By A. Aminoff
The rise of the far right in recent years, from the presidency of Donald Trump to the surge of far-right populism in Europe, poses a threat to many liberal ideals that we have collectively identified with since the Second World War. The success of far-right movements and populism, especially in the age of social media, is important to recognise, as they have demonstrated a collective intelligence in using algorithms and digital media. After the horrors of the Second World War, the victorious countries established a new world order with the creation of the United Nations, and the world ratified many of the humanitarian agreements and conventions that make up our current international system. However, this did not mean that the ideas that informed the totalitarian regimes and led to the horrific outcomes of the war had disappeared. They were merely forced underground, hidden for decades to come.
Metapolitics is a far-right ideological project. A key aspect of metapolitics is the aim to circulate ideas and normalize extreme right opinions and ultimately the main goal of metapolitics is long-term change: winning the battle for cultural hegemony (Maly 2019 & 2024). This is a long-term project with roots in the late 1960s and the French school of thought of the far-right “La Nouvelle Droite,” which remained mostly underground and hidden from the mainstream, however, with the transition to the digital age and meme culture a new type of metapolitics emerged. Metapolitics 2.0 coined by Ico Maly offers an explanation to the global rise of the far right in the digital age and their intelligence when it comes to online culture and the ability to circulate their ideas. In other words, they know what to post, when to post and how to receive the most views. They possess a specific intelligence of algorithms and social media platforms and can essentially ‘organise’ virality, working together with a transnational network to create viral posts. This transnational network supports each other by sharing and liking content with the collective aim of making it go viral. This culture began in the early 2000s as meme’s began to circulate in niches on the web especially after the 9/11 attacks and has since spread into the mainstream.
Anti-enlightenment and anti-democratic
In his book Maly warns us of the agenda of the far-right and how metapolitics questions the very foundations of democracy and rejects its structure and ideology: ‘Democracy cannot be separated from the Enlightenment ideology of equality, freedom and universal human rights. At least not without changing the meaning of democracy itself. And that is exactly the goal of metapolitics’ (Maly 2024, 305). The anti-democractic view favored by metapolitics understand the nation as an organism, advocating for blood and soil nationalism over individualism, the separation of races and the celebration of the strict biological differences between sexes and traditional gender roles. These views stand opposed to immigration, anti-racism and gender equality.
‘Meta-activists’ also have a keen sense of utilizing the Hybrid Media system a term coined by Andrew Chadwick (2017). Maly uses the example of Schield and Vrieden a Dutch far right group that made an outrageous video of their far-right protest with the aim of being picked up by mainstream media. Once mainstream media picked up the video as a news story it led to thousands of views and clicks. In this way, the video went viral and the Schield and Vrieden group gained a very large audience for their ideas and claimed to be representing the voice of Dutch youth. In reality, they only had a few people at their protest and represent a very small minority. However, because of their understanding of social media platform algorithms, and how the current hybrid media system works they were able to utilize the system to their advantage: their post went viral and the ultimate goal of gaining widespread circulation of their ideas succeeded. ‘Meta’ activists or influencers such like Schield and Vrieden will work within the confines of the community guidelines of social media platforms to stay integrated in as many mainstream media platforms as possible, often using these to link to their other niche platforms where they form deeper connections to their followers (Maly 2024). Their intelligence of platforms and algorithms has meant many extreme ideas and conspiracies have been able to stay on these platforms often undetected. An example of this is Pastel QAnon where activists use apps like Canva to create similar lifestyle color palettes and posts that essentially blend in the Instagram feed.
As Maly explains for meta-activists metapolitical action is broadly defined as placing a pro-white sticker on a college campus to gaining political office, the circulation of ideas and normalization of these ideas remains the ultimate goal of metapolitics in the fight for cultural hegemony. Gaining power is thus not necessarily the objective, simply having the ideas normalized and picked up as a part of mainstream conversation has been a long-term goal that seemingly succeeded.
