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Home , Alain de Benoist, Arktos Media, Australia First Movement, Daniel Friberg, European New Right, Europe of 100 Flags

How Has European Identity Been Defined, Theorised and

Instrumentalised by New Far-Right Movements

By Calum Fisher

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Student Number: 11774754

European Studies: Identity and Integration

2017-2018

Supervisor: Dr. Krisztina Lajosi-Moore

Second Reader: Dr. Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez

Table of Contents:

INTRODUCTION ...... 3 1 Background ...... 4 1.1 Globalisation and the Resistance of ...... 6 1.2 , Integration and the Re-Emergence of Nationalism ...... 9 2 Methodology and Aims ...... 14 2.1 Methodology ...... 14 2.2 Aims ...... 17 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 19 1 Theoretical Framework ...... 19 1.1 Useful Terminology ...... 20 2 Definitions and Theories of Identity ...... 21 2.1 National Identity versus European Identity ...... 22 2.2 Contested Views ...... 28 2.3 Instrumentalising Identity ...... 31 2.4 Metapolitics ...... 33 CHAPTER 1: HOW IS EUROPEAN IDENTITY DEFINED, THEORISED AND INSTRUMENTALISED BY GENERATION IDENTITY? ...... 35 1 What is Generation Identity? ...... 35 2 How Does Generation Identity Define and Theorise Identity? ...... 38 2.1 How does Generation Identity Instrumentalise Identity? ...... 44 CHAPTER 2: GENERATION IDENTITY AND ...... 49 1 What is Arktos Media and What Contributions Does it make to the Field of Far-Right Identity Theorisation? ...... 49 2 What Role Does Arktos Media Play in Facilitating Generation Identity’s Process of Identity Instrumentalisation? ...... 53 3 How, and Through What Processes, Does Arktos Media Facilitate Identitarian Discourse? ...... 56 CHAPTER 3: THE GLOBAL IDENTITARIAN SPHERE AND IDENTITARIAN HEGEMONY ...... 65 1 How Extensive is Friberg and Spencer’s Network and What Influence Does the Have Within it? ...... 65 2 How Can the Identitarian Movement’s Aim of Achieving be Analysed and Evaluated? ...... 74 2.1 Obstacles and Barriers to Identitarian Hegemony ...... 81 CONCLUSIONS ...... 85 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 90

2 Introduction

What, exactly, is European identity? It appears there are as many interpretations of this subject as there are Europeans, divided along many sets of lines including separatism versus integrationism, liberal versus illiberal democracy, and secular modernism versus

Christian traditionalism, amongst others. European identity plays a subordinate role to national identity, with 51% of Europeans feeling a sense of attachment to ‘ first, then ,’ and while those who identify solely with the nation outnumber those who identify solely with

Europe by 39% to 8%, it is becoming an ever more important and contentious issue amongst citizens, as a changed by and European migration, which have lowered barriers and blurred boundaries, has developed a definite sense of an overarching,

European identity.1

This sense of ‘European’ identity has also entered the consciousness of a wave of new far-right movements (FRMs), whose approach of simultaneously adopting a pan-European and hyper- regionalist viewpoint based on a bottom-up interpretation of European Identity as an inherent, hereditary and exclusive characteristic sets them apart from previous far-right movements such as and which saw the unification of a civilisation of Europe as achievable only via the enforcement of a top-down system of governance. While the proposed by these new, Identitarian movements is not novel – they are the descendants of thought and count many neo-Nazis amongst their ranks – the centralisation of ‘European identity’ to their beliefs enables them to collaborate across European borders. National branches of this pan-European movement support each other’s cultures and traditions, enabling them to claim to be the ‘true protectors’ of European diversity, while still appealing to a very nationalistic support base.2 In targeting this support base, Identitarianism presents Europe as a patchwork

1 Camelia Cmeciu and Mădălina Manolache, “A Narrative Approach to Europe’s Identity Crisis.” The European Legacy (2018): 1-2. 2 Markus Willinger, Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the ‘68ers, trans. David Schreiber (: Arktos, 2013): 87.

3 quilt, with each square representing the local, regional and national identities of each European country, each contributing a distinct, equal and permanent contribution to the blanket of

European Identity. While the wool from which each square was woven, they say, was shorn from the same sheep, the many hands, dyes and looms used to form and colour them has given each square distinct, inimitable patterns and styles that distinguish each one from the rest. If the coloured fibres of two squares begin to mix or are contaminated by outside fibres, they claim, the integrity of the entire blanket is compromised. Thus, a duality of thought is present in Identitarianism in which the preservation of national cultural difference is seen as a way of protecting continental cultural similarity.

This duality of thought can be seen in ideas they promote such as ‘a Europe of Nations’ or ‘a

Europe of 100 flags’ in which Europe is conceptualised as an organic civilisation of many nations, each with its own ‘identity, culture and collective beliefs, its own spirit’ as well as a

‘pan-European spirit’ that bonds them together.3 Moreover, this ‘European spirit’ has been adopted by American White Supremacists, whose interpretation of Identitarianism deterritorialises and ethnicises European Identity.

1 Background

As the world has opened up and and its universal values have spread, Liberal

Democracy counts nations from Europe and amongst its ranks while European nations have become unified under the , ushering in the age of .

Cosmopolitanism, that is, a ‘fluid’ and ‘thin’ type of identification that occurs alongside, not in place of, national identity, has flourished within Europe, enabling national cultural elements

3 Roy Norman Pedersen, One Europe, 100 Nations. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1992).

4 to cross over borders to create shared cognitions of belonging to an overarching European identity.4

However, globalisation has connotations of universalised interests and traditions emanating from the political and economic culture of the West, representing a homogenisation of traditions and cultures which can highlight – or even instigate – strong feelings of attachment or re-identification with one’s own nation-state.5 It is also a target for the far-right, who make use of a Conservative -style Romantic rhetoric that portrays globalisation as a vehicle for that stimulates ‘a degradation of values and culture’ within

Europe.6 Matthew Sharpe notes how globalisation has acted as a stirring force for the European

New Right (ENR) – the main ideological precursor to Identitarianism – which was deeply opposed to Liberalism in all forms, and highly suspicious of free markets, cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.

Despite the challenges of globalisation faced by nation-states, such as migration, and even though supporters of globalisation have made predictions that it would abolish ‘even political borders and make nationalism archaic’ in the belief that economic interests would take priority over promoting national identities, anti-globalist nationalism has proven highly resilient and effervescent.7 Transnational migration, communications and information spreading have led to competing theories considering a ‘global culture.’ Some theorists such as Mike Featherstone believe that the global availability of information and standardised products can lead, and may already be leading, towards a more homogenous global culture while others, such as Anthony

Smith, believe that a lack of global ‘memory’ and an ‘ethnic core’ mean that a global collective

4 Gerard Delanty, “The Quest for European Identity,” in Making the European Polity: Reflexive integration in the EU, ed. Erik Odvar Eriksen (Oslo: Routledge, 2007): 138-139. 5 Philip Resnick, “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” in Revisiting Nationalism, eds. Alain Dieckhoff and Christophe Jaffrelot (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005): 239-253. 6 Matthew Sharpe, “The Long Game of the ,” The Conversation. March 13, 2018. https://theconversation.com/the-long- game-of-the-european-new-right-75078; Raphael Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 89, no. 3 (2011): 1344. 7 Alain Dieckhoff and Christophe Jaffrelot, “Conclusion,” in Revisiting Nationalism. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005): 255.

