Willem de Vlaming, January 2026
CREATING COHESION THROUGH EXCLUSION
Us–them narratives are generally characterized by a shared psychological and rhetorical structure that simplifies the world into opposing groups and turns difference into threat. They appear across ideologies (religious, nationalist, racist, political) and targets, but their core mechanics are remarkably consistent.
Key characteristics include:
BINARY SIMPLIFICATION: Complex societies are reduced to two camps: “us” (good, normal, deserving) and “them” (bad, abnormal, undeserving). Nuance and overlap are erased.
MORAL ASYMMETRY: The in-group is framed as morally superior, rational, and victimized, while the out-group is framed as immoral, dangerous, or corrupt. Harm by “us” is justified or minimized; harm by “them” is magnified.
IDENTITY OVER INDIVIDUALITY: Individuals are judged primarily by group identity rather than actions or character. The out-group is treated as homogeneous (“they are all like that”).
THREAT AMPLIFICATION: The out-group is portrayed as an existential threat — cultural, economic, moral, or physical — often far beyond any realistic danger.
REAR AND EMOTION OVER EVIDENCE: Emotional triggers (fear, disgust, anger) are prioritized over facts. Anecdotes replace data; symbols replace analysis.
SCAPEGOATING: Social problems are blamed on the out-group, offering a simple explanation for complex issues and deflecting responsibility from institutions or leaders.
DEHUMANIZATION: Language strips the out-group of full humanity (animals, diseases, invasions, ideologies), lowering moral barriers to exclusion or violence.
ZERO-SUM LOGIC: Any gain for “them” is framed as a loss for “us,” even when cooperation or inclusion would benefit everyone.
BOUNDARY POLICING: Strict rules define who truly belongs to “us,” often leading to internal purges or suspicion of “traitors” and “sympathizers.”
In essence, us–them narratives are tools for CREATING COHESION THROUGH EXCLUSION. They offer clarity, certainty, and belonging—but at the cost of truth, empathy, and social trust. Their power lies not in accuracy, but in how effectively they mobilize fear and identity.
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Xenophobic narratives are about fear of the “outsider” and the protection of a perceived 'in-group', framed as a zero-sum struggle for safety, identity, or resources. It turns difference into danger.
The central elements are:
In-Group vs. Out-Group Thinking: Society is divided into “us” (native, legitimate, deserving) and “them” (foreign, suspicious, undeserving). Belonging is defined narrowly and often ethnically or culturally.
Threat Construction: Outsiders are portrayed as threats to jobs, security, public order, culture, or social cohesion—even when evidence contradicts this. Fear is emphasized over facts.
Scapegoating: Complex social or economic problems (unemployment, crime, housing shortages) are blamed on migrants or foreigners, simplifying reality and deflecting responsibility.
Cultural Purity Myth: The in-group is imagined as culturally pure, stable, and superior, while outsiders are depicted as incapable of adapting or as contaminating that purity.
Dehumanization and Othering: Outsiders are described in abstract, animalistic, or mechanistic terms (“floods,” “waves,” “invasion”), making exclusion or cruelty seem justified.
Zero-Sum Logic: Gains for outsiders are framed as losses for insiders, even when cooperation or inclusion could benefit everyone.
In essence, xenophobia rests on the belief that difference is dangerous and that coexistence weakens the in-group. It replaces social complexity with fear-based identity politics, making exclusion appear like self-defense rather than discrimination.
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The core of racist or ethnicist narratives is the belief that human groups defined by “race” or ethnicity are fundamentally unequal, and that these differences justify hierarchy, exclusion, or discrimination. These narratives simplify complex social, cultural, and historical realities into fixed categories of “superior” and “inferior” groups.
Key characteristics include:
Essentialism: Race or ethnicity is treated as a fixed, inherent trait that determines intelligence, behavior, morality, or cultural capacity. Individual variation is erased.
Hierarchy and Superiority Claims: Some groups are depicted as naturally superior, others as inferior, often justifying domination, exploitation, or segregation.
In-Group vs. Out-Group Framing: Society is divided into “us” (deserving, civilized, virtuous) and “them” (dangerous, lazy, backward), reinforcing exclusion and social boundaries.
Blame and Scapegoating: Social, economic, or political problems are attributed to the “other” group rather than structural or systemic causes.
Cultural or Moral Deficiency Narratives: Minority or targeted groups are often framed as lacking proper values, work ethic, or cultural refinement, reinforcing stereotypes and stigmas.
Dehumanization: The out-group is reduced to symbols, caricatures, or animalistic imagery, making discrimination or violence easier to justify.
Threat Construction: Minorities or foreign ethnic groups are framed as threats to safety, jobs, culture, or national identity, often exaggerated beyond evidence.
Historical and Biological Distortion: Pseudo-scientific, selective historical, or cultural arguments are used to legitimize hierarchies, ignoring the complexity of human societies and genetics.
In essence, racist/ethnicist narratives turn socially constructed categories into supposedly natural hierarchies, making inequality seem inevitable and morally justified. They operate by combining fear, moral judgment, and identity politics to divide people and legitimize domination.
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Antisemitic narrative is built on conspiracy thinking and dehumanization, portraying Jews not just as an “out-group,” but as a hidden, powerful, and malicious force manipulating society from within.
Its central elements are:
Conspiracy as a Worldview: Jews are imagined as secretly controlling governments, finance, media, or culture. This turns complex social realities into a single, false explanation with a villain behind the scenes.
Dual Stereotype: Weak and All-Powerful: Jews are simultaneously depicted as inferior, corrupt, or parasitic and as overwhelmingly powerful and dangerous. This contradiction is a hallmark of antisemitism.
Collective and Eternal Guilt: Jews are treated as a single, timeless entity, blamed across generations for social change, crises, or moral decline—regardless of individual beliefs or actions.
Internal Enemy Framing: Unlike xenophobia, which targets outsiders, antisemitism often portrays Jews as insiders who cannot be trusted, disloyal citizens undermining society from within.
Dehumanization and Mythmaking: Jews are reduced to symbols (greedy banker, corrupt intellectual, manipulative elite) rather than real people, allowing myths to replace lived reality.
Crisis Exploitation: During periods of instability—economic collapse, pandemics, political change—antisemitic narratives intensify, offering a scapegoat that feels “explanatory” and emotionally satisfying.
In essence, antisemitism is not just prejudice, but a total explanatory myth: it replaces evidence with fantasy and turns Jews into a symbolic enemy blamed for whatever a society fears or cannot control.
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Islamophobic narrative is built on a small set of recurring ideas that portray Islam and Muslims as inherently threatening, inferior, or incompatible with “the West.” These ideas are not about legitimate criticism of religion or politics; they are **generalizations that turn a diverse group into a single, negative stereotype**.
The main pillars are:
Essentialism: Islam is framed as a single, fixed, and unchanging ideology, and Muslims are treated as if they all think and behave the same way—ignoring cultural, theological, political, and personal diversity.
Collective Blame: The actions of a few (such as extremists or authoritarian governments) are attributed to all Muslims, creating guilt by association.
Inherent Violence Narrative: Islam is portrayed as uniquely violent or extremist, often without comparable scrutiny of violence associated with other ideologies, religions, or states.
Civilizational Threat Framing: Muslims are depicted as outsiders who cannot integrate and who threaten national identity, democracy, women’s rights, or secularism—casting coexistence as impossible.
Dehumanization and Fear: Muslims are reduced to security risks, invaders, or demographic threats, which makes discrimination, surveillance, or exclusion seem justified or necessary.
Selective Context and Double Standards: Historical, political, and socio-economic contexts are stripped away when discussing Muslim-majority societies, while similar contexts are emphasized elsewhere.
In short, the core of Islamophobia is the transformation of a complex religion and its followers into a simplified “enemy image,” driven by fear rather than evidence. Criticism becomes Islamophobic when it stops engaging with ideas or actions and instead targets identity as inherently dangerous.
