The Brexit context and conspiracy theory resonance
The Brexit context met all the textbook conditions for conspiracy theory resonance among the British public and voters: anxiety-generating crisis and insecurity; uncertainty and disaffection with official explanations; a community’s low sense of status and self-esteem (Douglas et al., 2019; see also O’Toole, 2018, on Britain’s ‘self-pity’). According to Jessop, ‘the Brexit conjuncture reflected a long-running split in the establishment, a worsening representational crisis in the party system, a growing crisis of authority for political elites, a legitimacy crisis of the state, and a crisis of national-popular hegemony over the population’ (2017: 134) that had been in the making for decades.
Under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative and Tony Blair’s New Labour Governments, British society started undergoing massive economic, political and socio-cultural transformation, within globalisation, neo-liberalisation and Europeanisation processes in which the UK participated as a major actor
(Calhoun, 2017; Clarke & Newman, 2017; Delanty, 2017; Jessop, 2017). The policies that set the framework and directions for change were subsequently carried forward by the next governments. At societal level, they created divisions between the so-called ‘losers’ and beneficiaries of these processes along class and occupation, age, education and geographical lines, which surfaced in the Brexit referendum in the ‘Leave’ vs. the ‘Remain’ voters (Calhoun, 2017; Clarke & Newman, 2017; see Antonucci et al., 2017, who also identify a declining ‘squeezed middle’ group). The former experienced a deep sense of political disenfranchisement, as the Labour and Conservative parties had failed to adequately represent their concerns and to voice their grievances, a loss of status quo and economic security, and various anxieties (Calhoun, 2017; Clarke & Newman, 2017; Hearn, 2017), including over immigration. The two (heterogeneous) groups were also divided by a widening gap between the values and ideologies they upheld: ‘nation-centeredness’ and social conservatism on the one hand, and ‘cosmopolitan pluralism’ on the other (Delanty, 2017: 116; see also Calhoun, 2017 on the rejection by Leavers of the ‘Cool Britannia’ cosmopolitan brand created by New Labour in the 1990s).
Such divisions and discontents, aggravated by the tough austerity measures taken in the UK to redress the effects of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, became particularly manifest in the years of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition (2010-2015). The surging popularity of the UKIP, with its anti-EU, anti-immigration populist and nationalist agenda, was one consequence of the ongoing crisis and power imbalances in British society (Clarke & Newman, 2017; Delanty, 2017; Hearn, 2017; Jessop, 2017). Similar crises and imbalances were (and still are) present in the European Union: the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, the ‘intensifying democratic deficit in its political institutions’ (Jessop, 2017; see also Delanty, 2017) and the Islamic terrorist attacks in a broader post-9/11 frame (Calhoun, 2017; Delanty, 2017). Against this backdrop, making for a fertile terrain for the emergence and resonance of right-wing populism, nationalism and conspiracy theories, ‘Brexit was a vote against London, globalisation, and multiculturalism as much as a vote against Europe’ (Calhoun, 2017: 57), and, overall, an expression of frustration, anger and powerlessness, in which ‘the EU was a partially misplaced target’ (Calhoun, 2017: 62).
Corpus and analytical framework
The corpus has been selected on purposive criteria and it only permits an exploratory analysis. It comes from a larger press corpus on Romanian immigrants in the Brexit referendum debate, which I have considered a good point of entry into the coverage of EU immigration, since Romanians were among the most frequently mentioned nationalities (Moore & Ramsay, 2017). The larger corpus was put together in March 2018, from the Nexis database for UK national editions, by using the search words ‘Romania or Romanian AND migrant or immigrant’; after being cleaned of duplicates and irrelevant articles, it comprised twenty-eight articles from The Sun, ninety-five articles from The Mail online and ninety-six articles from The Express online, for the period 23 February-23 June 2016. Out of this corpus, for the present study, I have selected only those articles that contain words that could bring out the (defining) conspiracy theory dimension of secrecy: ‘hidden’, ‘secret plans/deals’, ‘lied/lying’, ‘cover-up’, ‘leak’, ‘deception’ and ‘truth’ (as politicians were accused of not telling the truth), which resulted into ten articles from The Sun, twenty-four from The Daily Mail and fifteen from The Express. The articles are a mixture of news stories, opinion and commentary, and collections of short excerpts from letters to the editor (from The Sun), included because their selection for publication reveals the newspaper’s positioning.