5 identity is not possible. Jaffrelot and Dieckhoff believe there is merit in both arguments and suggest that while a single global culture may not be possible, global flows of products, migration and information do in fact affect all global cultures, though differing cultural contexts will mean that different values and meanings will be attributed by different people.

They call this ‘glocalisation,’ which refers to the ‘vernacularisation’ and ‘indigenisation’ of transnational cultural elements where the ‘global impact is reinterpreted and appropriated at cultural level.’8 In the eyes of the members of new far-right movements such as the Identitarian movement, such cultural mixing and forced homogenisation represent the unacceptable loss of local cultures, traditions, histories and identities.

1.1 Globalisation and the Resistance of Nationalism

Over time, Liberalism and its values have become the overriding ideological factors in Europe.

Society has developed in a way that means individual citizens are able to act rationally and independently, set free from ‘established hierarchy and formality.’9 Events such as the student uprising in in May 1968, in which students revolted and workers held strikes in response to what they perceived as unfair labour and scholarly hierarchies helped cement Liberalism as

Europe’s primary political system. While this revolution was not successful in the sense that it failed to overthrow a regime, it instigated a dramatic social change in France as well the rest of Europe and America in which the established hierarchies and formalities were reversed, workers were treated better and liberal values such as freedom of speech, feminism and environmentalism became the social and legal norms. The 1968 revolution also accelerated the growing movements of environmentalism and feminism, which were indicative of the culture of individual freedom and responsibility that Liberalism necessitated. came

8 Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot, “Conclusion,” 257-259. 9 Alissa J. Rubin, “May 1968: A Month of Revolution Pushed France Into the Modern World,” . May 05, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/france-may-1968-revolution.html.

6 alongside , which also emphasised the individual, giving people a sense of

‘duty’ and ‘responsibility’ that ‘fundamentally transformed the social, political, economic and psychological spheres’ to the extent that ‘people understand themselves in public life primarily as individuals.’10 Another revolution in 1989 saw the fall of which seemed, at the time, to destine Liberal Democracy to become the dominant global ideology. Francis

Fukuyama famously declared this event as the ‘end of history’ due to the ‘unabashed victory of economic and political Liberalism.’11

However, Liberalism has not benefitted everybody. While many Europeans have taken advantage of the freedoms afforded by a cosmopolitan lifestyle, Ivan Krastev has noted the division and conflict related to the unequal spread of cosmopolitanism in society between two groups identified by David Goodheart as the ‘Anywheres’ that is, the cosmopolitan ‘winners’ of globalisation supporting open society values, versus the ‘Somewheres,’ whose societal values are closed, nativist and nationalist.12 While aspects of globalisation such as migration, feminism and Capitalism have served the Anywheres well, they have contributed to a weakening of national identification and traditional bonds that have damaged the senses of

‘security’ and ‘belonging to a particular community’ of the Somewheres. Mark Little and

Matthew Feldman also suggest that in the face of ‘stagnating wages, identity precariousness, immigration and rising inequality,’ the Somewheres have become susceptible to a narrative that has placed the blame for these social problems on ‘establishment’ figures such as ‘social democrats and other centre-left political parties,’ as well as the EU.13 It is also important to note the distinction between a European identity and a European Union (EU) identity. FRMs are typically – if not always – anti-European Union. FRMs see Europe as a cultural and

10 Pankaj Mishra, “Prologue: Forgotten Conjunctures,” in Age of Anger: A History of the Present. (: Macmillan, 2017): 12. 11 Francis Fukuyama, “The end of history?” in The National Interest 16 (1989): 3. 12 Ivan Krastev, After Europe. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017): 34; Jonathan Freedland, “The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart – a Liberal’s Right-wing Turn on Immigration,” . March 22, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/22/the-road-to-somewhere-david-goodhart-populist-revolt-future-. 13 Mark Littler and Matthew Feldman, “Social Media and the Cordon Sanitaire,” Journal of Language and Politics 16, no. 4 (2017): 513.

7 historical civilisation, while they view the EU as an institution that threatens regional European identities by enabling migration, globalisation and cosmopolitanism. The rise of separatist groups in Europe also reflects differing attitudes on nationalism, Europeanism and integrationism within the EU. Populist-nationalist groups such as the Front National (FN) are highly nationalistic and believe in national sovereignty and the dissolution of the EU, whereas autonomist movements such as the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Convergence and Union

(Convergència i Unió, CiU) in are ardent supporters of the European Project, believing that European integration is ‘the best way to limit powers of the central state and to reinforce those of the regions.’14

The far-right, according to Rafael Schlembach, portray globalisation ‘as the erosion of national-cultural values and as an attack against the achievements of the European social model of the welfare state.’15 Some of the processes of globalisation are very similar to those which instigated the emergence of nations, including the development of new communications technologies. Jaffrelot and Dieckhoff claim that some of the process which ‘contributed to the making of the nation-state are now undermining it in the era of globalisation,’ citing the transition of print to digital media as one example. Where print media used the extension of communications to bring ‘social mobility over a given territory,’ electronic media now surpass the borders of such territories, thus contributing to a weakening of the traditional nation-state.16

Globalisation, they claim, compresses space-time, making ‘greater connectedness and deterritorialisation possible, the latter of which they view as the ‘heaviest blow struck against the nation-state,’ dividing the world into two systems. The first is the international system of

‘transnational flows,’ superimposed onto the alternate system ‘primed on state logic’.17

14 Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot, “Conclusion,” 264. 15 Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” 1333. 16 Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot, “Conclusion,” 255. 17 Ibid., 256.

8 Migration, as the most important of these flows, challenges the nation-state through changes to allegiance, either from one nation-state to another or ‘loyalty from the nation to other entities.’ Migration also produces new ‘ethnoscapes,’ referring to the way diasporic groups create new interactions with nationalism. This includes identity hybridisation as well as varying levels of cultural homogenisation or Americanisation. Ultimately, these all bring about a weakening of the perceived bond between ‘the citizen and his nation-state,’ despite there being some use of new technologies such as social media to create and maintain new, nationalist, online ‘in-groups.’18

1.2 Immigration, Integration and the Re-Emergence of Nationalism

While there can be no universal theory for nationalism that fits all nations equally, Erika Harris claims that nationalism tends to re-emerge in times of political uncertainty and in the face of real and perceived threat towards the identity, autonomy and unity of a nation.19 Following

World War II, the peoples of Europe and America set about creating international institutions with the intention of letting ‘nationalism fade away, to be replaced by international co- operation,’ particularly in cases of crisis.20

Moreover, nationalism has made a resurgence in the last decade, due to many factors including the global financial crash and, perhaps most importantly, the migration crisis. Harris claims that the vertical structure of nation-states, which is based loosely on ethnic homogeneity and citizenship, drives geo-politics to become an ‘ethnicity-driven competition for power and control of resources,’ and becomes contradictory when simultaneously acting as the protector

18 Ramona Kreis, “#refugeesnotwelcome: Anti-Refugee Discourse on ,” Discourse & Communication 11, no. 5 (2017): 501. 19 Erika Harris, “Why Has Nationalism Not Run Its Course?” Nations and Nationalism 22, no. 2 (2016): 243-247. 20 Geoffrey Hosking, “Why Has Nationalism Revived in Europe? The Symbolic Attractions and Fiscal Capabilities of the Nation‐ State,” Nations and Nationalism 22, no. 2 (2016): 210.

