeed, when they take on rhetoric that is typical of the far-right, mainstream parties normalize radical-right views even more than when far-right politicians use that rhetoric.

On top of this, this rhetoric was amplified by the media. Especially after Farage’s entry in the campaign, the Reform UK politician enjoyed a level of media attention that came close to that of Sunak and Starmer—even though his party was considerably smaller. This amplification of the message of far-right politicians is likely to have exacerbated the normalization of their views. As Diane Bolet and Florian Foos show, the media can significantly contribute to the normalization of extreme-right views – especially when those views are not challenged.

Normalization and taking far-right views to the streets

In a context such as this, it is plausible to think that far-right individuals will have felt emboldened to act on their views. Indeed, one of the findings in my book is that, in the aftermath of elections where far-right views are more normalized, more xenophobic protests take place. It is plausible to think that the same extends to the riots and violence witnessed over the last week.

As noted above, many other factors may have contributed to the events unfolding in the United Kingdom. Few, if any, social phenomena have a unique cause. Moreover, when discussing a single case, it is very hard to pinpoint rigorously what, exactly, caused it. Yet, previous research provides ample evidence that the type of rhetoric employed by political elites in recent months can have made these events more likely, by making far-right individuals feel that acting on their views is more acceptable than previously thought.