The New Far Right, Subcultural Theory, and the Sociology of Emotions

Abstract

This article argues that a theoretical synthesis between subcultural theory and the sociology of emotions can provide a way to grasp the esthetic and emotional appeal of the new far right. This is illustrated through a multimodal analysis of fashwave music. We find that the central emotion conveyed by the music is a variation of restorative nostalgia accompanied by a sense of loss and anger. The analysis demonstrates the potential of the theoretical perspective and contributes empirically to studies of the new far-right movement.

Acknowledgements

This article is part of the research project “Anger – A Study of Norms for the Expression and Justification of Anger” at Aalborg University. We would like to thank Annick Prieur, Merete Monrad, Morten Kyed, Betül Özkaya, and Anita Nissen for their comments on the article.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Andrea L. P. Pirro, “Far Right: The Significance of an Umbrella Concept,” Nations and Nationalism (2022), 1–12.

2 Tore Bjørgo, and Jacob A. Ravndal, “Extreme-Right Violence and Terrorism: Concepts, Patterns, and Responses,” (ICCT, The Hague, 2019).

3 José P. Zúquete, The Identitarians (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2018); Bjørgo, and Ravndal, “Extreme-Right”; Rasmus H. Dalland, Identitaer – en rejse ind i Europas nye højre [Identitarian – A Journey into Europe’s New Right] (Copenhagen: ATLAS, 2019); Anita Nissen, “Europeanization of the Far Right: A Case Study of Generation Identity and Fortress Europe” (PhD diss., Aalborg University, 2019).

4 George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Bjørgo, and Ravndal, “Extreme-Right”; Shannon E. Reid, and Matthew Valasik, Alt-Right Gangs: A Hazy Shade of White (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020).

5 Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); Mathias H. Pedersen, Fascister i fåreklaeder? [Fascists in Aprons?] (Copenhagen: Baggrund, 2021); Cas Mudde, The Far Right Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019).

6 Mark S. Hamm, American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime (Westport: Praeger, 1993); John M. Cotter, “Sounds of Hate: White Power Rock and Roll and the Neo-Nazi Skinhead Subculture,” Terrorism and Political Violence 11, no. 2 (1999): 111–40; Timothy S. Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and ‘Nazi Rock’ in England and Germany,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 157–78; Robert Futrell, Pete Simi, and Simon Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene,” The Sociological Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2006): 275–304; Ugo Corte, and Bob Edwards, “White Power Music and the Mobilization of Racist Social Movements,” Music and Arts in Action 1, no. 1 (2008): 4–20; Ryan Shaffer, “The Soundtrack of Neo-Fascism: Youth and Music in the National Front,” Patterns of Prejudice 47, nos. 4–5 (2013): 458–82.

7 Bjørgo, and Ravndal, “Extreme-Right”; Tore Bjørgo, Høyreekstremisme i Norge: Utviklingstrekk, konspirasjonsteorier og forebyggingsstrategier [Far right extremism in Norway: Developments, conspiracy theories and strategies of prevention] (Oslo: Norwegian Police University College, 2018); Tore Bjørgo, “Right-Wing Extremism in Norway: Changes and Challenges,” Right Now!, 25 February 2019, https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/news-and-events/right-now/right-wing-extremism-in-norway.html (accessed 15 June 2021); Miller-Idriss, Hate.

8 Julian Bruns, Kathrin Glösel, and Natascha Strobl, Die Identitären: Handbuch zur Jugendbewegung der Neuen Rechten in Europa [The Identitarians: Handbook for the New Right’s Youth Movement in Europe] (Münster: Unrast, 2017), 68; Zúquete, The Identitarians; Nissen, Europeanization, 173; Dalland, Identitaer; Miller-Idriss, Hate, 117–20.

