Description
The conspiratory nature of the alternative right was noticed by a number of scholars. Nevertheless, the way conspiracy theories such as the great replacement and the white genocide have been produced, consumed, and circulated as truth remains largely overlooked in the literature. By examining this digital political phenomenon as a multitude, this paper exposes how and why the alternative right has managed to trigger its own regimes of truth. It argues that digital media has facilitated the appearance of novel ays of claiming authority, which have contributed to make the leap from “stigmatized” to “legitimate” knowledge. The multimodal critical affect-discourse analysis of nine YouTube videos containing authoritative articulations of the great replacement, white genocide, deep state and cultural Marxism (narratives found in alt-right circles) illuminates how authority is discursively constructed, recognized through comments and likes, and further reinforced through shares across different platforms. This paper makes two important theoretical contributions. To political studies, it presents a new way of examining digital political phenomena by focusing on what is shared as commonality in digital spaces. To international relations, it demonstrates how amorphous political bodies have found on the internet a space to produce and disseminate their own truths.
