The puzzle of populist devotion: How alliances and propaganda explain right-wing populism

Understanding right-wing populism—and its critics—through a novel theory in political psychology.

In only a few months, Donald Trump’s presidency has provided decisive evidence for a bold scientific hypothesis: it’s bad to elect incompetent demagogues to positions of power.

Reckless rhetoric and foreign policies that threaten long-standing alliances and global cooperation. Incompetent attacks on the administrative state, international aid, and scientific research. Disastrous tariff policies. And all this and more accompanied by an incessant stream of outrageous lies, falsehoods, and staggering stupidity.

On one level, none of this should be surprising. It’s not a revolutionary discovery that ignorant, dishonest, and narcissistic bullshitters don’t make good political leaders.

On another level, it’s precisely this lack of surprise that creates a puzzle: How could this flagrant charlatan have taken over the Republican Party and won the presidency not once but twice?

If Trumpism were merely an American phenomenon, one might answer by pointing to various weird features of the USA. And no doubt Trump and MAGA are uniquely American in many ways. However, the style of politics he represents—often called “right-wing authoritarian populism” by the kinds of wonky academics right-wing authoritarian populists despise—appears to be growing in popularity worldwide, including in most Western democracies.

In the UK, people are now seriously discussing the possibility that Nigel Farage, a friend and supporter of Trump who speaks at his rallies, might one day become prime minister. A February poll put support for his party, Reform UK, at 25%, ahead of all other parties.

How would a Farage prime ministership turn out? Well, nobody played a more significant role in bringing about the UK’s decision to leave the European Union than Nigel Farage, and how did that turn out?

Evidence consistently demonstrates that populist demagogues and bullshitters, right-wing and left-wing alike, make for bad leaders. Populism is “kakistocracy”: government by those least suited to govern.

Given this, few questions are more pressing at the moment than: What the fuck is going on?

More precisely, what explains the widespread appeal of this style of politics to so many voters? What creates the intense loyalty many of them feel to specific populist leaders like Trump or Farage? And why does this loyalty persist despite seemingly undeniable evidence of incompetence and dishonesty?

I will explore these questions through the lens of one of the most interesting theories in recent social science: David Pinsof and colleagues’ “Alliance Theory” of political belief systems.

According to Alliance Theory, political belief systems function as propaganda designed to promote the interests of specific political alliances. After unpacking and clarifying this idea, I will show how it illuminates (1) the content of right-wing populist ideology, (2) its appeal to voters driven to demonise immigrants and college-educated professionals, and (3) why such voters often feel intense loyalty to incompetent demagogues like Trump.

Finally, I will turn Alliance Theory back on myself. In what ways do highly educated professionals (“liberal elites”) sharpen the alliances and rivalries that fuel right-wing populism? And could the political narratives we embrace be rooted in the same underlying forces?

1. The Alliance Theory of political belief systems

What explains the contents of political ideologies? Alliance Theory attempts to answer this question with only two core assumptions: (1) humans possess abilities for forming and detecting alliances, and (2) instinctively use propagandistic tactics to support their allies against their rivals in conflicts.

Whose side are you on?

Whether in office politics, modern democracies, or the social behaviour of our primate relatives, political life is fundamentally rooted in alliances and rivalries. We cannot accomplish anything individually when competing for power, status, and resources. So, we form cooperative alliances and then compete against rival groups.

Given this, a fundamental question of political psychology is: How do people choose allies?

Pinsof and colleagues identify three central criteria:

1. Similarity. Sharing traits, beliefs, and preferences facilitates efficient coordination.

2. Transitivity. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and “any friend of yours is a friend of mine”. These bits of folk wisdom capture the insight that it’s beneficial to ally with those who share one’s allies and rivals. This reduces infighting (friends fighting friends) and betrayal (friends helping enemies).

3. Interdependence. If your interests are aligned with others, or they reliably benefit you in some way, you have a stake in their success. This makes you natural cooperators.