9 See, e.g. Chris H. Larsen, Politisk ekstremisme i Danmark [Political Extremism in Denmark] (Roskilde Universitet, 2012); Steven Windisch, and Pete Simi, “Neo-Nazi Music Subculture,” in Routledge Handbook of Deviance, ed. Stephen E. Brown, and Ophir Sefiha (London: Routledge, 2017), 111–21; Simon Copeland, and Sarah Marsden, Right-Wing Terrorism: Pathways and Protective Factors (UK: Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, 2020).

10 John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts, “Subcultures, Cultures and Class,” in Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006 [1975]), 3–59.

11 See also Dick Hebdige, Subculture. The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979), 114; John Clarke, “The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Community,” in Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, ed. Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006 [1975]), 80–7.

12 Hamm, American Skinheads.

13 Ibid., 82–3.

14 Cotter, “Sounds of Hate,” 111–40.

15 Clarke, Hall, and Jefferson, “Subcultures, Cultures and Class”; Clarke, ”The Skinheads”; Hebdige, Subculture; Hamm, American skinheads; Cotter, “Sounds of Hate”; Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics”; Futrell, Simi, and Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements”; Corte, and Edwards, “White Power Music”; Shaffer, “The Soundtrack of Neo-Fascism.”

16 Daniela Pisoiu, “Subcultural Theory Applied to Jihadi and Right-Wing Radicalization in Germany,” Terrorism and Political Violence 27, no. 1 (2015): 9–28.

17 Richard A. Cloward, and Lloyd E. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs (New York: The Free Press, 1960).

18 See Tore Bjørgo, “Militant Neo-Nazism in Sweden,” Terrorism and Political Violence 5, no. 3 (1993): 28–57; Ehud Sprinzak, “Right-Wing Terrorism in a Comparative Perspective: The Case of Split Delegitimization,” Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 1 (1995): 17–43; Jacob A. Ravndal, “Thugs or Terrorists? A Typology of Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe,” Journal for Deradicalization 15, no. 3 (2015): 1–38.

19 See, e.g. Cotter, “Sounds of hate”; Michael Kimmel, and Abby L. Ferber, ““White Men Are This Nation:” Right-Wing Militias and the Restoration of Rural American Masculinity,” Rural Sociology 65, no. 4 (2000): 582–604; Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics.”

20 See, e.g. Cotter, “Sounds of Hate”; Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics”; Futrell, Simi, and Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements”; Corte, and Edwards, “White Power Music”; Shaffer, “The Soundtrack of Neo-Fascism”; Kirsten Dyck, Reichsrock: The International Web of White-Power and Neo-Nazi Hate Music (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2017); Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, Lions of the North: Sounds of the New Nordic Radical Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

21 Bjørgo, and Ravndal, “Extreme-Right.”

22 Miller-Idriss, Hate, 18.

23 Nissen, Europeanization.

24 Sumi Somaskanda, “Identitarian Movement - Germany’s ‘New Right’ Hipsters,” Deutsche Welle, 23 June 2017, https://www.dw.com/en/identitarian-movement-germanys-new-right-hipsters/a-39383124 (accessed 31 May 2021).

25 Nissen, Europeanization, 174; See also, Zúquete, The Identitarians; Dalland, Identitaer.

26 Reid, and Valasik, Alt-Right Gangs, 76; See also George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).

27 Amy Cooter, “Neo-Nazi Normalization: The Skinhead and Integration into Normative Structures,” Sociological Inquiry 76, no. 2 (2006): 145–65; Pete Simi, and Robert Futrell, American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Space of Hate (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015); Teitelbaum, Lions of the North; Cynthia Miller-Idriss, The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); Patrik Hermansson, David Lawrence, Joe Mulhall, and Simon Murdoch, The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the 21^st Century? (London: Routledge, 2020); Christer Mattsson, and Thomas Johansson, “Neo-Nazi Violence and Ideology: Changing Attitudes toward Violence in Sweden’s Skinhead and Post-Skinhead Eras,” Terrorism and Political Violence (advance online publication), doi: 10.1080/09546553.2021.1871898.

28 Timothy S. Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinhead and “Nazi Rock” in England and Germany,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 157–78.

