Outrage

Through a synthesis of fledgling theories of post-truth (author, 2006, 2014, 2016, 2017) developing around Donald Trump and Brexit and theories of emotions in populism, I analyze the right-wing French movement La Manif Pour Tous, and their ongoing issue campaign against what they call “gender theory in the schools.” After I identify their populist qualities, I analyze five prominent post-truth qualities in the movement: 1) organization and public presentation; 2) “active distrust” qualities; 3) emotional/affective qualities; 4) “rumor bombs” about gender theory; and 5) conjunctural specificity within gender, sexuality and other backlashes. Considering the conjunctural convergence of social trust and truth deficits, I propose that the post-truth and “rumor-bombing” aspects simultaneous with their populist nature are better understood as a kind of emotional or “emo-truth” common to both performance of authenticity in Reality TV shows and right-wing populist movements today. Finally, I propose cases like this point to a mainstreaming of post-truth populism, across Western liberal democracies and beyond.

Public articulations of outrage about wrongdoing and its perpetrators seem ubiquitous, especially on social media, and often seek worthy objectives such as justice for the wronged. However, expressions of outrage can sometimes lead to an innocent person’s career being destroyed or even the endangering of their life. How might we understand such devastating outcomes from a phenomenon that seeks to respond to violence? This paper sees outrage as an emotion whereby one appraises that someone has harmed another and/or violated moral norms. It evaluates how third parties’ public articulations of their outrage can manifest the cyclical violence of Girardian mimetic theory. By engaging with Mark Brewin’s claims about the revelatory function of texts, the paper proposes a nuanced understanding of the relation between social media and the prominence and prevalence of contemporary outrage. It seeks to contribute to analyses of outrage using Girardian theory, especially in political emotion research.

People can become outraged by what they perceive as injustice, like torture or aggressive war, and sometimes this stimulates social action. Perpetrators of such actions regularly use a number of methods, such as cover-up and reinterpretation, to minimise outrage. The struggle between ...