“The spiral of silence” in European and Irish politics

In the 1970s, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German specialist in polling and communications, developed a theory she dubbed the spiral of silence.

It remains relevant today, as illustrated by the recent elections to the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, our local elections.

The spiral of silence suggests that we all have a keen, if unconscious, sense of where public opinion is headed. If we feel that the majority’s view is different from ours, we will remain silent, thereby reinforcing the majority’s view.

There are some exceptions, for example what Noëlle-Neumann calls the hard core, i.e. those who continue to defend and express their unpopular opinions. They could eventually become so influential that a new spiral begins and their opinions once again become those of the majority.

It’s not so much that people change their minds if they become less willing to express them. Noëlle-Neumann believed this was why opinion polls were so often wrong.

For example, in 1965, when polls asked about voting intentions, the ruling Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) and the German Social Democratic Party (SDP) appeared to be neck and neck until ‘in the last few weeks.

However, Noëlle-Neumann’s Allenbach Institute also asked people to leave their own opinions aside when predicting which side the public would vote for. As early as July, people were saying they thought the CDU-CSU would win comfortably, which they did.

She sees it as proof that if people can stay silent in public, in the voting booth, things can be different.

Noelle-Neumann’s life was not without controversy, having briefly worked as a young journalist for the weekly Das Reich and writing anti-Semitic articles. She claimed that she had to write in an anti-Semitic vein to survive, but never agreed with the Nazis’ dehumanizing and murderous treatment of the Jewish people. She also claimed that she was later fired and blacklisted by Goebbels.

Whatever Noëlle-Neumann’s past, she was haunted by the question of how Hitler could have risen to power in her beloved Germany. As the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) celebrates winning more votes than German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left SPD in the European Parliament elections, and the far-right National Rally obtained 30 percent of the French vote, his theories seem more important than ever.

Ideas once considered repugnant become acceptable again. The Guardian quotes Céline, a French civil servant, who was once afraid to say at work that she supported Marine Le Pen’s party. Now, in the comfortable suburb where she lives, this will no longer allow her to be accused of being a fascist. The National Rally pointed to the increase in the number of teachers voting for these measures as proof of their popularity.

Noelle-Neumann’s most influential writings date from simpler times, before the advent of social media. No one could have predicted that TikTok would be the driving force behind the political popularity of Jordan Bardella, 28, president of the National Rally, who has 1.5 million followers on the platform. The fact that his TikToks don’t raise eyebrows, unlike those of other politicians, was probably a big factor in winning over a third of younger voters.

Bardella has the carefully cultivated image of being the son of a single immigrant mother raised in a poor Parisian suburb, but, in fact, his divorced father paid for him to go to a private Catholic school, where the majority of students in 2014 were Muslim and/or children of ambitious immigrant parents.

Today he is the gentle and acceptable face of far-right politics, declaring that Islamization and immigration are destroying France.

In Ireland, the far right is disorganized and too busy with infighting and divisions to pose a real threat – yet.

The real danger is that mainstream parties feel obliged to steal the clothes of the far right, for example by becoming tougher on immigration. Centrist parties moving to the right on issues such as immigration only accelerate the normalization of anti-immigrant discourse.

Yet this country’s economy would collapse without immigration.

Asylum seekers are a subset of migrants, and our failures to treat them humanely are well documented. But if we had a fair and timely process and a functioning housing system, the problem wouldn’t be as bad.

Just as importantly, the fact that many anti-abortion voters found themselves politically homeless in the dominant parties, with the exception of Aontú, led to a divide emerging as centrists felt alienated politics.

Anti-abortion voters have also been cast as a basket of deplorables by the mainstream media. This has probably led many people who would have been staunch grassroots members of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael to be more open to people with radical views.

Likewise, if every legitimate concern about immigration is labeled as racist, some moderate people will inevitably be pushed to the far right.

In the age of social media, whose power accelerates change, spirals evolve at alarming speed. Respectful face-to-face conversation is still important to counter this acceleration, but if Noelle-Neumann is right, we are very reluctant to express our true opinions when we fear negative social consequences. Yet the alternative that harmful attitudes are normalized should worry us much more.