Constructing the Outgroup: Nationalism, Misinformation, and Minority Rights in Pakistan

Does nationalism increase belief in anti-minority conspiracy theories? From China to Russia to India, analysts and public commentators increasingly assume that nationalism fuels belief in false or unverified information. Yet existing scholarly work has insufficiently examined—theoretically or empirically—this link. In Pakistan, conspiracies about ethnic rights groups colluding with hostile foreign powers have existed for decades. Today, women’s rights movements are attacked for being mouthpieces of the West. Even Nobel Prize Winner Malala Yusufzai, while celebrated abroad as a global symbol of women’s resistance and human rights activism, remains a divisive figure in her home country, with many alleging that she fabricated the attempt on her life as a way to exit Pakistan. I argue that the Malala phenomenon is just one example of how nationalism and nationalist sentiment fuel negative sentiment—including misinformation—about rights-seeking marginalized groups, particularly minorities and women.  Using surveys, survey experiments, and focus groups, I show that nationalism increases concerns with a country’s status on the international stage, that those concerns lead individuals to seek to portray only a positive image of their country, and this in turn leads them to underplay concerns of marginalized groups in the country. One consequence of such a motivated bias is an increased likelihood that rights-seeking minority groups will be viewed with suspicion, frequently as fifth columns.

Speaker: Niloufer Siddiqui, Associate Professor, University at Albany-State University of New York

Discussant: Laurent Gayer, Research Director at CERI-SciencesPo/CNRS

Chair: Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI-SciencesPo-CNRS