For reasons of space, I will give only a brief presentation of the analytical framework. I draw upon Fairclough and Fairclough’s approach to deliberation in political discourse (2012), centred upon practical argumentation (‘argumentation for or against particular ways of acting’, Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012: 1), Isabela Fairclough’s recent work on framing within this approach (2016; see also Faiclough & Madroane, 2020), and Christopher Tindale’s use of the concepts of ‘cognitive environment’ (Sperber & Wilson, 1986) and ‘audience-relevance’ in rhetorical argumentation.7
Deliberation as an argumentative genre ‘combines two main argument schemes: argumentation about what course of action ought to be adopted (in light of desirable goals) and argumentation on what course of action ought to be avoided (in light of undesirable potential consequences)’ (Fairclough & Madroane, 2020: 125, based on Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012; Fairclough, 2016; 2019). In the argument from goals, a proposal for action is advanced starting from premises that specify desirable goals (underlain by a set of values), the circumstances the agents find themselves in (‘natural, social and institutional facts’; the ‘problem’ the agents are confronted with) and a means-goal premise. The argument from goals is subjected to a thorough process of critical testing, during which various objections are raised; crucial among them are objections regarding the ‘intended or unintended’ negative consequences (impacts, risks, etc.) of the proposal (the argument from consequence). A reasonable decision in support of the proposal is reached if no ‘decisive objections’ can be brought to it, that is if no unacceptable negative consequences, which cannot be ‘overridden by other reasons in favour’, can be identified (Fairclough & Madroane, 2020: 128; Fairclough, 2019). If unacceptable negative consequences can be identified, the proposal for action is successfully rebutted.
Within this approach, Isabela Fairclough defines the process of framing as ‘the selective salience given to certain premises in a deliberative process, intended to direct an audience towards a particular conclusion (and potentially towards a particular decision and course of action)’ (2016: 68, added emphasis; see also Fairclough & Madroane, 2020: 133-134). Hence, as a basic framing mechanism, texts can focus on any of the premises of the argument from goals or consequences, making them salient. A second mechanism relies upon the use of rhetorically persuasive definitions, metaphors, categorisations (related to Fillmorian semantic frames) in argument schemes that support the premises of the argument from goals or consequences (Fairclough & Màdroane, 2020: 134-135). Finally, a third mechanism employs elements from other genres, such as description, explanation or narrative, to indicate the cause of events or to assign blame or responsibility to agents and thus fuel moral indignation (Fairclough & Màdroane, 2020: 136).
My hypothesis is that, when media articles resort to populist conspiracy theory in the framing process, premises are made selectively salient through the following strategies (the list is not exhaustive): emphasising the ‘apocalyptic’ dimension of a problem that is identified and that may be symbolically built into a crisis (Hofstadter, 1996; Berlet, 2008), so that its unacceptable consequences can also be brought into relief; laying blame on political and institutional actors for the problem in ways that go in the direction of scapegoating, which involves overlooking other causes of the problem (Berlet, 2008: 225); identifying the actions of political and institutional actors as cases of betrayal or secret plotting, from positions of power, to their own advantage and against the public interest; drawing upon (and at the same time building) the narrative role of‘villains’ for the group of alleged conspirators in a clear-cut, sharp contrast with that of ‘heroes’ (or ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’, see Tsotsou in this volume), roles further connected to a ‘dualist’ vision of good and evil that could even lead towards the ‘démonisation’ of the villains (Berlet, 2008; Hofstadter, 1996; see also the introduction to this volume).8 Such framing strategies can be used alongside other strategies that hold political and institutional actors accountable without scapegoating or demonising them and present the problem at hand without fostering a sense of apocalyptic crisis (as is also the case in the corpus under scrutiny).
As noted earlier, references to specific conspiracy theories are rare in my corpus. Nonetheless, re-occurring narratives, explanations and arguments in the long-running media debate on EU immigration, which include mentions of conspiracy theories and instances of populist conspiracy style, can be easily recognised by the public (here, the readers of the three newspapers analysed) and may come to shape expectations among some of them. I tentatively use ‘audience-relevance’, defined as ‘the relation of the information-content of an argument, stated and assumed’ to the cognitive environment9 of an audience (Tindale, 1999: 103, added emphasis), to suggest that certain members of the addressed audiences who are regular readers or who are familiar with certain conspiracy theories could make assumptions or draw out hidden premises from the Leave argument(s) on EU immigration to make the stated premises (more) relevant to their cognitive environments. This hypothesis would need to be backed up by audience research (as a follow-up study).
Findings and discussion
Elsewhere (Màdroane, 2018), I have reconstructed the Leave argument(s) on EU immigration as covered in four pro-Brexit newspapers (The Telegraph, The Sun, The
Express and The Daily Mail), by examining a corpus on Romanian immigrants as an entry point into the referendum debate. While that corpus is not identical to the one used here, I consider the reconstruction, done following the approach to practical argumentation presented above, valid for the current research, and I take it as the main point of departure. Here I look only into the Leave argument from goals and into the Leave argument from negative consequences aimed at rebutting the Remain claim, but not into the critical objections formulated by the Remain camp.