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LGBTI+-phobic narrative is about enforcing rigid norms of gender, sexuality, and social order, and portraying deviation from those norms as dangerous, immoral, or destabilizing. It frames diversity of identity as a threat rather than a human reality.
The main pillars are:
Norm Enforcement (Binary Thinking): Gender and sexuality are presented as fixed, natural, and binary. Anything outside heterosexuality and cisgender identity is labeled “unnatural,” “confusing,” or illegitimate.
Moral Panic Framing: LGBTI+ people are depicted as threats to children, families, religion, or social values. This often relies on exaggerated or fabricated fears rather than evidence.
Pathologization: Queer identities are framed as illness, deviance, trauma, or a “phase,” denying their legitimacy and lived reality.
Contagion Myth: Visibility or acceptance of LGBTI+ people is portrayed as something that can “spread” or “recruit,” as if identity were imposed rather than inherent.
Dehumanization and Reduction: LGBTI+ people are reduced solely to their sexuality or gender identity, erasing the rest of their humanity and individuality.
Tradition as a Weapon: “Culture,” “nature,” or “religion” are invoked selectively to justify exclusion, even though these traditions are historically diverse and evolving. (Tradition is peer pressure from dead people)
In essence, LGBTI+-phobia is rooted in fear of social change and loss of control over identity norms. It treats diversity as a breakdown of order rather than an expression of human variation, turning difference into danger.
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Misogynistic narratives are characterized by the systematic denigration, marginalization, and control of women, often framed as natural, inevitable, or justified. These narratives justify inequality and violence by portraying women as inferior, dangerous, or untrustworthy.
Key characteristics include:
Essentialist Gender Stereotypes: Women are reduced to fixed roles or traits—emotional, weak, irrational, submissive, or nurturing—and men to the opposite. Individual diversity is erased.
Blame and Control Framing: Women are often blamed for social problems, moral decay, or male misfortune, and are depicted as needing control (through law, culture, or family) for society to function.
Sexualization and Objectification: Women’s worth is frequently framed in terms of appearance, sexuality, or reproductive function, rather than full humanity or capability.
Threat and Fear Framing: Women are portrayed as manipulative, deceitful, or dangerous in ways that justify restricting their autonomy, e.g., the “femme fatale” or “seductress” tropes.
Denial of Agency and Authority: Women’s voices, expertise, and leadership are dismissed as less legitimate, rational, or capable than men’s.
Cultural or Moral Justification: Traditions, religion, or nature are invoked to legitimize male dominance, unequal rights, or control over women’s bodies and choices.
Normalization of Violence: Abuse, harassment, and coercion are trivialized, blamed on women themselves, or treated as culturally acceptable responses to “deviation” from prescribed roles.
In essence, misogynistic narratives reduce women to objects or symbols rather than full human beings, framing inequality as natural or necessary. They work psychologically by fostering fear, moral panic, or resentment of women who challenge prescribed norms.
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Anti-liberal narratives are characterized by a rejection of liberalism’s core principles — individual rights, pluralism, rule of law, and limits on power — and by reframing those principles as sources of weakness, decay, or domination rather than protection and freedom.
Common defining features include:
Rejection of Individual Autonomy: Individual rights are portrayed as selfish, artificial, or destabilizing. Collective identity (nation, religion, class, culture) is framed as more important than personal freedom.
Suspicion of Pluralism: Diversity of beliefs, lifestyles, or identities is depicted as chaos or moral relativism. Social unity is defined as sameness, not coexistence.
Strong Authority Preference: Order, hierarchy, and decisive leadership are emphasized over checks and balances. Constraints on power (courts, media, civil society) are framed as obstacles rather than safeguards.
Moral Certainty Over Debate: Liberal tolerance and open debate are criticized as weakness. Anti-liberal narratives favor absolute truths — often grounded in tradition, religion, nationalism, or ideology.
Delegitimization of Institutions: Independent institutions (judiciary, press, academia, NGOs) are portrayed as corrupt elites, foreign agents, or enemies of “the people.”
Zero-Sum View of Rights: Rights are framed as finite: granting rights to minorities is portrayed as taking them away from the majority. Equality is recast as unfair advantage.
