Chasing Demons: Crime, Narrative, and Affect, in Online British Conspiracist Communities.

• In Event: Narrative Criminology 1: Humour and emotions

Abstract

Anger and hate have long been seen as important emotions implicated in social movements and the stories they tell. Through anger political movements can identify out-groups, blame them for perceived harm, and then mobilise community action. However, despite the wide-spread recognition of their importance, these emotions have been understudied in the context of the growth of Reactionary Populist Conspiracist Movements. Conspiracy theorists and the movements that surround them have come to occupy an increasingly large space in the political life of democratic societies across the world, where they act as a persistent and contentious opposition in some countries, whilst taking power and shaping laws in others. This is of particular concern to criminological scholars as these movement often break the law through violence and criminality, whilst simultaneously calling for harsh criminal justice penalties for their enemies. How then should we understand these movements and the elaborate conspiracy narratives they tell which seek to justify and legitimise their actions.
This paper will seek to address this question through a narrative criminological lens, by examining how these moments use the emotions of hate and anger in the narratives that justify their social mobilisation, focusing specifically on a case study of the anti-lockdown and anti-climate change "Freedom movement" in the United Kingdom. The paper will show how anger and hate are used in the movements narratives to both constitute in and out-groups, and to motivate political actions against perceived enemies. Moreover, borrowing from Sara Ahmed, the paper will show how hatred circulates between various "demonised" groups to create a perceived unity in the movement's opponents and thus narrative coherence in their storytelling tradition. The paper contributes to narrative criminology by demonstrating the role that affect plays in storytelling and the power of emotions to act as the motor for collective narrative mobilisation

Author

• Joseph Patrick McAulay, University of Oxford, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies