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The massacre of more than fifty worshippers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, shocked the world. The murders were not random. They expressed a particular ideology, one that the alleged perpetrator described as ‘fascism’. But what does fascism mean today — and what kind of threat does it pose? Jeff Sparrow traces the history of the far right, showing how fascists have adapted to the new politics of the twenty-first century. Burgeoning in dark places online, contemporary fascism exults in violence and picks its targets strategically. Today, it is Muslims; tomorrow, it will be Jews or gays or Asians. With imitative massacres already occurring around the world, Christchurch must be a wake-up call. This book makes a compelling, urgent case for a new response to an old menace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about trauma and uncertainty for vast swathes of the world population, including in Australia. One effect of this has been the growth of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and general conspiracism. This article explores efforts by fascists and neo-Nazis to exploit the rise in conspiratorial thinking for recruitment and dissemination of their ideas. Five Australian conspiracist Telegram channels are studied for signs of fascist cross-pollination, and it is found that users with fascist sympathies attempt to influence the channels’ discourse through appeals to purported ideological and situational commonalities.

Learning in extremist settings is often treated as operational, with little regard to how aspiring participants in extremist settings engage with complex and abstract ideological material. This paper examines learning in the context of the amorphous network of digital channels that compose the extreme-right online milieu. Through an in-depth qualitative analysis, we explore how well the prevailing model of extremist ideological learning (in ‘communities of practice’) accounts for the behaviour of aspiring participants of Fascist Forge, a now-defunct extreme-right web forum. The findings suggest that some of the social aspects of communities of practice have been replicated in the online setting of Fascist Forge. However, for a combination of technical and ideological reasons, the more directed and nurturing aspects of learning have not. Several issues are raised about the role of ideological learning in online communities, notably the open accessibility of extremist material, the lack of ideological control leading to potential mutation and innovation by self-learners, and the role of digital learning in the preparation, shaping and recruitment of individuals for real world organising and activism.

Increasing attention paid to the far right commonly glosses over transnational activity, which reflects an imperial strategy to globalize far-right thinking and its attendant discursive and physical violence against others. Empirically, I focus on far-right transnational linkages among ordinary people (not state officials) between the United States and Europe and across Europe, and between India and the Indian diaspora especially in the United States to present variation in organizational strategies. Transnational far-right activity’s under-the-radar status is due to dated assumptions that presume transnational linkages occur on a top, down basis, and emanate from the formal political sphere, overlooking significant transnational material and immaterial linkages forged online by ordinary people who carry messaging through the far-right online ecosystem to affect political decision-making and societal discourses more generally. In the case of the far-right Indian diaspora, public-facing self-presentation aligns with Hinduism, which embraces peace and coexistence, despite the pursuit of the opposite, and this multicultural guise complements the bottom, up flow of far-right messaging to render Hindu nationalism, Hindutva, difficult to see. The far right throughout the world unites around casteism, the embrace of a fixed and “natural” societal hierarchy, and is fueled emotionally by the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Both casteism and replacement theory are adaptable to different contexts to enable unity across contexts despite internal diversity among far-right groups, notably in the United States, and diverse targets of hatred. Far-right unity-in-diversity obviates constraints on transnational activity based on nativism and enables different in organization and psychosocial and cultural practices.

The terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand is a landmark in far-right terrorist behaviour within the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The Australian far-right terrorist held both domestic and transitional connections to other far-right extremist groups and travelled extensively before committing the attack in New Zealand. The assailant’s proficiency with weaponry and technology is considerable, as is his relationship with the online far-right community. However, little discussion is made about this incident as an evolutionary step for far-right terrorism and how it could impact the region. Accordingly, this article examines the Christchurch far-right terrorist attack, how this attack may impact the future of far-right terrorism and what are the responses to the attack by politicians and tech companies. The article finds the assailant’s behaviour significant for far-right terrorist behaviour in the APAC region with the potential for mimetic instances in the region.