Crisis and Decline Framing: iberal societies are depicted as decadent, collapsing, or under existential threat. This sense of emergency is used to justify exceptional measures.
Popular Will vs. Rule of Law: “The will of the people” is elevated above constitutional limits, minority protections, or universal rights—often selectively defining who counts as “the people.”
In essence, anti-liberal narratives frame freedom, pluralism, and restraint on power as dangers rather than achievements. They promise stability, identity, and moral clarity—but typically do so by concentrating authority and narrowing who is considered worthy of rights and voice.
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Anti-EU narratives are defined by portraying the European Union as an illegitimate, harmful, or oppressive force that undermines sovereignty, democracy, identity, and prosperity. While they vary across countries and ideologies, they share a common framing: the EU is the problem, not a tool.
Key defining features include:
Loss of Sovereignty Frame: The EU is depicted as stealing national control over laws, borders, courts, budgets, or culture. Shared governance is reframed as foreign domination.
Distant Elite Narrative: EU institutions are portrayed as unaccountable technocrats disconnected from “ordinary people,” making decisions without democratic legitimacy.
Nation vs. Europe Dichotomy: National identity is framed as incompatible with European integration. Loyalty to the EU is cast as betrayal of the nation.
Scapegoating for Domestic Failures: Economic hardship, migration pressures, regulatory burdens, or unpopular reforms are blamed on “Brussels,” even when decisions are national or jointly agreed.
Overregulation and Bureaucracy Trope: The EU is portrayed as absurdly bureaucratic, inefficient, and obsessed with trivial rules—symbolizing waste and overreach.
Cultural and Moral Threat Framing: The EU is accused of imposing liberal values (on migration, gender, minority rights, secularism) that allegedly undermine tradition, religion, or social cohesion.
Democratic Inversion: Popular will at the national level is elevated above shared rules and treaties, framing EU law as illegitimate even when democratically ratified.
Zero-Sum Integration Logic: Any gain at the EU level is framed as a loss for the nation, ignoring mutual benefits of coordination and collective power.
Crisis Amplification: EU crises (financial, migration, COVID-19, Ukraine, climate policy) are used as proof of systemic failure rather than challenges of collective governance.
In essence, anti-EU narratives turn a complex political union into a symbolic enemy — a stand-in for globalization, liberalism, and change. They simplify shared decision-making into domination and transform political trade-offs into moral injustices.
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Anti-authoritarian narratives are defined by opposition to concentrated, unchecked power and by defending individual freedom, accountability, and pluralism against coercive control. They frame authoritarianism not as order or strength, but as a fundamental threat to human dignity and social resilience.
Key defining characteristics include:
Suspicion of Concentrated Power: Power held by a single leader, party, institution, or ideology is seen as inherently dangerous unless constrained by law, oversight, and accountability.
Defense of Individual Rights: Civil liberties (speech, assembly, belief, privacy) are treated as non-negotiable safeguards, not privileges granted by the state.
Rule of Law Over Rule of Force: Laws are valued when they limit power and apply equally. Arbitrary rule, emergency powers, and selective enforcement are framed as warning signs.
Pluralism and Dissent as Strength: Disagreement, opposition, and diversity of views are presented as healthy and necessary, not as weakness or disloyalty.
Resistance to Propaganda and Cult of Personality: Anti-authoritarian narratives challenge leader worship, nationalist mythmaking, and simplified “enemy” stories used to justify repression.
Institutional Independence: Free media, independent courts, academia, and civil society are defended as protections against abuse, not obstacles to governance.
Historical Memory and Warning Logic: Past authoritarian regimes are invoked as cautionary examples, emphasizing how gradual erosion of freedoms often precedes overt repression.
Bottom-Up Legitimacy: Authority is framed as legitimate only when derived from consent, participation, and accountability—not fear, tradition, or force.
In essence, anti-authoritarian narratives assert that order without freedom is not stability but control, and that societies are strongest when power is limited, contested, and transparent. They reject the promise of “security through obedience” in favor of resilience through rights and shared responsibility.