Taught Intransigence: How Far-Right Audiences are Trained to Reject Counterarguments

This paper introduces the concept of “taught intransigence” to describe a key mechanism through which far-right politics are normalised within contemporary liberal democracies. Rather than treating the far right as external to the democratic mainstream, this paper approaches far-right politics as embedded within contemporary liberal democracy. The concept of taught intransigence captures one mechanism through which this embedding occurs: political actors and their surrounding right-wing media apparatus actively train audiences to reject alternative perspectives and resist corrective information. Focusing on Nigel Farage and corresponding UK media coverage, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of how inflammatory statements on immigration and race are amplified and framed to instruct audiences not only on how to interpret and circulate these claims, but also on how to defend them and dismiss counterarguments. Media commentary frequently anticipates critiques, legitimises anecdotal claims over evidence, and signals which challenges should be ignored, thereby socialising audiences into durable forms of intransigence. This process helps explain how far-right ideas become embedded as common-sense positions within mainstream political discourse, contributing to the resilience of misinformed beliefs among politically aligned publics. By foregrounding the role of audience instruction in the mainstreaming process, the paper offers a conceptual contribution to debates on far-right normalisation and demonstrates the value of analysing elite speech in tandem with media amplification. These findings have broader implications for understanding democratic erosion and for designing interventions to counter misinformation in ideologically motivated audiences.