Importantly, similarity, transitivity, and interdependence are not fixed qualities. Because forming and joining alliances is so important, people take active measures to increase and display their similarity (e.g., through imitation and shared norms), transitivity (e.g., by adopting allies’ friends and enemies), and interdependence (e.g., by offering resources, protection, or support to enhance mutual reliance).

Propaganda tactics

Alliances exist to promote shared goals and interests. Given this, allies must support each other in competition against rival alliances. In modern democratic politics, much of this competition occurs through persuasion—and, hence, propaganda. Political allies must create and amplify narratives that defend allies, demonise rivals, win third-party support, and recruit new members.

Alliance Theory asserts that the contents of political belief systems emerge from such propaganda. This propaganda can be created consciously and deliberately. However, more often it involves what psychologists call “motivated reasoning”—people are instinctively biased towards ideas that make them and their allies look good in contrast with their rivals—and through what I’ve called a “marketplace of rationalisations” in which alliances seek and reward content creators—pundits, intellectuals, politicians, media companies, and so on—who produce congenial propaganda.

Alliance Theory identifies three core biases that shape such propaganda:

1. Perpetrator biases: people are motivated to minimise their alliance’s responsibility for transgressions.

2. Victim biases: people are motivated to exaggerate their alliance’s victimisation by rivals.

3. Attributional biases: people are motivated to attribute responsibility and blame in self-serving (well, alliance-serving) ways. (For example, advantages enjoyed by alliance members result from internal dispositions like talent and hard work, whereas disadvantages result from external factors like misfortune or mistreatment.)

In addition, I would add that alliance propaganda involves more general forms of aggrandisement (e.g., painting alliance members as noble, honest, and virtuous) and demonisation (e.g., painting rivals as evil, corrupt, and dangerous).

According to Alliance Theory, real-world political belief systems emerge as a consequence of such alliance propaganda. Instead of coherent worldviews, they involve “collections of ad hoc justifications, rationalizations, moralizations, embellishments, and rhetorical tactics designed to advance the interests of complex political alliances in competition with their rivals.”

2. Alliance theory and right-wing populism

If Alliance Theory is correct, we should understand right-wing populist ideology not as a coherent creed but as a form of alliance propaganda. The first question, then, is who makes up the underlying alliance.

Who’s in, who’s out

In research into support for right-wing populism, two kinds of explanations are highly influential.

The first focuses on economic grievances created by globalisation, deindustrialisation, rising wealth inequality, and the emergence of a prestigious knowledge economy that low-education citizens can’t compete within.

The other focuses on cultural “backlash,” noting how traditionally dominant groups resent the profound liberalisation of Western values in recent decades. This liberalisation is evident in much greater acceptance of multiculturalism, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender equality, especially among younger college-educated professionals who occupy prestigious positions in politics, culture, and the economy.

In reality, both forces are probably important. Evidence suggests that the core base of support for right-wing populism in Western countries involves less-educated, white, socially conservative voters who’ve experienced declining status in recent decades due to globalisation, immigration, the decline of manufacturing, liberalisation of Western values, and the growing prestige and influence of college-educated professionals.

Such voters share similar traits. They're also interdependent because they share a common fate in response to broader economic and cultural changes. And they’re united by their two common enemies: first, immigrants and minority groups who don’t identify with the culture of the traditionally dominant white group; second, highly-educated professionals, the winners of a globalised knowledge economy who champion immigrants, minority cultures, counter-cultures, and progressive social change.

That’s the core of the right-wing populist alliance. However, this core base typically allies with two other important groups in most Western democracies.

First, there are traditional business elites (the “Merchant Right”) who share right-wing populists’ hostility towards college-educated, liberal professionals (the “Brahmin Left”). Think of Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, or Tim Martin as prominent representatives of this class. They’re eager to use right-wing populist movements to push through libertarian economic reform.

Second, there are those psychologically disposed towards conspiratorial, paranoid, anti-establishment politics, irrespective of who or what the “establishment” is. Think of, say, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Jones, or Russell Brand as representatives of this personality profile.

Populist propaganda

The next question is how right-wing populist ideology functions as propaganda designed to promote the status and interests of this alliance against its rivals.