9 of cultural and ethnic heritage while promoting cosmopolitan virtues such as European integration and the protection of minority groups.21

European integration appears to have even reinvigorated nationalism, as nations and ethnic groups feel it is corrosive towards local languages and culture. Beyond the expansion of the

English language and the weakening of local traditions, Europe has also integrated a

‘substantial influx of refugees and asylum seekers’ which has caused indigenous cultures to feel ‘challenged, rejected and confronted by those of the newcomers.’22

Furthermore, efforts to overcome nationalism such as ‘pan-’ movements have not successfully replaced nation-states even when aligning on bases of shared culture, religion or language.

Arab unity, for example, was given a ‘death-blow’ under the United Arab Republic of 1958-

1961, as the assumption that shared geography and culture would lead automatically to unity was proven wrong. While a common sense of belonging is fosterable, it is primarily the nation- state that people feel a sense of attachment towards.23

Regionalisation, through projects such as the EU, has been more effective in diminishing, though not eradicating, nationalism.24 Regionalism has reduced the number of Europeans who are willing to die for their nation at war and who feel a sense of ‘national pride’ while increasing the number of Europeans who trust in their national neighbours, yet despite this ‘smoothening’ effect on nationalistic behaviour, it is very sensitive and the current situation in Europe has proven how quickly nationalism can return. Moreover, this effect could be attributed to the

‘development of individualistic values’ which undermines the ethos of collective nationalism, at a time when trust in the EU ‘emanates primarily from national concerns’ of economics and

21 Harris, “Why Has Nationalism Not Run Its Course?”, 244. 22 Ibid., 243-247. 23 Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot, “Conclusion,” 260. 24 Ibid., 260-261.

10 security.25 A good example of the nation coming first in people’s psyche is when the people of

France voted ‘No’ to the Maastricht Treaty in 1972, in order not to relinquish any more national sovereignty.

Furthermore, migration has combined with identity precarity and growing disparities in culture, economics and politics to create simmering feelings of resentment, set to boil over in protests of anger and outrage. The sentiments of anger and resentment have aided the growing support for far-right and populist ‘movements of rage.’ Anger towards globalisation has been particularly damaging for the Left, which, in the 1970s, supported rural Indian communities in defending their cultures from globalisation but are now faced with nativist, yet relatively prosperous, Europeans who are trying to ‘resist’ refugeeism and ‘defend their way of life.’26

Karen Stenner explains this anger as a psychological reaction to ‘normative threats,’ which manifests itself as an illiberal, intolerant and often aggressive reaction to social changes such as migration or the acceptance of marriage which challenge the imagined demographic collective an individual belongs to.27 However, Maria Montserrat Guibernau suggests that it is not necessarily ‘the presence of foreigners’ that Europeans find challenging, as they are generally accepting of migration from the wider ‘in-group’ of other European citizens, but more the ‘fear of the Islamic way of living.’28 In fact, new FRMs such as Generation Identity are very open about their objection to what they perceive as the ‘Islamisation’ or

‘Islamification’ of Europe.

Islam’s growing presence in the demography of Europe has caused unease across the continent, sparking debates about Europe’s heritage and identity in terms of tolerance, secularism and religion, as well as stimulating social and political changes to which its people and politicians

25 Ibid. 26 Krastev, After Europe, 33. 27 Ibid., 41. 28 Montserrat Guibernau, Belonging: Solidarity and Division in Modern . (Cambridge: Polity, 2013): 22.

11 have been compelled to respond. With change comes ‘insecurity and uncertainty’ that new

FRMs have used to direct discourse along lines regarding belonging and . Guibernau claims that this has produced a trans-class, nativist form of ‘’ intended to defend national identity from ‘alien’ cultures and influences. 29

In fact, it is exactly this alterity that enables nationalism to re-emerge and maintain itself. While hybridisation and homogenisation dilute national collective identities, they also increase the interaction of diasporas with ‘Others,’ potentially strengthening further through increased sentiments of nostalgia for the motherland in migrant groups as well as heightened awareness of local feelings of national pride. Benedict Anderson suggests that globalisation and capitalism do not just bring nationalism back to the fore, but instigate new types of nationalism – one type of which is ‘long-distance nationalism’ in which ‘ethnic material in relation to the Other’ is prioritised over cultural and territorial aspects of identity. However, long-distance nationalism is not completely deterritorialised as migrants often maintain strong feelings of attachment to the homeland which is ‘imbued with an emotional, almost reverential dimension.’30 Furthermore, diaspora citizens are not necessarily against the nation-state system, with many of them seeking to ‘help their co-ethnics living in their homelands’ along the lines of national goals. In this way, sovereignties are challenged under the current system, but the nation is still kept alive and supported by people who primarily identify with their nation-state.

Immigration, therefore, is fundamental to all debates on the conception of Europe. Social problems which arose from the combined crises of the financial crash of the noughties and the refugee crisis of 2015 have pushed immigration to be perceived as Europe’s most pressing

29 Guibernau, Belonging, 22. 30 Dieckhoff and Jaffrelot. “Conclusion,” 259.

12 matter across the entire continent.31 Anti-immigration and xenophobic rhetoric, spurred on after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 which led to increased migration within Europe, intensified almost immediately and succeeded in mobilising European voters to support far- right .32 In fact, this rhetoric has been so effective it has been adopted by right-wing movements beyond Europe, perhaps most famously in US President ’s ‘build the wall’ dialogues. Such rhetoric has paved the way for fringe, radical groups to forge narratives of impotence, incompetence and distrust in regard to the institutions of globalisation, as well as developing a political discourse that is hostile towards migration.33 Furthermore, documented rises in nationalist sentiments and anti-immigration movements have been stimulated by the emergence of new far-right movements which have used similar rhetoric to point towards these social problems, and particularly migration, as issues of identity.

Such rhetoric has led to the emergence of a recent movement based on the ideology of the

ENR, Identitarianism. Its first incarnation, the French Bloc Identitaire, emerged in 2003 as a movement based on the ideology of ENR thinkers such as and Guillaume

Faye.34 In turn, the youth wing of the BI broke away in 2012 to form Génération Identitaire, which quickly spread across Europe as Generation Identity (GI), a movement which has adopted and reappropriated ENR ideology to the extent that its de facto leader, , claims that they are ‘taking the ideological and strategic action of Alain de Benoist.’35 Since its inception, GI has spread quickly across Europe, with the Austrian Identitäre Bewegung

Österreich, the German Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland and the Italian Generazione

Identitaria branches all founded in 2012. The British GI movement was launched in 2017,

31 Imran Khan, “Autumn 2016 Standard Eurobarometer: Immigration and Terrorism Continue to Be Seen as the Most Important Issues Facing the EU” Together Against Trafficking in Human Beings. December 22, 2016. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/news/autumn-2016- standard-eurobarometer-immigration-and-terrorism-continue-be-seen-most-important_en. 32 Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski, “Right-wing in Europe & USA.” Journal of Language and Politics 16, no. 4 (2017): 471- 484. 33 Littler and Feldman, “Social Media and the Cordon Sanitaire,” 513. 34 Simon Murdoch et al., A New Threat? Generation Identity UK and Ireland. (London: HOPE Not Hate, 2018): 6. 35 J. Lester Feder and Pierre Buet, “The Man Who Gave A New Life.” Buzzfeed News. December 26, 2017. https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/the-man-who-gave-white-nationalism-a-new-life.

