Session One: What the Language of Right-Wing Populism Is Actually Doing

On 20 May, linguist Kirstie Skates and cultural anthropologist Steven Lacey joined Dr Olha Mukha for the first session in our new lunchtime series — examining right-wing populism not as politics, but as a system of language and emotional appeal.

The core argument was precise: what feels instinctive in populist communication is carefully structured. Codes, repetitions, and emotional cues work together to make particular ideas feel natural — and that sense of naturalness is where much of their power resides.

What the analysis showed

The session unpacked the specific linguistic mechanisms at work — how populist language builds trust, manufactures urgency, and creates a sense of collective identity around shared grievance. Rather than appealing to argument, it appeals to feeling: the sense that someone finally sees things clearly, speaks plainly, and means what they say.

Gender dynamics within far-right movements also came into focus — how female representatives typically occupy supporting rather than leading roles, and what that structural pattern reveals about the ideology underneath the rhetoric.

What the conversation raised

The live discussion pushed into harder territory. Can the same linguistic tools work for progressive voices — and if so, what would that actually look like in practice? The session suggested the techniques themselves are not ideologically fixed; they are tools of credible leadership. The problem, as several attendees noted, is that too many politicians have been trained to say nothing, and evasiveness reads as a lack of direction.

There was also a sharper question beneath the surface: how do you engage people who have genuinely bought into a false narrative — not to ridicule, but to reach? Ridiculing public figures may be effective. Reaching voters with real grievances requires something different.

If the session had a fault line, it was this: analysis, however sharp, does not automatically translate into action. Understanding how populist language works is not the same as knowing what to do about it. Several threads in the discussion pointed toward that gap without quite crossing it.

What it sparked

The room was anything but passive. The live discussion organised itself around several distinct threads.

Can the same tools work the other way? The most persistent question was whether the linguistic framework being analysed could be turned around — applied to build positive momentum for progressive movements. The discussion settled on an uncomfortable answer: the techniques themselves are not ideologically fixed. They are tools of credible leadership. The problem is that too many politicians have been trained to say nothing, leaving them appearing evasive and directionless. The ideology is different; the mechanics don't have to be.

How do you reach people who have already bought in? A sharper and harder question ran beneath the first. There is a meaningful difference, the chat argued, between ridiculing public figures — which may be effective — and reaching voters who have drifted toward the far right with genuine grievances about cost of living and political neglect. Those two tasks require fundamentally different approaches, and conflating them risks making things worse.

Gender, hierarchy and what it reveals Observations about gender dynamics within far-right movements produced some of the session's most precise analysis. Female representatives tend to occupy supporting rather than leading roles — a structural pattern that, on closer examination, says something important about the ideology underneath the rhetoric. Giorgia Meloni's speeches were noted as following exactly the same beats as the material under discussion.

Politics as theatre Several attendees pushed at the performative dimension — the idea that populist language creates something like an invented world, with its own internal rules, where the audience is knowingly inside the spectacle. This connected to a broader point about the sophistication with which these movements understand politics as entertainment, and the degree to which that understanding is now baked in rather than consciously deployed.

Trust as the underlying mechanism Running through all of it was a question about trust. The implicit offer in much of this language, it was suggested, is not really about policy — it is about the feeling of being seen and believed. In a landscape where trust in institutions, media, and mainstream politics has eroded, that offer lands differently than it once did.

The session closed without easy answers — deliberately so. As Dr Mukha put it, the aim of this series is not to arrive at comfort, but to look more closely at how narratives are built, and what that means for anyone working on democracy, media, or social cohesion.

The question of how democratic institutions, media organisations, and civil society actually respond — not just intellectually, but practically and at scale — remained deliberately unresolved. So did the deeper tension between countering a narrative and replacing it with something that people genuinely want to move toward.

Watch the recording

Next: 3 June — 'Unite the Kingdom': An Ethnographic Deep Dive

Our second session goes further. We didn't just study the 'Unite the Kingdom' rally from the outside — we were there. On the ground, in the crowd, observing first-hand how the language, emotion, and dynamics discussed in Session 1 play out in practice.

On 3 June Steven Lacey and Dr Olha Mukha will bring those field insights into the room, joined by moderator Thomas Brayford, for a close ethnographic examination of what actually happens at events like these — who attends, what it feels like, and what it tells us about the movement beneath the rhetoric.

Sponsored by Peek Content.

Register here