29 Anoop Nayak, “Race, Affect, and Emotion: Young People, Racism, and Graffiti in the Postcolonial English Suburbs,” Environment and Planning A 42 (2010): 2370–92.

30 Futrell, Simi, and Gottschalk, “Understanding Music in Movements.”

31 See, e.g. Rune Ellefsen, and Sveinung Sandberg, “Black Lives Matter: The Role of Emotions in Political Engagement,” Sociology (advance online publication), doi: 10.1177/00380385221081385; Anna Sofia Lundgren, and Bo Nilsson, “Civil outrage: Emotion, Space and Identity in Legitimisations of Rural Protest,” Emotion, Space and Society 26 (2018): 16–22; James M. Jasper, “Constructing Indignation: Anger Dynamics in Protest Movements,” Emotion Review 6, no. 3 (2014): 208–13; Kathleen Rodgers, “‘Anger is Why We’re All Here’: Mobilizing and Managing Emotions in a Professional Activist Organization,” Social Movement Studies 9, no. 3 (2010): 273–91.

32 Arlie R. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (New York: The New Press, 2016); Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, “Media Coverage of Shifting Emotional Regimes: Donald Trump’s Angry Populism,” Media, Culture & Society 40, no. 5 (2018): 766–78; Antonio Martella, and Roberta Bracciale, “Populism and Emotions: Italian Political Leaders’ Communicative Strategies to Engage Facebook Users,” Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research 35, no.1 (2022): 65–85; Inari Sakki, and Katarina Pettersson, “Discursive Constructions of Otherness in Populist Radical Right Political Blogs,” European Journal of Social Psychology 46, no. 2 (2016): 156–70.

33 Hilary Pilkington, Loud and Proud: Passion and Politics in the English Defence League (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

34 Nissen, Europeanization; Zúquete, The Identitarians; Dalland, Identitaer; Miller-Idriss, Hate.

35 Miller-Idriss, Hate, 11.

36 See also Chris Wilson, “Nostalgia, Entitlement and Victimhood: The Synergy of White Genocide and Misogyny,” Terrorism and Political Violence (advance online publication), doi: 10.1080/09546553.2020.1839428.

37 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

38 Nissen, Europeanization, 175–6.

39 See also Dalland, Identitaer; Miller-Idriss, Hate.

40 Miller-Idriss, Hate, 10.

41 Bharath Ganesh, ”Weaponizing White Thymos: Flows of Rage in the Online Audiences of the Alt-Right,” Cultural Studies 34, no. 6 (2020): 892–924.

42 See Nissen, Europeanization; Ganesh, “Weaponizing White Thymos.”

43 Jeppe F. Larsen, “The Identitarian Movement and Fashwave Music: The Nostalgia and Anger of the New Far Right in Denmark,” Popular Music 41, no. 2 (2022): 152–69.

44 Richard Swedberg “Theorizing in Sociology and Social Science: Turning to the Context of Discovery,” Theory and Society 41, no. 1 (2012): 1–40; Derek Layder, Sociological Practice (London: Sage, 1998).

45 Clifford R. Shaw, and Henry D. McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The culture of the gang (New York: The Free Press, 1955); Walter B. Miller, “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,” Journal of Social Issues 14, no. 3 (1958): 5–19; Walter B. Miller, “Implications of Urban Lower-Class Culture for Social Work,” Social Service Review 33, no. 3 (1959): 219–36; Cloward, and Ohlin, Delinquency and opportunity.

46 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002 [1972]); Stuart Hall, and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain (London: Routledge, 2006 [1975]); Paul Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (London: Saxon House, 1977); Paul Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge, 1978); Hebdige, Subculture.

47 Cohen, Delinquent Boys.

48 Christine E. Griffin, “The Trouble with Class: Researching Youth, Class and Culture beyond the ‘Birmingham School’,” Journal of Youth Studies 14, no. 3 (2011): 245–59.

49 David Muggleton, Inside Subculture – The Postmodern Meaning of Style (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Stanley Cohen, “Symbols of trouble: Introduction to the Second Edition,” in Folk Devils and moral Panics, 2^nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002 [1987]); David Muggleton, and Rupert Weinzierl, eds., The Post-Subcultures Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2003); Andy Bennett, and Keith Kahn-Harris, eds., After Subculture – Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture (New York: Palgrave, 2004).

50 Hebdige, Subculture.

51 Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss,” in Sociologie et Anthropologie, ed. Marcel Mauss (Paris: PUF, 1950), 9–45.

52 Clarke, “The Skinheads,” 149.

53 Hebdige, Subculture, 107.

54 Willis, Profane Culture; Clarke, Hall, and Jefferson, “Subcultures, Cultures and Class.”

55 Muggleton, Inside Subculture.

56 See, e.g. C. D. Spielberger, E. Johnson, S. Russell, R. Crane, G. Jacobs, and T. Worden, “The Experience and Expression of Anger: Construction and Validation of an Anger Expression Scale,” in Anger and Hostility in Cardiovascular and Behavioral Disorders, ed. M.A. Chesney, and R.G. Rosenman (New York: Hemisphere, 1985), 28; P.C. Ellsworth, and K.R. Scherer, “Appraisal Processes in Emotion,” in Handbook of the Affective Sciences, ed. R.J. Davidson, H. Goldsmith, and K.R. Scherer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 575; Craig A. Smith, and Leslie D. Kirby, “Appraisal as a Pervasive Determinant of Anger,” Emotion 4, no. 2 (2004): 133–8.

57 Kellina M. Craig, “Examining Hate-Motivated Aggression,” Aggression and Violent Behavior 7, no. 1 (2002): 85–101; Evan R. Harrington, “The Social Psychology of Hatred,” Journal of Hate Studies 3, no. 1 (2003): 49–82; Frederik Tygstrup, “Affective Spaces,” in Panic and Mournic. The Cultural Work of Trauma, ed. Daniela Agostinho, Elisa Antz, and Cátia T. Ferreira (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), 195–210; Justin E. C. Tetrault, “What’s Hate Got to Do With It? Right-Wing Movements and the Hate Stereotype,” Current Sociology 69, no. 1 (2021): 3–33, 7.

58 Birgitte S. Johansen, “Locating Hatred,” Emotion, Space and Society 8, no. 16 (2015): 48–55.

59 Jack M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure – A Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

60 Barbalet, Emotion, social theory, and social structure, 65.

61 Scott Schieman, “Anger,” in: Handbook of the sociology of emotions, ed. Jan E. Stets, and Jonathan H. Turner (London: Springer, 2006), 493–515.

62 Sara Ahmed, “The Organisation of Hate,” Law and Critique 12, no. 3 (2001): 345–65.

63 Randall Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

64 Ibid., 127.

65 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia.

66 Ibid.

67 Christine Hine, Virtual Ethnography (London: Sage Publications, 2000).

68 See Larsen, “The Identitarian Movement and Fashwave Music.”

69 Hine, Virtual Ethnography.

70 Malene C. Larsen, and Louise N. Glud, “Nye medier, nye metoder, nye etiske udfordringer,” Metode of Forskningsdesign, 1, no. 1 (2013): 67–94.

71 Génération Identitaire, Home [YouTube Channel], n.d., https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYQNocWm-rzX6EULiasVh8g (accessed 31 May 2021).

72 National Policy Institute Events, About [Web Archive], 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20161114185742/http:/npievents.com/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

73 Hine, Virtual Ethnography.

74 See, e.g. Reggie Ugwu, “How Electronic Music Made By Neo-Nazis Soundtracks The Alt-Right,” BuzzFeedNews, 13 December 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reggieugwu/fashwave#.cqOM44Oqo (accessed 31 May 2021); Penn Bullock, and Eli Kerry “Trumpwave and Fashwave Are Just the Latest Disturbing Examples of the Far-Right Appropriating Electronic Music,” VICE, 30 January 2017, https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgwk7b/trumpwave-fashwave-far-right-appropriation-vaporwave-synthwave (accessed 31 May 2021).

