“Europe is Christian, or It Is Not Europe”: Post-Truth Politics and Religion in Matteo Salvini’s Tweets

Abstract

AbstractPost-truth narratives are often connected to the online spreading of far-right ideologies and hate speech. Disinformation has also been studied in relation to religion, as it tends to target religious people and involve narratives about Christianity and Islam. In this chapter, I explore the use of post-truth online narratives about religion by focusing on the case of Italian populist political leader Matteo Salvini, who is renowned for his anti-Islam positions, for his Catholic faith, and for his intense use of social media. Through an analysis of tweets sent by Salvini between September 2019 and January 2020, I found that his narratives about religion create three types of post-truth narratives: first, generalisations that consider all Muslims as holding values incompatible with Western democracies; second, hyperboles that negatively frames the ideology of Catholic clergy and left-wing politicians; third, misleading connections that suggest correlations not based on factual information. These strategies show that post-truth politics is not necessarily characterised by news that is blatantly false, but can involve implicit disinformation. In conclusion, Salvini’s tweets suggest that disinformation creates a climate of post-truth that activates religious emotions through the circulation of claims about religion; in turn, religious narratives further fuel antagonisms and emotional reactions that sustain the spreading of disinformation.