Main narratives:
- Latvians are Russophobic;
Overview:
The Alliance of Young Latvians’ TikTok content under Glorija Grevcova and Rūdolfs Brēmanis demonstrates their strategy of exploiting viral moments to advance their political messaging around ethnic discrimination. Both leaders extensively covered a single incident involving a woman at a judo competition who was filmed cheering on her son after he lost a match, shouting, “Wipe your tears! It doesn’t matter! He’s Russian!” This video went viral, with its posts reaching up to 300 thousand views, and it provided the party with perfect content to reinforce its narrative about anti-Russian sentiment in Latvia.
Brēmanis approached the incident by personally attacking the woman, using inflammatory language to characterize her as a bad human being while also investigating and discussing her political connections to other Latvian parties. Grevcova also focused on the political dimensions, repeatedly discussing the woman’s ties to established Latvian political parties to suggest systematic anti-Russian bias within the political establishment. Both politicians treated this single incident as representative of broader discrimination against Russian speakers in Latvia.
Their coordinated response to this viral moment illustrates how populist politicians can amplify isolated incidents to construct broader narratives about persecution and discrimination. By making multiple posts about the same event and approaching it from different angles – personal character attacks versus political connections – they maximized engagement while reinforcing their core message that Russian speakers face systematic discrimination from Latvia’s political establishment.