This raises the question of the responsibility of mainstream media and individuals and our role in facilitating the spread of far-right ideology. During the 2016 elections Donald Trump was given a platform and dominated global news for months on end. As we consumed stories of the Trump rallies, were outraged by leaked videos and shared stories, this served as a collective contribution of us all. By boosting Trump related content with every click, every view, and every offline discussion dominated by him as his views were repeated and reiterated again and again. The Nordic countries are not immune, although research would need to be done to determine whether the Finns party has metapolitical elements, the populist far-right leaning Finns party was the winner of TikTok in the Finnish parliamentary elections of 2023 and the YouTube algorithm favored right leaning content in the Finnish presidential elections of 2024. Politicians of the Finns party have been known for sharing racist content and pushing extreme theories such as the great replacement theory. Emilia Palonen recently characterized the Finns as an ‘illiberal’ party.
Algorithm awareness and Deplatformization
As individuals, we have power that can be harnessed collectively. Becoming aware of algorithms and spreading that awareness is a first step towards taking action and creating just online spaces. By recognizing that every engagement with this type of content boost its popularity in algorithms means we can refrain from clicking on “ironic” memes that contain hate speech, we can question our newspapers’ click-bait headlines and demand better journalistic integrity. In upcoming elections we can demand a conversation on issues such as equality and human rights and speak up when the conversation is dominated by themes that are advocated for by far-right and far-right leaning groups. Recognizing the dominance of far right and right leaning groups have on these platforms can lead to demanding better legislation to hold platforms accountable. This is not only a problem of social media, but also a problem of search platforms, as there are data voids which mean far-right content is favored by search engines such as google. Ov Norocel has discussed the problem of data voids using the case of search queries in Sweden concerning immigrants that favored racist anti-immigration content in search results.
Although deplatformization is a complex issue, as it can silence many peaceful voices trying to advocate and increase awareness for just causes. In the case of far-right site The Daily Stormer, associated with the Unite the Right Ralley in Charlotessville, deplatformization worked as the site was pushed out of the mainstream. Unable to operate without a domain, unable to be found on google and unable to generate income with crowdfunding, without a social media presence the site was succesfully paralysed. This is an example of effectively removing far-right ideology from the mainstream digital ecosystem (Maly 2024, 276), (Van Dijck, J. et all, 2023)).
Maly concludes that Metapolitics is ‘–a full frontal attack on humanism, the idea of universal human rights, Enlightened democracy and equality and freedom for an emerging world community’ (Maly 2024, 316). A better world is a just and equal world and that has to extend to our online spaces. Algorithmic awareness, deplatformization, platform accountability and legislation and addressing data voids and dominantly white spaces online are all strategies that can be adopted to start resisting metapolitical action. Will the upcoming European Elections be dominated by issues such as equality and human rights, or will they be increasingly framed by those pushing narratives of the far-right? As far-right parties are expected to make great gains in the EU elections this is a valid question. These strategies and our role in shaping online narratives and algorithms are things we can all begin to consider in the quest of building a better world.
Sources and further reading:
Argentino, M.-A. (2021). Pastel QAnon – GNET. Global Network on Extremism & Technology. https://gnet-research.org/2021/03/17/pastel-qanon/.
Chadwick, Andrew (2017). The Hybrid Media System. Politics and Power. New York: Oxford University Press.
Maly, Ico (2024) Metapolitics, Algorithms and Violence: New Right Activism and Terrorism in the Attention Economy. Routledge 2024.
Maly, I. (2019). New Right Metapolitics and the Algorithmic Activism of Schild & Vrienden. Social Media + Society, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119856700.
Norocel, O. C., & Lewandowski, D. (2023). Google, data voids, and the dynamics of the politics of exclusion. Big Data & Society, 10(1).
Palonen, E. (2021). The new leader of the Finns Party reinforces an illiberal turn. The Loop: ECPR’s Political Science Blog. https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-new-leader-of-the-finns-party-reinforces-an-illiberal-turn/.
Van Dijck, J., de Winkel, T., & Schäfer, M. T. (2023). Deplatformization and the governance of the platform ecosystem. New Media & Society, 25(12), 3438-3454. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211045662.