75 National Policy Institute Events, About [Web Archive], 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20161114185742/http:/npievents.com/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

76 Larsen, “The Identitarian Movement and Fashwave Music.”

77 See, e.g. Gunther R. Kress, and Theo Van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (London: Arnold, 2001); David Machin, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (London: Bloomsbury, 2007); Carey Jewitt, “An Introduction to Multimodality,” in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, ed. Carey Jewitt, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), 15–30; Carey Jewitt, ”Different Approaches to Multimodality,” in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, ed. Carey Jewitt, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2014), 31–43.

78 See David Machin, and John E. Richardson, “Discourses of Unity and Purpose in the Sounds of Fascist Music: A Multimodal Approach,” Critical Discourse Studies 9, no. 4 (2012): 329–45; Larsen, “The Identitarian Movement and Fashwave Music.”

79 Jewitt, “An Introduction to Multimodality” 16.

80 Machin, Introduction to Multimodal Analysis, 23; Jewitt, “Different approaches to multimodality,” 32–3.

81 See Hebdige, Subculture.

82 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977); Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Fontana, 1973).

83 Xurious, Videos [BitChute Channel], https://www.bitchute.com/channel/xurious/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

84 ”Videos,” altCensored, last modified 20 August 2022, https://altcensored.com/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

85 Hine, Virtual Ethnography.

86 https://dailystormer.su/the-official-soundtrack-of-the-alt-right/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

87 See, e.g. Bullock, and Kerry “Trumpwave and Fashwave”; Marc Tuters, “Fashwave and the False Paradox of Ironic Nazism,” Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 41, no. 1 (2021): 172–8.

88 Grafton Tanner, Babbling Corpse—Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts (New York: Zero Books, 2016); Adam Harper, “How Internet Music is Frying your Brain,” Popular Music 36, no. 1 (2017): 86–97; Raphaël Nowak, and Andrew Whelan, ““Vaporwave Is (Not) a Critique of Capitalism”: Genre Work in An Online Music Scene,” Open Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (2018): 451–62; Laura Glitsos, “Vaporwave, or Music Optimised for Abandoned Malls,” Popular Music 37, no. 1 (2018): 100–18; K. McLeod, “Vaporwave: Politics, Protest, and Identity,” Journal of Popular Music 30, no. 4 (2018): 123–42; Tuters, “Fashwave and the False Paradox of Ironic Nazism.”

89 C. Ward, “Vaporwave: Soundtrack to Austerity,” Stylus, 29 January 2014, http://www.stylus.com/hzwtls (accessed 31 May 2021); Tisa Jukić, “The Ideological Ambiguity of Internet Art: Vaporwave, Yugowave and Serbwave,” INSAM – Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 3, no. 2 (2019): 55–68.

90 Glitsos, “Vaporwave, or Music Optimised for Abandoned Malls.”

91 Padraic Killeen, “Burned Out Myths and Vapour Trails: Vaporwave’s Affective Potentials,” Open Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (2018): 626–38, 628.

92 https://rawaga.com/products/c-y-b-e-r-n-%CE%B4-z-i-album-galactic-lebensraum (accessed 31 May 2021).

93 C Y B E R N Δ Z I, Right Wing Death Squads, 3 December 2015, https://altcensored.com/watch?v=bNuYGxMV-xQ (accessed 31 May 2021).

94 C Y B E R N Δ Z I, Guardians of Europe, 3 June 2016, https://altcensored.com/watch?v=qIwnCUC1x7U (accessed 31 May 2021).

95 Barthes, Image-Music-Text; Barthes, Mythologies.

96 “Serbia Strong / Remove Kebab,” Know Your Meme, last modified April 2022, https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/serbia-strong-remove-kebab.

97 C Y B E R N Δ Z I, Galactic Lebensraum, 2016, https://www.discogs.com/it/Cybernazi-Galactic-Lebensraum/master/1073739 (accessed 31 May 2021).

