Us versus Them? The populist undermining of security-based trust as a divide-et-impera strategy

Anti-immigrant propaganda, a key element of contemporary nationalist populism in Europe, traditionally centers around a ‘Us versus Them’ dichotomy. The discursive construction of the other involves a negative portrayal of unwanted outgroups, which undermines different facets of citizens’ trust towards foreigners. Employing deductive content analysis of Matteo Salvini’s posts on X and using the Intergroup Trust Model as a framework, we show that foreigners are cast as the untrustworthy ‘Them’ in Italy. Our results illustrate that immigrants are depicted as deviant in terms of morality or culture – portrayals that emphasize collective boundaries of belonging and promote the classic ‘Us versus Them’ divide. Yet, foreigners are more frequently portrayed as a pervasive threat to the personal safety of unprotected and isolated individuals. We interpret this as a divide-et-impera approach that fosters a politically profitable ‘culture of fear’ and fragments society along more insidious fissures than the conventional Us/Them divide.