Liberal elites and the totally flawed and corrupt establishment

Most obviously, right-wing populist ideology functions to demonise its alliance’s chief rivals.

First, it's partly defined by its opposition to corrupt, failing, conspiring, and disgraceful “elites” and the “establishment”. However, these malevolent elites are not defined by their wealth or power. Elon Musk is not an “elite”. Neither is Donald Trump. Instead, the target is “liberal” or “cosmopolitan” or “globalist” or “woke” elites, an amorphous category that includes everyone from George Soros to teachers and civil servants who recycle and enjoy foreign films.

This selective anti-elitism reflects right-wing populism’s alliance structure. Their rivals aren’t all powerful and influential people, but those influential groups they perceive as threats or obstacles to their status and success: progressive intellectuals, urban professionals, bureaucrats, celebrities who champion liberal cultural change, and so on.

As with most demonising narratives, right-wing populist ideology homogenises and vilifies this diverse group. Educated professionals are sinister conformists (“non-player characters”), a unified class deliberately conspiring to undermine the working class's traditional ways of life and economic prospects.

From this perspective, there’s an underlying logic to right-wing populism's famous anti-expert attitude. Although this is often explained solely in terms of ignorance, stupidity, or “misinformation,” it involves a clear propagandistic strategy. From the perspective of the right-wing populist alliance, a world in which people listen to experts is a world that’s worse for the alliance's relative status.

Second, right-wing populist ideology also demonises the other primary rival of its core alliance: immigrants and minorities who don’t identify with the traditionally dominant white culture. Again, such groups are homogenised and painted in the most negative light possible: as criminals, rapists, drug dealers, murderers, and an invading force the globalist liberal elite are bringing in to replace the natives. And of course, such relentless demonisation is supported by endless lies and made-up anecdotes and statistics.

Again, as with right-wing populism’s attack on expertise, it’s tempting to view such attacks as run-of-the-mill stupidity, ignorance, and xenophobia, but this obscures their propagandistic rationale.

The silent majority

The flip side of demonising rivals is painting the alliance in the most positive light possible.

Who stands against liberal elites and immigrants? It’s “the people”: the real Americans, the true Britons, the ordinary people, the silent majority, the forgotten men and women who just want their country back, the hardworking, patriotic, commonsense citizens, the authentic heart of the nation.

Moreover, such people are not just virtuous. They’re victims. Globalist elites have taken away their power, undermined their way of life, ignored their perspectives, and rigged the system against them. They’re besieged by political correctness, wokeness, immigrant and minority crime, and economic and social problems caused by a corrupt establishment.

And they can do no wrong. Right-wing populist ideology either denies or downplays any transgressions, historical or present, perpetrated by members of the alliance, whether it’s the history of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, or the negative consequences of politicians and policies they support.

Ideological incoherence

Finally, Alliance Theory illuminates the incoherence of right-wing populist ideology. For example, because right-wing populists' electoral success typically depends on allying with business elites, it often involves a bizarre combination of economic libertarianism (slashing regulations and taxes) and economic protectionism (increasing tariffs and trade restrictions). It also champions free speech absolutism when thinking about violations of progressive speech codes and aggressive censorship of ideas its base finds unappealing or threatening.

Overall, Alliance Theory seems to explain these features of right-wing populism well. However, such reflections don’t explain why populist voters often feel such a strong allegiance to manifestly incompetent leaders like Trump.

3. Leader loyalty

The intense, almost cult-like loyalty some populist leaders enjoy is one of right-wing populism’s most striking and mysterious features. Trump is the most obvious example, but you can see less extreme versions of the same phenomenon in figures like Farage, Wilders, and Le Pen.

Alliance Theory can illuminate this loyalty in two ways. First, it identifies what really matters to voters' support for specific leaders: whether they deem the leaders to be on their side, an ally who champions them and their status, or a rival. Electoral performance is only relevant to such judgements if it bears on this more fundamental question.

Second, Alliance Theory identifies three such factors that play a big role in answering that question: similarity, transitivity, and interdependence.

