Exploiting the crisis

The Covid-19 pandemic posed many problems for politicians worldwide, but it also offered an opportunity for some politicians of a populist nature to exploit public fears and tensions by scapegoating migrants, minorities or other countries. In this chapter we follow Moffitt’s (2016) analysis of 21st century populism, in which he shows how crises are constructed discursively by populist leaders, who then stir up antagonism against certain out-groups whom they hold to be responsible for the crisis, and exploit the ensuing polarization in order to gain support. We examine four cases of political exploitation of fake news in which migrants were held responsible for spreading the Covid-19 virus or benefiting from treatment or vaccines before members of the in-group. These four cases are from very different cultural settings (Germany, Spain, Lebanon and India), and they all focus on multimodal evidence. Our analysis shows how each populist leader exploits existing cultural tensions and multimodal repertoires to persuade his/her audience. Although populist politicians draw on a wide range of different visual and textual manifestations embedded into different cultural settings, it is possible to identify certain common key strategies that characterize populist communication in times of crisis.