This text is part of the contents of the first book by ECOAR))) and will go on sale at the end of this year, 2026. Winning the Narrative! Manual for Combating the Far-Right Discourse.
No totalitarian regime is consolidated solely by force. It also happens thanks to the capacity of the masses to assume as normal what, some time before, seemed unthinkable. Societies rarely change abruptly. Even in times of greatest political transformation, collective behaviours tend to respond to prior dynamics of conformism and adaptation. The rise of the far-right constitutes a paradigmatic example of this phenomenon: the gregarious behaviour of the masses facilitated the progressive acceptance of a regime that was integrated into everyday life as a sequence of steps rather than as a rupture. But why does this happen? Why do people get carried away by the group?
People are social beings who tend to act, move, or think in groups, following the patterns of the majority, without individual planning. This behaviour, inherited from their evolution as a social species, seeks security, belonging, and reduction of uncertainty. Thus, the emergence of mass social phenomena leads people to behave following group patterns simply because “everyone is doing it”. This is what is known as gregarious behaviour and it has a merely adaptive basis because it saves mental effort. The downside is that gregarious thinking blocks critical thinking, since it delegates decisions and responsibility to the group. Along the same lines, the bandwagon bias (or herd bias) operates, characterised by people adopting the beliefs, decisions, or behaviours of the majority, even when their own information or judgement suggests otherwise. Thus, the bandwagon bias neutralises people’s fear of being wrong while giving them security based on the assumption that the majority has more information or is more right than they are.
This situation, moreover, in the case of far-right processes, is reinforced by another psychological bias called the bandwagon effect, through which a person tends to do something, adopt an idea, or support an option simply because many people are already doing it. In this case, the far-right functions as a “fad”, so this effect causes that option to multiply its popularity simply because it is already popular. The bandwagon has its origin in 19th-century American politics, when candidates put musicians on a wagon and encouraged people to “climb on the wagon” during parades to support the one who was going to win. This effect is multiplied today through social networks and digital platforms that enhance it with algorithms that show us what is “trending”, creating a vicious circle: the more people see it, the more visible it becomes, and therefore the more people see it.
At the same time as this occurs, people are publicly exposed to certain ideas and, therefore, they gradually configure those ideas as part of their identity. They perceive themselves as part of that group and, at the same time, others do the same. The longer a person spends “dressing” themselves in that idea, the more they adhere to it and, therefore, the harder it is for them to get rid of it or change. Being at this point, people tend to protect and reinforce their identity, so changing makes them feel “naked”. In order to save energy and reduce uncertainty, people “activate” the confirmation bias, through which they tend to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information that confirms their prior beliefs, hypotheses, or expectations, while simultaneously ignoring, devaluing, or forgetting information that contradicts them. This bias operates unconsciously and is considered one of the main obstacles to the development of critical thinking, objective decision-making, and the scientific method, since it can lead to overestimating the solidity of one’s own beliefs and to perpetuating stereotypes, prejudices, or unfounded theories.