Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper explores the idea that, in recent years, the new European and American far-right has developed a sort of anti-system (or alternative) culture of its own, which unfolds primarily in social media, but not only there. It includes charismatic celebrities, such as, among others, the French comedian Dieudonné, the Russian anti-system writer and politician Eduard Limonov, groups of neo-Nazi vegans, the American conspiracy journalist and theoretician Alex Jones, and Tomio Okamura, the Japanese leader of Freedom and Direct Democracy, a relevant far-right Czech political party. The emergence the new far-right sub-culture recalls the provocative displays of the May ‘68 New Left, with opposing, but also coincidental political attitudes. In this vein, the specialised journalist John Herrman asserts that there’s something similar in the right’s is gradual appropriation of the word alternative – an appropriation that, for lack of a stronger claim by disappearing alt-weeklies or leftist publishers, seems to be working (“Why The Far Right Wants to Be The New `Alternative´Culture”, in: The NYT Magazine, June 27, 2017). This is better understood if we take into account that the far-right also experienced a major change in its own ideological course since 1968, with the emergence of the so-called New Right under Alain de Benoist. In many cases, ideological changes were not too deep. New attitudes, however, became increasingly provocative, so much so that it could be accepted, and even claimed, by many people who, until recently, were considered leftists, or those who started to see the left as an exhausted alternative.