By now, the link between populism and adherence to covid-19 measures has been well established. Yet, the psychological process behind this relationship has been less clear. How, and why did populism have such an impact on public behaviour around COVID-19? We argue that the answer to this question lies in the categorical relationship between ‘ordinary people’ and ‘the elite’ established in the populist belief system before the pandemic. Populism relies on the social categories of ‘the people’ as the ingroup and ‘the elite’ as the outgroup. It provides a general narrative on the antagonistic nature of their relationship that explains sense of loss and lack of control and suggests solutions to these problems. Therefore, rather than being the end result, populism plays a mediational role as a form of sense making and organizing action. This puts the leadership in the position of the mediator.
One way to study this claim is to examine the role of leadership in the Covid-Sceptic movement and look at the types of arguments they use to politicise and mobilise followers against adherence to COVID-19 prevention methods. Looking at newsletters, leaflets and short videos and public speeches given in anti-lockdown protests across the UK, we analysed how the ingroup and outgroup categories and the relations between them are defined by the leaders of the Covid-Sceptic movement. This approach allowed us to explore how the experiences surrounding the pandemic have been framed in the Covid-Sceptic construction of reality and whether the leaders of the movement used the antagonistic relationship between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ to give meaning and direction to the movement’s actions.
Through a rhetorical-thematic analysis, we show that the Covid-Sceptic construction of reality was constructed around the same social categories and category relations that define right-wing populism. This new way of looking at populism allows us to emphasise the role of social categories for the flexible nature of populism that can be applied to contexts outside of electoral politics.