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The number of lone-actor attacks committed by far-right extremists have surged in recent years, most notably in the West where mass-casualty attacks have occurred, including the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The fatal attack in February 2020 in Hanau,
Germany, revealed the perpetrator’s influences to be a combination of traditional far-right, race-based, and anti-immigration narratives, alongside several more obscure conspiracy theories. This case demonstrates the need for further research into the intersection of these ideas and the online ecosystems in which they thrive, where notions such as the “Great Replacement” theory, aspects of which were echoed in the Hanau attacker’s own manifesto, are heavily propagated. It is this overarching idea that connects seemingly disparate attacks in a global network of ideologically analogous acts of terror.

In this paper, I analyze how the so called ‘alt-right’ is using Twitter to mainstream its politics. Understanding alt-right mainstreaming is important because the movement has embraced a Gramscian view of politics that believes cultural change (e.g. normalizing unpopular ideas) must precede institutional change (e.g. fielding candidates for office). To conduct my analysis I created a sample of 1,000 tweets from six ‘alt-right’ leaders. I then asked two questions about the tweets in this sample: what topics did alt-right leaders talk about most frequently, and how did they talk about them. My findings suggest that the ‘alt-right’s’ mainstreaming efforts on Twitter involve a mix of techniques. In terms of race, the alt-right is trying to normalize white identity politics. However, the movement is turning away from blatant misogyny on Twitter, instead strategically mimicking conservative tropes about women needing male protection. Finally, the alt-right references Europe more frequently than the US, suggesting that Europe is a geographic anchor in alt-right discourse.

This article looks at two periods in the history of white supremacy in New Zealand: the short-lived explosion of skinhead groups in the 1990s, and the contemporary rise of the internet-driven alt-right. It looks at the similarities and differences between the two groups, looking at style, symbols, ideology, and behaviour. It looks at the history of these two movements in New Zealand and compares the economic and social factors that contributed to their rise, in particular how the different social class of members produced groups with near-identical ideology but radically different presentation and modes of action.

This study focuses on the role of Internet memes in the communication of two far-right groups in Finland. The material consists of 426 memes posted by Finland First and the Soldiers of Odin between the years 2015 and 2017 on Facebook. Multimodal discourse analysis was applied to understand the contents, forms, and rhetorical functions communicated via the Internet memes. The analysis shows that the contents of the memes revolve around six themes: history, humor, mythology, symbols, news and mottos. By using Internet memes, the groups aim to construe a heroic imagined past, to lend legitimacy to the nationalist cause, to arouse moral anger and hate toward refugees, and to encourage the movements’ followers to fight. We argue that, for the extreme groups, Internet memes are tools to crystallize their arguments in an easily shareable and concise form, which makes the memes useful tools in persuasion and mobilization, as well as attracting new audiences.

This essay adopts a critical rhetorical perspective attuned to affect to investigate white nationalist rhetoric on Stormfront, a popular white nationalist message board. My analysis illuminates how Stormfront attempts to appeal to mainstream white audiences by resisting normative expectations and affects articulated with white supremacy and (re)constructing white nationalism as a formation of white racial consciousness articulated with communal belonging, common sense, and pride. On Stormfront, affect is mobilized discursively to challenge colorblindness, construct rhetorical distance between white nationalism and white supremacy, and strategically negotiate white (dis)comfort with direct discourse on race to compel affective investments in white nationalism.

Several incidents of mass violence in 2019 were preceded by manifestoes posted to deep Web social media sites by their perpetrators. These sites, most notably 4chan and 8chan, are buried in the deep Web, away from the neutralizing effects of broad public discourse. Many of the posts to these sites reference earlier extremist incidents, and indeed the incidents themselves mimic aspects of previous attacks. Building on previous research, this paper examines these deep Web social media sites. Through an analysis of traffic and posts, we confirm that these sites often act as a self-reinforcing community of users encouraging each other to violence, and we map a statistically significant rise in post volume; on these sites immediately following terrorist attacks.