13 enlarging the movement to 13 active national GI branches in Europe. The GI movement arose in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, which has brought about ‘the most dramatic rise of far-right political forces in the ,’ including the breakout success of UKIP in the

2009 European Parliament election amongst others.36

2 Methodology and Aims

2.1 Methodology

One of the aims of the Identitarian movement is to attain cultural hegemony, that is, when

‘knowledge, beliefs, understanding, plans, attitudes, ideologies, norms and values’ are successfully influenced by discourses to create ‘social cognitions,’ which are shared models of understanding society.37 In Identitarian parlance, this process is known as ‘metapolitics,’ which is a right-wing reinterpretation of Gramscian hegemony. Crucially, the Identitarian movement seeks hegemony in particular in the realm of ‘identity,’ which it seeks to redefine and theorise as an immutable, innate and primordial characteristic of personal and collective identification.

It then also wants to instrumentalise identity as an exclusive aspect of membership of a homogenous-yet-diverse European society, bound together by its ‘Europeanness,’ a deliberately vague concept which has cultural, ethnic, racial and religious boundaries.

Since the processes of hegemony acquisition or metapolitics occur through discourse, I will undertake a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as set out by Teun Van Dijk, which ‘focuses on the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance […] defined here as the exercise of social power by elites, institutions or group, that results in social inequality.’38

CDA also makes a distinction between ‘social power’ and ‘dominance.’39 Van Dijk defines

36 Sharpe, ibid. 37 Teun A. Van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 257. 38 Ibid., 250. 39 Ibid., 254.

14 power as ‘privileged access to socially valued resources’ that is obtained legally and legitimately, whereas dominance occurs when the same privileged access is acquired illegally or illegitimately. Furthermore, Van Dijk explains that the power or dominance of a group in forming social cognitions can be measured by its control over or access to discourse. Therefore, there are three key areas in which I will analyse Identitarian discourse:

1) Power and dominance,

2) Access to and control over discourse,

3) Social cognition.

For the first area, I will examine the (re)production of dominance and social inequalities that occur as a result of the discourses of Identitarian and far-right groups as well as institutions such as the media in their coverage of Identitarian matters or material produced in the media by Identitarians. I will focus in particular the publishing industry, with a specific focus placed on Arktos Media, a publisher of far-right literature with close connections to the Identitarian movement. By studying such groups, I will analyse real examples of dominance or social inequalities, exploring the exclusionary, discriminatory and marginalising effect that

Identitarian discourses have on non-Europeans, particularly those who are non-white and/or

Muslim, but also addressing other inequalities that may be present such as sexual, gender or culture-based inequalities.

In the second area, I will analyse the access to and control over discourse that are available to different stakeholders within the Identitarian movement, the privileges and benefits such access and control offer, and the impact they have on creating hegemony. Access to and control over discourse, in particular, will be the most important part of my analysis. This is due to the nature of Arktos Media as a publishing company and the status of its founder, , who also heads a number of related but separate multi-media organisations. I will also look at both

15 ‘produced’ and ‘received’ discourse, wherein the former refers to ‘the enactments, expression or legitimation of dominance in various structures of discourse,’ while the latter refers to the

‘functions, consequences or results of such discourse on the (social) of participants.’40

This analysis will include discourses produced and received by Generation Identity and other

Identitarian activists, members of connected far-right movements both within Europe and beyond with connections to politicians or people with high political connections, and the public.

Thirdly, I will assess ‘social cognitions,’ that is, the extent to which hegemony is achieved by creating a widely-spread, shared social understanding of and belief in subjects promoted by

Identitarian movements. This extent can be measured, for example, in the quantity of discourse that is produced reflecting Identitarian values such as defending European identity from mass immigration. Social cognitions will also be influenced by the two former areas, such as when, for example, socially powerful contributors such as politicians use their access to the media to endorse an issue relevant to the Identitarian movement, and thus influence or control the minds of the readership of the publication, which could be the public.

Since this paper seeks to answer the question of how identity is defined, theorised and instrumentalised by new far-right movements, the texts to be studied will be ones which discuss the various aspects and interpretations of (European) identity, which is a, if not the, major theme of Identitarian ideology. These texts will include literature produced by members of the

Identitarian movement itself and literature it has adopted from other movements, and also related literature from connected far-right movements. A particular focus will also be placed on Arktos Media and its various staff members. While Arktos Media publishes much of the literature the Identitarian movement uses as ideological material, such as translations of the

40 Ibid., 259.

16 works of ENR intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist and , its diverse group of employees has access to a wide range of media sources which it uses to publish, create, reproduce and disseminate Identitarian literature to a wide range of audiences.

2.2 Aims

The aim of this thesis is to analyse how Generation Identity, as a fringe political movement, uses discursive strategies to transform Identitarianism, into a mainstream political ideology.

This will include analysing the groups that make up the Identitarian movement based in both

Europe and North America, and their strategies of producing and controlling discourse to achieve cultural hegemony. The thesis will be split into four main chapters, the first of which will analyse GI’s human and ideological makeup, its strategies for defining, theorising and instrumentalising identity, and will answer the following questions:

1) What is Generation Identity?

2) How is identity defined, theorised and instrumentalised by Generation Identity?

In Chapter Two, I will explore the relationship between Generation Identity and Arktos Media, a far-right publishing company. I will analyse the role played by Arktos Media in facilitating

Generation Identity’s process of identity instrumentalisation, and how it facilitates the production and reproduction of Identitarian discourse. I will also look at how Arktos Media manages control over and access to Identitarian discourse through an extensive network based on Arktos Media’s diverse team of staff. This chapter will contain the following questions:

1) What is Arktos Media and what contributions does it make to the field of far-right

identity theory?

2) What role does Arktos Media play in facilitating Generation Identity’s process of

identity instrumentalisation?

17 In Chapter Three, I will look at the influence of Identitarianism beyond Generation Identity and Arktos Media by analysing an extended network of global far-right movements maintained by Arktos Media’s founder, Daniel Friberg and his American counterpart, Richard Spencer.

Through this network, I will analyse the extent to which the reproduction of Identitarian ideas can be found in far-right discourses across Europe and North America and on which platforms they can be found. I will then analyse the extent to which hegemony has been achieved by analysing examples of Identitarian discourse that has been produced or reproduced by the public or mainstream politicians. This chapter will answer the questions:

1) How extensive is Friberg and Spencer’s network and what influence does the

Identitarian movement have within it?

2) How can the Identitarian movement’s aim of achieving cultural hegemony be analysed

and evaluated?

18 Theoretical Framework and Literature Review

1 Theoretical Framework

From the literature review, the theoretical framework for this thesis will be based upon the instrumentalisation of European identity through discursive strategies as performed by the

Identitarian movement. In particular, I will be looking at its current incarnation and flag-bearer,

Generation Identity (GI), as well as non-European movements which support or have adopted

Identitarian values, such as the Alt-right in North America as well as organisations which support such movements, including Arktos Media.

