The “Hero‐Protector Narrative”: Manufacturing Emotional Consent for the Use of Force

Abstract

How do political leaders manufacture collective emotions to justify the use of force? This article introduces the "hero-protector narrative" as a conceptual model to analyze how political leaders try to manufacture specific collective emotions to encourage their audience to perceive violence as the only morally acceptable course of action. In our model, we formalize a set of distinctive narrative structures (roles and sequences), which are combined to activate compassion and moral anger as well as identification with "heroic" behavior. Furthermore, we argue that the resonance of this narrative draws on values of hyper-masculinity in patriarchal societies. As such this narrative is to be found across different types of actors (state/nonstate) and culturally diverse settings. To test our model, we use a computer-assisted QDA approach. We compare systematically discourses produced by political actors legitimizing the use of force versus actors opposing the use of force. We find that discourses supporting the use of force, such as those produced by George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden in the context of the Iraq war, share the structural characteristics of the hero-protector narrative. In this regard, they differ remarkably from violence-opposing discourses, regardless of their cultural background.KEY WORDS: political violence, political rhetoric, collective emotions, narrative structures, model How do political actors manufacture emotional consent around the use of force beyond the borders of their communities? Can we detect any characteristic structural patterns in narratives used by actors who try to justify the use of violence as opposed to those who reject the use of violence? This article claims that the emotional-discursive justification of violence is an essential, albeit underexamined aspect of the construction of violent conflicts. We argue that actors from different cultural backgrounds, as well as different institutional settings, including nonstate actors, use discourses that share a similar narrative structure, which we call the "hero-protector narrative." This narrative aims at stimulating, within target audiences, certain collective emotions whose function is to render the use of force not only an instrument of political choice among others, but an unavoidable course of action to preserve one's self-esteem. As a result, our research underlines the necessity to take the links between 991 0162-895X

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