98 “Sonnenrad,” Anti-Defamation League, last modified 5 March 2022, https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/sonnenrad (accessed 31 May 2021).

99 Jin-Rô: The Wolf Brigade, directed by Hiroyuki Okiura (1999; France: Bandai Visual Company, and, Production I.G.).

100 Hebdige, Subculture.

101 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia.

102 Xurious, Revolt Against the Modern World V1, 5 January 2018, https://www.bitchute.com/video/xdK4ReP9V9sy/. Another version, without the video, has approximately 500,800 views on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvGYhkiO_2w.

103 Stephen E. Atkins, Encyclopedia of Modern Worldwide Extremists and Extremist Groups (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004).

104 Ana T. Pinto, “Capitalism with a Transhuman Face – The Afterlife of Fascism and the Digital Frontier,” Third Text 33, no. 3 (2019): 315–36.

105 Jessica Stewart, “The Story Behind Raphael’s Masterpiece ‘The School of Athens’,” My Modern Met, 21 March 2022, https://mymodernmet.com/school-of-athens-raphael/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

106 “Oath of the Horatii,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, last modified 26 August 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oath-of-the-Horatii (accessed 31 May 2021).

107 “First Schleswig War,” Wikipedia, last modified 24 August 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Schleswig_War (accessed 31 May 2021).

108 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia.

109 For Identitarian use of the meme, see https://imgur.com/gallery/g6hGI8h.

110 Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains.

111 Ahmed, “The Organisation of Hate.”

112 Xurious, and Mark Brahmin, Ode to Son, 10 July 2019, https://www.bitchute.com/video/KkSCVkBNbrWQ/ (accessed 31 May 2021).

113 Mark Brahmin, “Ode to Son (Poem and Video),” The Apollonian Transmission, n.d., https://theapolloniantransmission.com/other-media-and-poems/ (accessed 31 May 2021). Mark Brahim has also had his poems featured on Stormfront https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1248303/.

114 See, Jeppe F. Larsen, and Sune Q. Jensen, “Jihadism from a Subcultural Perspective,” Critical Criminology 27, no. 3 (2019): 421–36, for a discussion of the similar risk of romanticizing the jihadi subculture; see also Martin O’Brien, “What is “Cultural” about Cultural Criminology?” The British Journal of Criminology 45, no. 5 (2005): 599–612; Keith J. Hayward, “Cultural Criminology: Script Rewrites,” Theoretical Criminology 20, no. 3 (2016): 297–321.

115 See, e.g. Michael Hann, “‘Fashwave’: Synth Music Co-Opted by the Far Right,” The Guardian, 14 December 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right (accessed 31 May 2021); Bullock, and Kerry “Trumpwave and Fashwave”; Larne A. Gogarty, “The art right,” Art Monthly; London, no. 405 (2017): 6–10; Brendan J. Kelly, “Fashwave, the Electronic Music of the Alt-Right, is Just More Hateful Subterfuge,” Southern Poverty Law Center, 17 October 2017, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/17/fashwave-electronic-music-alt-right-just-more-hateful-subterfuge (accessed 31 May 2021); Nancy S. Love, “Back to the Future: Trendy Fascism, the Trump Effect, and the Alt-Right,” New Political Science 39, no. 2 (2017): 263–8; Jack Smith, “This is Fashwave, the Suicidal Retro-Futurist Art of the Alt-Right,” Mic, 12 January 2018, https://www.mic.com/articles/187379/this-is-fashwave-the-suicidal-retro-futurist-art-of-the-alt-right (accessed 31 May 2021); Reid, and Valasik, Alt-Right Gangs; Gabriel Weimann and Natalie Masri, “Research Note: Spreading Hate on TikTok,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (advance online publication), doi: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1780027; Hermansson et al., The International Alt-Right.

116 Zúquete, The Identitarians; Nissen, Europeanization, 173; Miller-Idriss, Hate, 117–20.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by VELUX FONDEN under grant number 34958.