In looking at previous theoretical outlooks of nationalism, it will be important to determine how or if the GI’s view of nationalism can be categorised by the ways in which it views citizenship along the lines of ethno-cultural belonging versus civic participation. This process can then be applied to Europe in place of the nation to see if there are differences in the way

GI constructs an image of the continent to how it constructs an image of the nation. Moreover, it will be intriguing to see if conceptions of ethno- versus civic participation change when the focus is transposed from the nation to the continent. Beyond that, I will also examine any new contributions GI makes to nationalist or Europeanist theory.

I will also examine GI’s formation, history and development in the contexts of classical illiberal

European ideology, in particular that of the ENR, since it is GI’s ideological forefather and one that is still partially active, with intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist still producing literature and assisting far-right thinkers today. I will examine the key concepts GI has adopted from this movement, as well as any it has modified, expanded on or contributed towards. For instance, the revolved around a search for ‘authentic culture,’ while GI’s main purpose is to seek for an ‘authentic identity.’

19 Beyond this, I will look outside Europe to examine Identitarianism’s historical and contemporary position in global far-right politics. I will do this by looking at North American movements such as the Alt-Right and (IE) and establish the commonalities and differences they share in terms of ideology, influencers and purpose. Moreover, I will propose that GI is part of an organised network which I will call the Global Identitarian Sphere (GIS) that contains several distinct far-right movements that remain in regular contact with each other, share similar ideologies and aims and enhance each other’s reputations and reaches of influence within and beyond Europe. I will also investigate the ways in which these movements promote the concept of Identitarianism while following the concept of metapolitics, as well as any other methods of instrumentalising identity they may utilise.

1.1 Useful Terminology

While studying far-right, nationalist, populist and non-mainstream ideologies and movements,

I have discovered that these terms and their relatives are used interchangeably by some authors while they are given very distinct meanings by others. For purposes of simplification, I will use the term ‘far-right’ as a catch-all term covering all movements and ideologies that are generally considered right-wing and non-mainstream, unless a distinction is necessary or clarity is compromised.

Therefore, groups such as Generation Identity, Traditional Britain, the European New Right and the American Alt-Right will be referred to as ‘far-right’ in this thesis, despite the clear distinctions in their ideologies and methodologies. An exception to this will be made for explicitly populist movements, such as the French Front National, the Dutch Partij Voor de

Vreiheid (Party for Freedom, PVV) and the Hungarian Fidesz, which act as official, mainstream political parties and therefore modes of operation differ from far-right fringe

20 movements, despite sharing some characteristics that can be considered far-right as well as maintaining connections to the Global Far-Right Sphere.

The terms ‘Generation Identity’ and ‘the Identitarian movement’ will be distinct from each other, despite GI’s own use of the terms as interchangeable. This is because the Identitarian movement comprises of historical Identitarian movements such as its founding movement Bloc

Identitaire, American movements such as the Alt-Right which utilise Identitarian theory, and organisations like Arktos Media, which mediate Identitarian discourse.

2 Definitions and Theories of Identity

All types of identity, whether personal or collective, national or continental, are socially constructed, with meaning given to them from social perceptions and classifications which mutate over time and from place to place. 41 While personal identities are malleable amalgamations comprised of the ‘matrix’ of an individual’s role, class, gender and homeland, amongst other aspects, collective identities require ‘the existence of a social group with a collective project’ in order to provide ‘existential meaning’ and ‘a degree of continuity between individuals and their social environment.’42 Territorial identities, such as national and continental identities, are amongst the most pertinent aspects of both personal and collective identity matrices, with Anthony D. Smith arguing that territorial identity gives a cohesiveness to collective identification that even gender, as the most fundamental and universal category of identification, cannot match.43 However, territorial identities take on very different roles when comparing, for example, a national identity with a continental one.

41 Anthony D. Smith, “National and Other Identities” in National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991): 4. 42 Delanty, “The Quest for European Identity,” 129-130. 43 Smith, “National and Other Identities,” 10.

21 2.1 National Identity versus European Identity

Nationalism is an ‘active movement’ which intends to ‘attain and maintain autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a nation’ that is beyond ‘simply a shared sentiment or consciousness.’44 Anthony Smith proposes a core doctrine of nationalism which contains the following six aspects: that

‘1) humanity is divided into nations, each with its own character, history and

, 2) the nation is the sole source of political power, 3) loyalty to the nation

takes precedence over other loyalties, 4) to be free, human beings must belong to a

nation, 5) nations require maximum autonomy and self-expression and 6) global

and can only be built on the basis of a plurality of free nations.’45

Smith distinguishes between political nationalism, which seeks to secure an independent and sovereign state for a nation, and cultural nationalism, which, in place of political activities, seeks ‘moral regeneration’ of a community to form a self-sustaining and solidary nation. These types of nationalism are not mutually incompatible, and in fact complement each other, often alternating periodically.

In the eyes of nationalists, nations are viewed as primordial organisms whose existence is natural and therefore ‘prior to the state,’ whereas non-nationalists tend to view them as ‘historic culture communities,’ distinguishable from the state and definable as ‘a set of autonomous institutions exercising a monopoly of coercion and extraction in a given territory.’46 Smith has proposed three paradigms of nationalism, primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism, and when the majority of a population is able to identify with aspects of any or all of the

44 Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009): 61. 45 Ibid., 21. 46 Ibid., 44.

22 paradigms, a nation is formed.47 These are aided by ‘nation-building processes,’ which include the propagation of symbols, images and shared memories through which individuals can identify with the state. By applying the different approaches of the different paradigms of nationalism, these symbols are interpreted and re-interpreted in order to define ‘the boundaries and character of the national community’. Primordial nationalism views nations as ethnic communities that are inherent in humanity and have always existed, and supplemented by cultural ‘givens’ such as ‘language, custom, religion, race and territory,’ as well as ‘civic actions,’ such as making adjustments like responding to modern secular states in order to maintain itself.48 Modernism refers to a view of nations as social and historical constructions that can be ‘abandoned, changed or reconstructed by constitutional means like cultural policies.’49 According to Peter Duelund, national identity is ‘both a historical construct and the outcome of myths and symbols,’ which is passed on from one generation to the next through

‘recollections, values, emotions, myths, rituals, symbols and stories etc,’ leaving identity to be subject to reinterpretation and personal experience. This inheritance of ‘aesthetic artefacts’ has been identified by Smith as the paradigm of ethno-symbolism. When the resulting set of cultural markers is adopted by a cultural community, or ethnie, whose members believe in

‘historical memories, myth of common ancestry and association with a specific homeland,’ a national identity is formed around a de facto nation, which is defined by Smith as:

‘A named human population sharing a historic territory, common myths and

historical memories, a mass public culture, a common enemy and common legal

and duties for all members.’50

47 William Bloom, “Nation-Building,” in Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993): 61-62. 48 Smith, Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism, 8. 49 Peter Duelund, “A Sense of Belonging: Paradoxes of Identity, Nationalism and Diversity in Europe and Beyond,” in Identifying with Europe, eds. Ineke van Hamersveld and Arthur Sonnen (Amsterdam: Boekmanstudies, 2009): 160-187. 50 Smith, “National and Other Identities,” 14.

