Op-Ed: How the Right dictates the public discourse
Or how the Left dropped the ball on embedding leftist talking points into society
The opinion expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the opinion of the Fractures team. Kevin Heller is a writer and researcher on everything connected to the Far-Right in Europe and North-America.
On 18th February 2025 Frits Bolkestein died. That might not mean much to a lot of people, but in the Netherlands Bolkestein was known as one of the main right-wing conservative leaders of the biggest conservative party called the VVD. He was known for being an elitist agent provocateur who had a lot of political power that also bleed into the rest of the European Union. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s he was the one who did all that he could to turn Dutch society away from its reputation of being a “tolerant” country awashed with leftist ideals.
During his tenure as leader of the VVD refugees and asylum-seekers were no longer to be seen as people in need, but as so-called “fortune hunters”. People who come to the Netherlands to leech of our welfare state and goodwill. He paved the way for the resurgence of extreme right-wing parties like the LPF and the PVV and he managed to steer public debate to his talking points. Bolkestein managed to create an “immigrant problem” where previously the belief was that there was none.
Bolkestein was hated by the Left. He was called a racist and a populist. Students were putting stickers all over campusses with his face on it calling him a threat to society. The media weighed every word and called him out on misinformation and falsehoods. Debates with leftist politicians or interviews with reporters were tense and very polarized. He was a bad guy and half of the country did not like him.
But then things started to change as he gained more power and suddenly the media were copying his talking points and Bolkestein was called to appear on every TV panel show because his presence made for “good” tv. The media producers did not care if what he said was true or not, they cared about ratings. And as his talking points became more popular other political parties and politicians started to copy his wording. And just like that Bolkestein was main-stream.
And now he is dead and the media and politicians can’t stop praising him. Even his leftist opponents call him a “real gentleman”. Not a bad word can be found about him. But not just about him. His policy proposals and vilifying of immigrants is now called “visionary”. And in some ways that is true. The PVV, under the authoritarian leadership of Geert Wilders, is now part of the government and is calling the shots. The Left in the Netherlands is a shadow of what it was twenty to thirty years ago and the media has fully intergrated the ideas of the Right that there is an “immigrant problem”.
But the Netherlands is not an outlier in this. With the re-election of Trump in the US, Victor Orban sitting on his throne in Hungary, the AfD quickly gaining on the conservatives in Germany, Melloni calling the shots in Italy and other countries following suit, it is the Right that is not only calling the shots but is also dictating public debate. Right-wing talking points, phrases, slogans and policy are the main course today in politics, (social) media as it is on the streets or in the office.
It is obvious the Right has won the propaganda war and the Left has no answer for now.
When Joseph Goebbels was put in charge of the German propaganda department in Nazi Germany he based his ideas on the ones presented to him by his Führer. Hitler himself had written these simple rules on how to deploy propaganda:
Avoid abstract ideas - appeal to the emotions.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases.
Give only one side of the argument.
Continuously criticize your opponents.
Pick out one special "enemy" for special vilification.
Any sharp, and even dim, reader can immediately recognize these points in politics and the social landscape today in the US, Canada and Europe.
The modern day version is relatively simple:
Emotions: Your country (just pick any) is going down the drain, the economy is bad, inflation is high, your groceries are so much more expensive then they were in the past and also, you probably feel very unsafe, right?
Constantly repeat ideas: “They” are coming for your job, your daughter, your dog. Your country used to be great, now it isn’t, let’s bring it back to greatness. People who are different from you are scary and they are coming to kill and rape you and plunder your houses. We have the answers for ALL your problems: Housing? Blame immigrants? Crime? Blame immigrants. Inflation? Blame immigrants.
Give only one side of the argument: People feel unsafe so we have to be hard on crime. Having more police on the streets will solve all the problems. There are no bad side-effects to talk about and there are no other ways of handling this problem. We need more violence to solve violence and anything you say to contradict this is ridiculous and cannot be taken seriously.
Continuously critize your opponents: The Left is spending your hard earned money on stupid projects and they are filling their own coffers with the money that is left. Or, saying you support a peaceful solution in this conflict means you support terrorism.
Pick out one enemy for special vilification: That used to be Jews. Just Jews. They still are the “enemy”, but now we call them “globalists”. And with social media available the list of enemies has grown to cater to all sorts of “gut-felt” fears”
Pick on the transgender community even though they only represent less than 1% of society and do not show up as perpetrators in crime statistics.
Pick on any form of immigrant and just call them “illegal”, make sure though that they aren’t white, like Northern-European white. Make up stories about crime and keep pushing that narrative.
Pick on Muslims and make sure to mention 9/11 or the Paris attacks every time you mention something about Islam. Make sure to blanket blame an entire religion and force them to apologize any time one of “them” does something horrible.
These propaganda principles have been the backbone of the Right in the US, Canada and Europe for over 25 years and it has been more than effective. The Left has been forced to accept the “there is a problem with immigration” talking point. When someone tries to bring up the fact that developed countries need more immigrants to deal with a declining and greying society to maintain prosperity, they are kicked out of the public debate.
Pundits, public speakers, politicians and journalists now are forced to talk about transgender people in sports. Something that was never a problem, even though plenty of transgender people do and have done sports forever. But now it has to be talked about.
And the Left goes along with it all, because otherwise they have no podium. They feel the need to sit on any public podium just to stay relevant as they no longer have the infrastructure to create their own podium.
The Right is now calling the shots and the Trump/Musk presidency in the US shows how much the Right dominates the global public discourse. The entire world suddenly has to talk about the Gulf of Mexico vs the Gulf of America. And Denmark has to engage with questions about a possible US take over of Greenland. Companies and governments all over the world are kept busy having to deal with issues that were never issues until the Right turned them into issues.
“When they go low, we go high” has killed the Left. The Left still wants to play by the “rules”. Even if those rules no longer apply or were unwritten in the first place. Trying to come across as more civilized than the Right or having the “Truth” on their side is not the flex that the Left thinks it is. When the public discourse is owned, literally when it comes to social media, by the Right there is no room for long speeches on how the Right is wrong and how the Left has this ten point program that will not actually solve all your problems but will sort of mitigate some of it….but at the same time we can’t take away your gut-feeling that things are wrong because explaining our solutions to you would take too much time and we think you are too dumb to actually want to listen to our reasoning anyway.
The establishment Left also seems to be afraid of strong new voices who dare to go against the talking points of the Right. The establishment Left is so scared of scaring away people who do not want to vote for them. They want to win over people who do not want to listen to leftist solutions because they have been taught the past 20 to 30 years that the Left has abandoned them and lies to them. The Left is that guy who had a bad date and still keeps texting the girl three months after even though she has obviously ghosted him.
And I am sure there are some strong leftist voices out there who do not shy away from engaging the Right with the gloves off. Voices who dare to actually stand up for the LGBTQ-community or people with a migration-background, whatever that means. It is time that the old Left and the establishment Left make way for the New Left. A new Left that can make their own platforms and engage with people without having to revert to using the talking points the Right has so embedded into society.
I am sure there are some smart lefties out there who can make a Propaganda 101 for the Left. I don’t be afraid of the reaction you are going to get. The Right is going to scream bloody murder and will play the victim, but it is time for someone to take off the gloves and go for the groin in this fight for the literal survival of people and the planet.