Consider all three criteria in the case of Trump.

First, everything about Trump’s style and conduct is optimised to signal similarity to his base and—just as importantly—sharp dissimilarity from college-educated professionals.

His baseball cap, simple vocabulary, grammatical errors, vulgarity, ignorance, ALL CAPS social media posting, outbursts, political incorrectness, xenophobia, sexism, monstrous tackiness, love for low-status food and culture (McDonald’s, MMA, etc.), and disdain for high-status culture (e.g., foreign movies): these and countless more attributes make him highly relatable to his populist base and outrageous to the college-educated professional elites that base despises. The message is clear: I am one of you, not one of them.

Second, there’s transitivity: Trump relentlessly signals allegiance through his open contempt towards the populist alliance’s main rivals. He has almost superhuman stamina for picking fights and hurling insults at journalists, bureaucrats, academics, woke celebrities, and other “elites” and for demonising immigrants, minority groups, and subcultures in the most extreme ways possible.

Again, there’s a tendency to explain such behaviour in terms of run-of-the-mill stupidity, ignorance, and hatefulness. But there is also a signalling rationale in its unambiguous message to his base: My enemies are your enemies. Of course, this message is constantly amplified and reinforced by the conspicuous outrage and hatred such groups direct towards Trump in return.

Finally, there’s interdependence. Richard Hanania observes that populist leaders win status not by impressing the kinds of elites within long-standing, established institutions but through a direct connection to voters.

Trump is a perfect example of this: he took over the Republican Party against the wishes of traditional elites within established institutions by mobilising support directly from an overlooked base. And since then, he’s burnt his bridges to such institutions so spectacularly that his political survival depends entirely on this base’s support. This dependence, in turn, inspires loyalty: if Trump depends on ordinary voters, not traditional elites, these voters can trust him far more than other politicians.

Moreover, interdependence is tied to replaceability. For example, if a leader can be easily replaced with someone equally committed to the alliance and effective at advancing its goals, they won’t inspire fierce allegiance. That’s why political leaders of establishment parties rarely produce cult-like attachments: there’s always an army of equally impressive career politicians happy and willing to take their place.

The situation is very different for Trump. It would be extremely difficult to find someone equally capable of achieving power not just without impressing traditional elites but by continually insulting, outraging, and offending them. And this isn’t even to mention Trump’s unique ability to combine traits relatable to uninformed, low-education voters with genius-level abilities in certain domains, like establishing dominance, bullying and humiliating people, getting media attention, putting on an incredibly entertaining and funny show, and so on.

4. Why loyalty trumps competence

Nevertheless, the puzzle with which I began this article remains: even if Trump is highly skilled in some domains and effectively builds and signals loyalty to his base, why does he maintain significant support even in the face of clear incompetence, dishonesty, and negative qualities?

Even Trump himself seems surprised by this. As he remarked in 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's, like, incredible."

Several interlocking factors can explain this.

First, Trump’s dishonesty, vicious character, and terrible policies are often targeted at his base's rivals (e.g., immigrants, minorities, scientists, journalists, etc.) and elicit conspicuous outrage from them. Far from undermining his support, such actions solidify it.

Second, much of his base is either unable or unmotivated to hold Trump accountable for policy failures. Partly, this is because most voters don’t pay much attention to politics or current affairs, and so lack the knowledge to hold anyone accountable. However, this fact is exacerbated in the case of Republicans because even those who are interested in becoming informed inhabit a media ecosystem largely incapable of producing and transmitting reliable information. Moreover, once people feel intense loyalty to a leader, their perpetrator biases kick in: they downplay the leader’s responsibility for transgressions, emphasise mitigating circumstances, and deny or minimise any harm they appear to inflict.

Finally, when discussing policy “failure,” many commentators focus on whether policies and interventions improve his base’s situation in absolute terms. However, the real question concerns relative status. The right-wing populist alliance functions primarily to increase the relative status of low-education, socially conservative voters who identify with the traditionally dominant white culture within Western societies.