23 Modern FRMs place much importance on the ethnic aspects of identity, particularly while promoting concepts such as ‘white resistance,’ ‘white ’ and the ‘.’

These are all aspects of what Guibernau labels ‘cultural ,’ that is, the protection of an

‘endangered European identity.’51 While race can still be a defining factor in extreme nationalist politics, it often takes an ‘ethno-pluralistic’ turn, whereby culture, or culturally- defined ethnicity, is seen as the predominant marker of a community. Advocates of ethno- pluralism have thus argued that European nations can contribute equally towards the construction of a European identity.52

However, when a population is too diverse to consist of a single cultural ethnie or political demos – such as the European population – markers of identification occur at a broader societal level, with foundations based on discourse and communication.53 Therefore, European identity for many reasons does not and cannot occur in the same way as national identity. Lacking the cultural, political and historical cohesiveness needed to form a homogenous society, European identity, as reflected in European Union cultural policy, celebrates diversity. Furthermore, having a diverse ethnic and racial population means that there can be no fictive myth of ‘a people,’ while the lack of a common language and of shared myths and memories mean that

‘the possibility of a common European culture is limited.’

Nevertheless, European citizens do identify as Europeans. Research by Camelia Cmeciu and

Mădălina Manolache shows that only 39% of citizens of European nations feel a sense of attachment solely towards the nation and not towards Europe.54 However, the way in which the remaining 61% of Europeans feel European is ripe for discussion. Alterity is often an important factor in the formation of identities – it can sometimes be easier to articulate what

51 Guibernau, Belonging, 80. 52 Schlembach, “The transnationality of European nationalist movements,” 1347. 53 Smith, “National and Other Identities,” 1-18. 54 Cmeciu and Manolache, “A Narrative Approach to Europe’s Identity Crisis,” 1-2.

24 one is not rather than what one is – which gives weight to the argument which claims that

Christianity has given Europe a cultural heritage distinct from, and antithetical to, that of its

Islamic neighbours to the south and east.55

However, while remains very influential within Europe and its various adaptations have been used to strengthen national identities and shape European cultural history, Gerard

Delanty argues that since the 17th century, secularism, not Christianity, has been the unifying characteristic of European nations in terms of culture.56 Delanty points out the various divisions and even wars that have occurred between different Christian groups such as Catholics and

Protestants, claiming that it is ‘difficult to see how it offers a basis for cultural identification,’ although it does appear that the presence of apparently enables a loose sense of collective identity.

Philip Resnick also suggests that Christianity, through promoting a ‘universalistic ethos’ intended to unite all those who believe, may have deliberately or inadvertently created a factor of identification that does bond Europeans together: cosmopolitanism.57 With roots going back to the Hellenistic era, cosmopolitanism is a growing sentiment and ‘theoretical ideal’ that emancipates cosmopolitans from religious or territorial markers of identification, allowing them to connect to and identify with others who believe in promoting human rights, environmentalism, feminism and other concepts that demand international, co-operative efforts.58 However, while cosmopolitans can be ‘at home throughout the world or in many spheres of interest,’ cosmopolitanism cannot succeed if it does not respect needs for cultural, linguistic and political diversities. It must respect these in order to ‘prevent undue homogenization’ while still levelling the playing fields of technology, finance and .

55 Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe. (London: Springer, 1995): 67. 56 Ibid., 67. 57 Resnick, “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” 239-240. 58 Ibid.

25 Resnick claims that Claude Lévi-Strauss sums this up well in this quote: ‘humanity is constantly struggling with two contradictions. One of these tends to promote unification while the other aims at maintaining or re-establishing diversification.’59 This contradiction can be seen in the cultural policies of the European Union which demand ‘ever closer union’ while also promoting cultural diversity.

Moreover, cosmopolitan identity is unequally possessed by the middle and upper classes, in particular those who are comfortable with English, are wealthy enough to afford ‘the goods and life-styles associated with post-industrial societies’ and are competent with modern technology.60 Moreover, it is an optional identity that can be taken advantage of – or declined

– by those who are able to afford it. This separates it from national identity, which people are born into and become ‘socialized within their own specific cultures endowed with their own specific languages.’

Cosmopolitanism is also related to what Philip Resnick calls ‘integrated European democratic space,’61 (IEDS) in which civil society and citizens movements such as protests develop into a political will at a European level as well as a European Public Sphere, described by Jürgen

Habermas as a communicative and transactional ‘common political mentality,’ that enables

‘European citizens feel a responsibility for one another’ as a ‘post-national moral community.’62 While this collective political mentality can often be seen in humanitarian or liberal protests such as those against the Iraq war, it is also adopted by the far-right through actions such as GI’s ‘Defend Europe,’ in which far-right activists attempt to create a hostile environment towards immigrants and refugees across Europe.

59 Ibid., 243. 60 Guibernau. Belonging, 42. 61 Resnick, “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” 243. 62 Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. “February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A plea for a common foreign policy, beginning in the core of Europe.” Constellations 10, no. 3 (2003): 294.

26

Despite this, European identity usually takes the form of a ‘thin’ identity based on possible shared ‘values, concern for the common good, and political participation’. European identity is therefore in contrast to national identity, whose more tangible components such as place, ethnicity and language constitute its ‘thickness.’63 Where IEDS may bond Europeans around a specific subject or belief, ‘linguistic and cultural diversity any move to a single

European identity’ and keep old political, cultural and economic approaches in place, where

European co-operation is valued over European integration.64 Furthermore, the existing global power structures of nation-states will not be easily replaced, particularly since nation-state citizenship is much more identifiable with than global citizenship. Nation-states also offer their citizens many protections as well as being ‘extremely exigent common enterprises of self-rule.’

Also, historically, the ‘application of rights has been territorially bound,’ and territory is the

‘hard currency’ of national politics. Therefore, identifications beyond the nation, such as that with a hemisphere or continent, can only be applied to urbanized, internationally-minded citizens and, thus, remain ‘thin.’65 Furthermore, national citizenship is alluded to almost constantly and subconsciously in everyday life through what Michael Billig has termed ‘banal nationalism.’66 Banal nationalism refers to the inactive national images that one encounters on a daily basis that range from unwaved flags hung from official buildings, to monarchs’ heads on coins or supermarkets advertising local produce, emphasising stereotypical characteristics of nations. Banal nationalism also serves to reproduce images of foreign nations, and can be seen in everyday life when, for example, one sees adverts for Italian-style pizza or

Scandinavian furniture. Billig labels these images as ‘constant flaggings of nationhood’ which

63 Resnick, “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” 250. 64 Ibid., 244-245. 65 Ibid., 250. 66 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism. (London: Sage, 1995).

27 reproduce and solidify social cognitions of the attributes and characteristics each nation is supposed to have.67 These constant reminders are highly influential in maintaining the position of being a ‘national’ at the forefront of citizens’ identities, which can have extreme consequences since it takes ‘relatively little to inflame nationalist passions into something larger.’68

2.2 Contested Views

Prior to the , Europe experienced the Age of Enlightenment which changed the way Europeans thought of themselves in terms of individuals, as opposed to the medieval view of society as being part of a natural social order in which ‘lineage, gender, social status and other attributes […] were fixed by birth.’69 This new way of thinking spawned Liberalism, secularism and Christian , which together placed ‘Reason, Progress and Science’ at the centre of a universal value system that established a ‘European’ identity in which human rights, individuality and Liberalism as an ideology became a defining part of European history.