In the circumstances premise of the argument from goals, the problems created by EU immigration in British society are identified as ‘increase in crime, overcrowding and overburdening of public services and housing systems, disruption of community cohesion, unfair competition, and wage depression on the labour market’ (connections between EU immigration and illegal immigra-tion/the refugee crisis are also drawn) (Madroane, 2018: 152). The desirable goals revolve around a Britain that will be free of these problems, which also means non-constrained by EU legislation (especially on freedom of movement) and political decision-making, and a ‘Britain restored to its former (before EU membership) glory, seen in nationalistic terms’ (Madroane, 2018: 152). The values underlying the goals (also relevant to the circumstances premise) have to do with commitments to the British nation from the perspective discussed in the introduction to this chapter. The means to achieve the proposed goals is exiting the European Union, hence the claim that citizens should vote ‘Leave’ in the referendum. The Leave argument also addresses the alternative option, remaining in the European Union, from an argument from consequence, for example by emphasising the unacceptable negative consequences of continuing down the same path, which would only worsen the EU immigration-related problems. The strategy of identifying problems in the status quo and of highlighting the unreasonableness of preserving it is common in cases of proposals to change policy, either through institutional channels (advocacy) or direct action (social protest).
Significant for my purposes here is the attribution of responsibility for the EU immigration problems to two main groups of actors-the European Union leaders and institutions and the pro-European British ‘elites’ - and, occasionally, to experts, the police, the judiciary, multinational corporations and the pro-EU British media, accused of spreading propaganda. The attribution of responsibility is related to the circumstances premise, which identifies the conditions of action, but also bears relevance to the argument from negative consequence: by exposing the institutional practices and actions that have generated the problems, it directs readers towards the conclusion that it is unacceptable to allow such practices and actions to continue (in an attempt to rebut the Remain claim). As a framing mechanism, it works towards supporting the claim that Britain should leave the UK (and rejecting the claim it should stay) in two steps. First, the problems caused in Britain by EU immigration are highlighted to create the image of a crisis to which British citizens have fallen victim. When the argument(s) draw upon populist conspiracy theory, the presentation of the crisis acquires the dimension of an impending ‘catastrophe’ that justifies an urgent intervention to save the world, in an ‘apocalyptic’ vision (Hofstadter, 1996; see also Berlet, 2008 on ‘apocalypticism’). Second, the finger is pointed directly at those who have presided over or, in conspiratorial terms, orchestrated the crisis (the EU and the pro-EU British politicians) and who, based on past and current evidence, will most likely continue to do so, while the trends will only get worse (in the argument from negative consequence). The approach, therefore, seeks to undermine trust in the EU and the pro-EU British politicians, by discrediting their character or ethos, and, thus, to undermine trust in the Remain claim (Fairclough & Madroane, 2020; see also Miller, 2002). Holding political and institutional actors accountable is not unusual in the public space (politicians are answerable to the public for their actions), but, in populist conspiracy theory, it develops into a form of‘scapegoating’ and, possibly, demonisation, which can fuel strong moral indignation and mobilise publics into action.
Of the different roles that the European Union can play in relation to Britain as a member state (Balch & Balabanova, 2017), prominent in my corpus is that of the EU as a supranational legal entity, which has the power to impose freedom of movement laws (and other laws) upon member states. This finding is in agreement with the tendency noted by Balch and Balabanova (2017) in their corpus from the year 2013, when the public debate focused on the lifting of restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian workers. It is in this capacity that the EU is recurrently identified as the main source of immigration ills in British society: migrant crime (including terrorism) and disease; the dissolution of local British communities ‘overtaken’ by various cultures (under scrutiny are often migrants from the former European communist space and from Muslim countries); the overburdening of public services, correlated with a high rate of population growth; the unfair appropriation of welfare benefits that serve for the development of the migrants’ home countries, in a zero-sum game (their gain is Britain’s loss):
- (1) ‘Forty-five thugs have been allowed into our country because of EU freedom of movement laws and they’ve gone on to commit some very serious crimes. Then we find out that 300 mansions have been built in Romania on the back of Britain’s benefits system - another truth’.
- (‘Gypsy crooks’ scheme proves ive need Brexit’, 2016, The Sun)
- (2) ‘Ms Patel, a leading member of the Leave campaign, spoke out as new figures show one pupil in every 15 has at least one parent from the EU ... Separate figures from the UK Statistics Authority show 123,000 school-age migrants entered Britain over the period under free movement rules’.
- (Wheeler, 2016, The Express)
The repetition of the cause-effect association between the disaster inflicted upon British society by EU immigration and the EU in its supranational capacity, coupled with the simplification of causes, invests the EU with a symbolic dimension of evilness (Madroane, 2014b) and contributes to its scapegoating. This is further amplified by the actions of various pro-EU British governments (at the time of the referendum and in the past), who are portrayed as allies of the EU, in stark opposition to British citizens, and, thus, as ‘internal enemies’ (see the introduction to this volume). Such symbolic constructions have a significant potential for mobilisation because they can instil both fear and moral outrage. On this basis, I next discuss the multiple purposes that the representation of the European Union as a supranational legal power can serve in the Leave argument(s) on EU immigration, in connection to the use of populist conspiracy theory in the framing process. I also consider the possibility of mainstream interpretations for the framing mechanisms and strategies identified, which is an important feature of the corpus.
