The psychology of Querfront tactics: How protesters perceive and navigate conflicting ideologies to mobilise collectively

Social scientists have developed impactful frameworks to understand who unites in protest. Yet, when exceptional circumstances arise, people are sometimes astounded by the convergence of disparate groups protesting together for an apparently unifying cause. One recent example is the COVID-19 pandemic. A new movement protesting the containment measures rapidly evolved, gaining momentum only weeks after the measures' implementation. Strikingly, the movement included participants from, among others, the political far left and right—individuals who had protested each other only weeks earlier and would do so again after the pandemic was declared over. This context enabled a real-life investigation of how people navigated conflicting ideologies to mobilise collectively. Drawing on 11 naturalistic protest observations and template analysis of 30 interviews with 31 protesters, we find that most participants indeed experienced the movement as ideologically diverse. At the same time, protesters used three strategies to navigate ideological conflict: (1) highlighting superordinate identities and ally utility (i.e., usefulness in advancing shared goals); (2) defending allies through in−/out-group biases; and (3) embracing diversity. Our analysis demonstrates the combined explanatory power of social identity, social categorisation, and coalitional psychology frameworks in understanding emerging Querfront alliances, showing how protesters moved from identity construction to coalition calculus.