In fact, intellectuals such as Anthony Pagden see Enlightenment-inspired Liberalism as the defining aspect of European identity, since it was a uniquely European event. However, the development of Liberalism also gave birth to illiberal and anti-liberal ideologies, representing the complicated relation Europe has with the legacy of the Enlightenment.

Jens Rydgens claims that the new far-right is continuing a tradition of the post-war -wing that stems from the 1980s in which ethnic nationalism was the driving force for radical right-wing parties to ‘safeguard the nation’s majority culture and to keep the nation as ethnically homogenous as possible.’70 Many of these parties – such as France’s Front National

, ’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs and ’s Alternative für Deutschland – have

67 Ibid., 174. 68 Resnick, “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism,” 245. 69 Guibernau, Belonging, 15. 70 Jens Rydgens, “Radical Right-Wing Parties in Europe,” Journal of Language and Politics 16, no. 4 (2017): 485.

28 transitioned from fringe movements to well-supported political parties. All, in some way, act as continuations of the European New Right (ENR) of the 1960s, which was a revival of the thoughts of early antiliberal scholars such as (1753-1821),

(1868-1952) and Augustin Barruel (1741-1820). Where these old intellectuals saw

Enlightenment-inspired Liberalism as a threat to the ancien régime, religion and the nation, modern far-right parties see cosmopolitanism, migration, and secular humanism as a threat to national identity, traditions, and heritage. This has led to a resurgence of far-right nationalist movements, and while there are some, such as , whose opposition to the Islamisation of Europe comes from a position of defending particular Enlightenment values, most are highly illiberal.71

The ‘universal’ value system did not override the fact that Europeans identified more strongly with the nation-state than the continent. Territorial nationalism was part of the foundation of

European order after the French Revolution, and conceptions of Europe such as the ‘’ theorised by , Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and viewed

Europe as an ‘alliance of nations’ which ensured that the nation-state, not the continent, was the main marker of identification. Moreover, while the values produced by the Enlightenment created and crystallised the idea of ‘Europe as a civilisation of national cultures,’72 the concept of ‘civilisation,’ alongside ‘modernity,’ was resisted by illiberals who preferred instead to fight for the ‘rediscovery’ of European culture.73 However, ‘European culture’ is not a universally recognized subject and its authenticity has been challenged. Raphael Schlembach, for instance, describes the ‘reconstruction of “Europe”’ by right-wing parties and organisations as ethnically

71 Malte Thran and Lukas Boehnke, “The Value-Based Nationalism of Pegida.” Journal for Deradicalization 3 (2015): 178-209. 72 Delanty, Inventing Europe, 67. 73 Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” 1348.

29 charged with notions such as protecting ‘the values of Christianity,’ or ‘liberation from both

Bolshevik attacks and capitalist rule’ being used as cover for ideas of ‘Aryan mythology.’

Gerard Delanty also attributes much of the search for European culture to ‘European pessimism,’74 described as a thought process in which ‘modernity and technological civilisation’ are seen as an intellectual void that must be replaced by a ‘supposedly authentic

European culture.’ However, while intellectuals such as José Ortega y Gasset and have lamented the ‘feeling of European degeneration,’ the European dimension of their complaints contributed significantly to the ‘European identity’. The ultimate result of European pessimism, according to Schlembach, was the Conservative Revolution. This was a movement of intellectuals in Weimar Germany that ‘argued for a cultural and political revolution against both communism and Liberalism – known as the ‘’ - with the aim of a unified

Volksgemeinschaft,’ or People’s Community, within Europe.75 The third way became a strong influence on Fascists such as and , who saw the third way as a ‘post-historical aesthetic order’ that could transcend the nation ‘to create a truly European supra-national civilisation.’ In fact, the resistance to the dichotomy of Communism and Liberal

Democracy meant that was not just key to Fascism, but almost essential.

Pandering to ‘both anti-American and anti-Bolshevik’ sentiments, Fascism offered an anti- capitalist, romantic agenda of ‘sovereignty and independence’ which was intended to create a supranational identity that would be ‘perceived as a return to, or reawakening of, a supposedly authentic and natural culture.’ In fact, Europe was so central to Fascism that Mosley proposed the idea of ‘Europe a Nation,’ in which pan-European Fascist rule would ‘transcend hostility

74 Delanty, Inventing Europe, 109-110. 75 Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” 1336.

30 between European states.’ However, the ‘Europe’ envisaged by such Fascists relied on a

Romantic view of nationalism.76

Romanticism, according to Smith, is part of a ‘wider search for authenticity,’ or the search for the ‘true essence’ of a nation.77 This is what gives an us its usness, and its ‘cultural values that could not be replicated’. It is also seen by authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau as part of a quest for ‘the return to nature,’ indicating the primordialist, organicist approach taken by

Romantic Nationalists, and also of the search for the ‘homeland’. Romantic nationalists implicate a ‘sublime’ landscape as having idealistic and subjective attachments to its people, which has enabled cultural nationalists to extol ‘the simple and healthy life of the countryside and its inhabitants […] by identifying the land with the “real” people.’78

2.3 Instrumentalising Identity

In fact, it is resistance to immigration and liberal migration policies that defines the success and following of the new FRMs. Cosmopolitanism, open borders, tolerance and civility, the aspects of globalisation and key characteristics of the EU that were heralded in the 1990s, are now seen as their ‘core vulnerabilities’. Tolerance is under attack from illiberals, who view

Europe as being ‘polluted’ by foreign cultures, religions and races as well as by liberals, whose own tolerance towards pluralism in political views is being tested by the growth of illiberal thought. New FRMs are now championing alternatives to liberal values, even including alternatives to democracy itself. In order to modernise, the new far-right has modified its approach, or at least its discourse, in the promotion of traditional viewpoints by intertwining

‘culture’ and ‘heritage’ into previous theories of society based on race, which it has repackaged and instrumentalised as ‘identity’.

76 Ibid., 1341-1342. 77 Smith, Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism, 86. 78 Ibid., 69.

31 National identities are demarcated by symbolic boundaries, reflecting community members’ perceptions of themselves ‘as refracted through all the complexities of their lives and experiences’ as well as how they believe they are perceived by outsiders.79 Thus, the symbols that represent these boundaries, such as the displaying of emblems, symbols and images, are used to ‘constitute and strengthen the belief in a common identity’. Even if the members of a community may have very different or even incompatible beliefs, the adoption of the same symbols transforms ‘the reality of difference into the appearance or illusion of similarity’ and thus enhances a sense of belonging and community.

According to Manuel Castells, living conditions that make ‘life unbearable for most people’ prompt social change via social movements which emerge in response to negative emotions such as anxiety, anger and fear.80 Fear and anxiety act as emotional repressors, but through

‘communicative action’ they can be taken over by anger which acts as a trigger for action, including risky behaviour. These same communicative actions can help bring together

‘networks of outrage’ that can develop into a ‘conscious, collective actor.’81

The role of the internet in social movements is crucial for new far-right movements. Internet- based movements can thrive because of the way they are able to structure themselves. As they are not monolithic structures, but ‘networks of networks,’ they are not hindered by a lack of a physical base or formal . Participation is maximised through decentralised, open access, which supplements physical presence in urban spaces with continuous online activity.

