The outer and inner narrative
How does one quickly evaluate the honesty, credibility and the respectability of a cause, movement or organisation? One simple way is to compare the different narratives they promulgate. When the outer narrative — told to outsiders — and the inner narrative — reserved for the inner core — significantly differ and conflict, that is cause for serious concern.
Gary Francione had a problem. A recent convert to ‘gender critical’ beliefs, he was trying hard to square them with his previous views. Francione suggested that, whilst in his opinion trans women could not claim to be women, they were free to present as women — in other words free to dress in whichever way they liked.
Despite the poll coming out heavily in his favour, Francione was immediately attacked by his new friends. Apparently, cis men and trans women alike presenting as women was ‘womanface’ and offensive to all women because it ‘mocked’ them. ‘Womanface’ is the idea that to have men dressing as women is akin to white people dressing as black people — otherwise known as ‘blackface’. It is a deeply transphobic trope that essentially means transgender people are offensive by their very existence.
A similar fate befell the gender critical trans woman Debbie Hayton. Known for writing gender critical pieces in the Spectator, she is seen as a loyal ally of the gender criticals: however she is also a transgender schoolteacher, and so comes under attack from those in her own side who love to peddle the idea of ‘trans propaganda in schools’. Recently a number of prominent gender critical accounts called for her to be sacked for teaching in school whilst transgender.
The gender critical lawyer Michael Foran also fell into that same trap. Last year, he was asked about the transphobic views of Magdalen Berns, a sadly deceased gender critical. He declared them abusive. Foran smooth-talks the outer narrative: Berns focused on appealing to the inner core. When the words of Berns were called out by Aiden Comerford, Foran had to lie, twist, originally having insisted that he had a problem with Berns’ views and then having to backtrack, accused Comerford of harassment and eventually declared he is leaving twitter for a time.
Francione’s, Hayton’s and Foran’s experiences underline a crucial conflict in many ideological movements: that between the outer and the inner narratives. The outer narrative is aimed at outsiders, at winning converts to the cause. It is mild, moderate and reasonable, attempting to appeal to the existing societal norms. The inner narrative is designed to envigorate the hardcore, to keep the already converted in a constant state of militant excitement. It is emotive, uncompromising and puts the Cause ahead of any other norm. It is also much heavier on the conspiracy theories.
The gender critical outer narrative talks of freedom of speech, clashes of rights between trans and cis women, advises caution in the use of puberty blockers and is careful to not attack transgender people, calling on them to be reasonable and cede ground voluntarily for the rights of women. It pretends to target the ‘trans rights activists’ — the supposed extremists who allegedly do not represent the ‘true’ trans people such as Hayton. The inner narrative openly calls all transgender people mentally ill, offensive (‘mocking women’) and accuses them of giving children a bad example purely by the virtue of existing. Adherents of this narrative often share caricatures attacking the personal appearance of trans people. At the extreme end are Twitter accounts with thousands of followers dedicated to searching up pictures of transgender people online to post and and mock. The ‘moderates’ never challenge this behaviour.
The ‘inner’ group objects to any promotion of transgender people whatsoever: it is a similar approach to the one taken by homophobes in Russia who demand homosexuality to never be mentioned in public. The campaign against the TikTok start Dylan Mulvaney is a great example — the outer narrative pretends Dylan can wear what she likes, whereas the inner openly calls for any organisation platforming her to be boycotted, as happened with the Bud Light beer. Similar campaigns have been waged against Asda for their ‘slay it’ advert, against the appearance of the Hertfordshire policewoman Cherry O’Donnell on promotional material and against the Cheshire fire service for featuring a trans man.
Outer-inner narrative pairs exist elsewhere. The Russian outer narrative in Ukraine talks of ‘liberation' of Ukraine from a ‘Nazi regime’, of Putin having to intervene in order to protect the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine and of the invasion being a response to the expansion of NATO, whilst the inner talks of hating Ukrainians, re-educating Ukrainian children and expanding Russia. The Israeli outer narrative talks of liberating Gaza from Hamas with the minimum possible civilian casualties, whilst the inner talks of holding all Gazans responsible for Hamas, expansion of Israel and revenge. When Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh in September, their outer narrative insisted that the Armenians living there were in no danger, however the inner narrative talked of ‘revenge’ upon the civilian population: it is no wonder that the Armenians, wizened by the lessons of 1915, believed the inner narrative and chose to flee en masse. It is indeed generally a good strategy to treat the inner narrative as the more reliable regarding intent.