From this perspective, policy interventions that make everyone worse off in absolute terms can be desirable if they disproportionately hurt the alliance’s rivals or lower their status. Further, the concrete material consequences of policies often matter much less than their symbolic significance. For example, tariffs and harsh immigration restrictions might make everyone poorer and hurt long-run economic growth. However, if they signal respect to populist voters and send a big “Fuck you!” to their rivals, such voters might overlook these costs.

5. A difficult look in the mirror

The first draft of this article only had four sections. For a while, I was happy with it—smug, even. I felt I had written an insightful analysis. Sure, there were gaps, omissions, simplifications, and too much speculation. But on the main point—that right-wing populism is best understood in terms of alliance-serving propaganda—I felt confident.

And then I remembered: I, too, am a human being.

Alliance Theory isn’t a theory of right-wing populism. It’s a theory of political psychology. So, where were the alliances, rivalries, and propaganda shaping my political analysis? Reading the draft, I could only see obvious facts, careful theorising, compelling evidence, and persuasive arguments. How had I escaped the psychological forces behind the belief systems and behaviour of right-wing populists?

Well, perhaps I hadn’t.

A few awkward things jumped out when I re-read the draft with a more critical eye.

First, there was the obvious context for the article: the people I’m analysing are not my allies. I’m a highly educated urban professional, an academic, an insufferable liberal elite. The analysis doesn’t come from an Archimedean point outside politics. It comes from a rival.

Second, there was the demonisation. Throughout the article, I homogenised and denigrated right-wing populists. They weren’t diverse people with complex goals, values, and interests. They were a monolithic group of self-serving propagandists.

If someone learned about the world solely from my article, they would mistakenly conclude that there are no legitimate concerns about globalisation, immigration, rapid cultural change, the behaviour of college-educated professionals, or the failures of the expert class (e.g., in Iraq, the financial crisis, and COVID messaging).

The article is also dripping with self-aggrandisement. By explaining right-wing populism in terms of status competition, alliance formation, and motivated reasoning, I implicitly contrasted them with us, their more rational, evidence-based rivals. We’re the reasonable ones, the truth-seeking ones, capable of recognising incompetent demagogues and policy failures when we see them. And we’re not just virtuous; we’re being victimised by low-education xenophobes willing to sacrifice the long-term health of Western societies for self-serving reasons.

Moreover, even if one grants that right-wing populism is bad, do its voters and leaders deserve all the blame for its popularity?

Even if it’s true that populist demagogues signal allegiance to their base of supporters, isn’t it also true that college-educated professionals devote a lot of time and energy to signalling their distance from—frequently, their open contempt for—this base?

It doesn’t take a sociological genius to observe that the tastes of many college-educated professionals often function as status symbols designed to differentiate us from uneducated hoi polloi. We don’t just dislike NASCAR, wrestling, fast food, guns, reality TV, Starbucks, superhero movies, “consumerism” (i.e., consuming low-status things), and so on. We flaunt our dislike of them and conspicuously look down on those who enjoy them.

Even political correctness, ostensibly a tool for protecting the marginalised, too often functions as a class signifier, a set of tripwires designed to flag anyone without the cultural capital to master progressive speech codes.

I could go on, but the point is clear: Is my analysis here simply a refined form of alliance-serving, rival-demonising propaganda? Haven’t I implicitly painted my alliance positively, denigrated its rivals, delegitimised their concerns, and assigned responsibility and blame in self-serving ways?

These are good questions. I don’t have good answers.

I’m inclined to say the following: Sure, everyone is biased, but not everyone is equally biased.

For example, do right-wing populists spend time reflecting on whether their treatment of rivals is uncharitable? Are they even alert to the possibility that their favoured narratives might function as alliance-serving propaganda? Do they ever acknowledge the possibility of their biases, let alone take active measures to mitigate them?

Writing these words, I feel a reckless sense of smugness return: Doesn’t our willingness to self-reflect—to even consider that we might be biased—demonstrate our superiority over them?

And there it is again: the unavoidable pull of alliance-serving propaganda.