Uniting the far right: how the far-right extremist, New Right, and populist frames overlap on Twitter – a German case study

ABSTRACT

Recent elections in Europe have demonstrated a steady rise in the success of right-wing populist parties. While advancing an anti-immigration agenda, these parties have been adamant to distance themselves from ‘right-wing extremism’. This article analyses a sample of tweets collected from the Twitter accounts of the German AfD, Identitarian Movement and the Autonomous Nationalists by employing frame analysis. We conclude that the frames of far-right actors classified as extremist, New Right, and populist in fact converge and we discuss our findings in the context of related case studies in other European countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Extremism
• populism
• far right
• Twitter
• frame analysis

Acknowledgment

Produced as part of the cooperation between the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip) and the Danube University Krems.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Hereafter, ‘New Right’. In this article, the ‘New Right’ encompasses all aspects of the New Right movement across Europe, including the French Nouvelle Droite and the German Neue Rechte.

2 In reference to the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci and his idea of ‘cultural hegemony’. Gramsci reasoned that the key to power was to win over the hearts and minds of people and elites through the creation of cultural institutions. Namely, ideas were more likely to resonate with the masses through control over the narratives wielded through cultural, rather than political, institutions (see Bar-On, 2011: 204).

3 The ‘black block’ strategy is ‘a social movement tactic directly lifted from leftist activists in which groups of identically dressed, disguised protesters move as a ‘block’ against counterprotesters or police’ (Miller-Idriss, 2018: 51).

4 A ‘trope’ in this context is similar to the concept of ‘dog whistle politics’. López (2014: ix) defines the latter as: ‘coded racial appeals that carefully manipulate hostility toward nonwhites […] Superficially, these provocations have nothing to do with race, yet they nevertheless powerfully communicate messages about threatening nonwhites.’

Additional information

Funding

This research was partially supported by the European Union's Framework Programme 7 [Grant number 312827: VOX-Pol Network of Excellence].

Notes on contributors

Reem Ahmed

Reem Ahmed is a Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) and a PhD Candidate at the Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy Graduate School of Law (AMBSL) at the University of Hamburg. Her dissertation examines regulatory responses to online extremism in the UK, Germany, and the EU and is funded by a scholarship awarded by the AMBSL.

Daniela Pisoiu

Daniela Pisoiu is Senior Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs and Lecturer at the University of Vienna. Her areas of expertise are radicalisation processes, extremism and terrorism.