For some lucky movements, the inner and outer narratives coincide. The Trump campaign is one example: their problematic relationship with the facts and the truth allowed them to simply repeat the lines intended for the inner sanctum to a wider audience. This was possible due to the reliance of post-truth politics on the throwing out of badly concocted conspiracy theories and hoping that enough of the target audience become confused and disoriented, choosing to believe nothing and trust a natural ‘strong leader’ showman such as Trump. Others, such as today’s Labour party, go to the opposite extreme, avoiding any substantive commitment whatsoever and keeping both the inner and the outer narratives very barren. However, it is generally the case that having an outer and inner narratives that match is a sign of open-ness and political credibility. If the acolytes and the spokespeople are signing from the same hymnsheet, that shows the whole organisation to be honest and trustworthy, and, indeed, the British media is generally quite good on challenging British politicians regarding narrative consistency, albeit much less so when it comes to foreign ones.
So why do we fall for it? Why aren’t those spinning the outer narratives regularly challenged regarding their inner narrative colleagues? The outer narrative comes with a few defense mechanisms against such an attack. For instance: when asked whether they have personally challenged the more macabre parts of the inner narratives, when having extreme statements quoted to them, one would typically attempt to dismiss the quotes as fringe or taken out of context. In this case, it is important to stress who the quote is coming from. Inner narratives originate from people or sources that are in some way official: mainstream media, official spokespeople for organisations or people recognised as being within the organisations’ core. Fringe narratives can come from outriders, anon sources or anywhere else: they cannot be directly controlled by the organisation promoting the inner and/or outer narratives. That means, that, say, Galant, Soloviev or Helen Joyce are sources of the inner rather than the fringe narrative. So are Smotrich, Peskov or Bev Jackson. However, a random activist, backbench Knesset MP or a TikTok influencer are probably fringe. Sharing platforms with fringe people may be a concern, however they can be seen as separate.
It is vital for an informed discourse that the inner narratives are widely covered. And yet, it all too often does not happen. The islamophobia of many of the Israeli politicians and officials is barely reported in the UK. The anti Ukrainian sentiments in Russia are exposed somewhat better, thanks to the work of the likes of Francis Scarr. The hateful quotes of transphobes are rarely, if ever, exposed to the mainstream. Compare this with how every single statement of British politicians over the last 30 years is pored over and over-analysed.
It is also vital that the people propagating the outer narratives are constantly challenged on whether they agree with statements from the inner narrative, especially when they shared platforms with those making them, or retweeted their statements. Language barriers make this hard — when the inner narrative is in Russian or Hebrew, it loses some of its potency when revealed to Westerners.
On social media, of course, inner narratives are routinely exposed and publicised. People are constantly challenged on the views of their colleagues. This generally leads to the people propagating both narratives to pile in hard with accusations — misogyny, homophobia, anti-semitism, russophobia and so on — to drown out the contradictions and discrepancies between their own narratives. Whataboutery is routinely employed — for instance to make allegations about transgender people, Gazans, Ukrainians and Armenians respectively. The recent criminal case at the International Court of Justice gave quite a wide airing to the Israeli inner narrative about Gazans, quoting the islamophobic statements of Israeli public figures and leaders at length. The response to such exposure was to attack… South Africa, who brought the action.
Those tactics regardless, everything hinges on giving the inner narratives due exposure — and that means constantly challenging every representative on the inner narrative talking points and asking them to condemn these. It is the job of the media to make this standard practice.
PS: the terminology of outer and inner narratives was also used here to define the narrativist framework. However, that framework seems to refer to spontaneous narrative evolution in social groups rather than deliberate propaganda by political organisations and states.