Many online movements actually benefit from a reduced threat of oppression due to having few specific targets to repress. This decentralisation also enables online networks to be ‘local and global at the same time,’ which they manage through occupying what Castells calls ‘the

79 Guibernau, Belonging, 37. 80 Manuel Castells, “Changing the World in the Network Society” in Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. (Cambridge: Polity, 2015): 246-265. 81 Ibid., 247.

32 space of autonomy,’ which is a hybridisation of the occupation of urban and online space. It is autonomous because it allows online social movements to self-organise in the free spaces of the internet and also practice their exercises by reclaiming or occupying urban spaces in the city.82 This autonomy creates a public space that connects members of the social movement.

The international and free qualities of the internet also mean that these movements often have some type of cosmopolitan culture by connecting people from different backgrounds. They also follow typical patterns of Internet network ‘logic,’ such as harnessing the power of symbolism, imagery and video through websites such as YouTube, as well as relying on the potential of ‘virality’.

2.4 Metapolitics

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, theorised that in order for a regime to wield control over a population, it must first win its consent by shaping ‘debate in the cultural sphere’83 by filling

‘schools, universities, newspapers and think tanks with proponents of one’s own ideological perspective’ in order to spread and normalise that ideology. Gramsci called this ‘Cultural

Hegemony.’ Once a cultural change has occurred, direct politics can then take place.

Alain de Benoist, of GRECE, read and re-evaluated Gramsci’s theories on the power of culture and repackaged it as ‘metapolitics.’ Metapolitics, also known as right-wing Gramscianism, was adopted by the ENR who organised ‘new journals, publishing houses, think tanks and fora’ to promote its ideology, particularly in relation to narratives of the ‘decline of the West’ caused by non-European, and particularly Islamic, immigration.84

In order to claim legitimacy, these systems need to be able to create an accessible and usually non-violent image of themselves, which they juxtapose with the perceived or accused injustice

82 Ibid., 250. 83 Sharpe,” ibid. 84 Ibid.

33 or violence of the system they are protesting against. Images of police violence have been used to increase sympathy and remobilise movements.85

85 Castells, “Changing the World in the Network Society,” 246-265.

34 Chapter 1: How is European Identity Defined, Theorised and Instrumentalised by Generation Identity?

In this chapter, I will describe Generation Identity as the flagship branch of the Identitarian movement, analysing what Identitarian ideology entails and how it has developed from predecessor ideologies, as well as how it compares to contemporary far-right ideologies. I will also look into who makes up the Identitarian movement, including the key individuals in the movement as well as the more active national branches of Generation Identity. Following that,

I will then assess using discourse analysis what the key concepts of Identitarianism are relating to identity, such as ‘,’ and the ‘Great Replacement,’ as well as methods of instrumentalising identity such as metapolitics. In particular I will analyse the inequalities present in the Identitarian conception of identity, how it upholds social dominance and how strategic use of discourse enables Identitarians to exercise such dominance. In order to ascertain the Identitarian position towards identity theorisation, the primary source for analysis in this chapter will be the book adopted as Generation Identity’s manifesto, Generation Identity: A

Declaration of War Against the ’68ers (‘A Declaration of War’), with secondary sources comprising literature from the European New Right that GI has adopted, academic and media articles as well as other discourses produced by the GI such as YouTube videos and Social

Media material.

1 What is Generation Identity?

The Identitarian Movement was born in France in 2003, when the ideology of Nouvelle Droit intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye was compiled to form the basis of

Identitarianism’s first movement, the Bloc Identitaire. This movement fractured in 2012, with

35 its youth wing separating to form Generation Identity (GI), which remains as the Identitarian movement’s active branch within Europe, promoting the concept of ‘ethnopluralism,’ the practice of ‘metapolitics,’ and resistance to ‘left-wing societal consensus and the dominance of the so-called ‘’68ers’ in modern European politics.’86 Following the formation of its original branch, Génération Identitaire of France, there are now 13 active national branches operating in Europe. The ideological origin of GI comes from European New Right (ENR) intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, who were inspired by the plasticity towards left- right politics taken up by illiberals such as Benito Mussolini and that allowed them to flit between ideologies at either end of the such as Fascism and

Socialism. ENR intellectuals combined this plastic approach with strong critiques of the liberal order to produce a highly nationalistic movement, which rejected liberal ideas such as and , while promoting others such as the ‘right to difference,’ which dictates that ‘each culture must pursue its own development, if possible on the territory it was formed.’87 Benoist in particular has had a profound effect on the direction of GI’s ideology, to the extent that GI claims that it is ‘taking the ideological and strategic action of

Alain de Benoist,’ who was responsible for appropriating Gramscian hegemony as metapolitics.88 In fact, this ‘push “for a right-wing Gramscianism”’ was as key to Benoist’s

GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d’Etude pour la Civilisation Européenne) as it is for the

Identitarian Movement today.89

Like the classical illiberal theories of Joseph de Maistre, Charles Maurras and Augustin

Barruel, who proposed types of illiberalism as a counter-ideology in response to the liberal legacy of the Enlightenment, GI also operates as a ‘counter-revolution’ or ‘counter-ideology,’

86 Murdoch et al., A New Threat?, 14. 87 Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, “The New Right in All Its Diversity” Far-right politics in Europe. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017): 123. 88 Feder and Buet, ibid. 89 Sharpe, ibid.

36 specifically providing an opposition to the outcome of the 1968 Revolution in which French students led an uprising against institutions, allowing concepts such as social freedoms, feminism and environmentalism to prevail and ultimately dominate in society, which came to be berated by right-wing illiberals as ‘cultural .’ This is most evident in Willinger’s A

Declaration of War.90

Despite being adopted as the manifesto of GI, Willinger’s book offers a somewhat shallow and unsubstantial account of what it means to be an Identitarian. The book is written as if it is intended to be read by its enemy, that is, the ‘’68ers’ (who are addressed throughout with the pronoun ‘you’), and offers a list of criteria that are crucial to the Identitarian identity, comprehensive in scope yet often lacking in detail, and frequently describing in greater detail what does not constitute Identitarianism than what does. For instance, the opening two paragraphs91 of Chapter One reads as follows: ‘You want to know who we are? Where we come from? What moves us? We’ll tell you.’92

In response to his own questions, Willinger begins ten of the next thirteen paragraphs referring to the damage his adversarial ‘you’ has caused to society, through statements such as ‘you’ve devalued the state, so that none of us wants to serve it anymore.’ In fact, A Declaration of War refers slightly more frequently to its Others than it does to itself, making just over 1000 references to second- and third-person pronouns compared to just under 900 references to first- person pronouns. However, the book is clear enough about which themes are central to the

Identitarian mindset. Identities can often be strengthened when they are in the presence of an alternative that contradicts their worldview or values, and by collating into one book the values, systems, norms and beliefs that Identitarianism stands against, and blaming their prevalence in

90 Willinger, Generation Identity. 91 A Declaration of War is written in a particular stylistic fashion, in which each paragraph contains one or two short sentences, most of which are one or two lines long. 92 Willinger, Generation Identity, 16.

37 modern society on a semi-fictional Other – the ’68ers – Willinger creates a basis for a counter- revolutionary identity of resistance that provides its subscribers with a framework upon which they can discuss, develop and disseminate Identitarian values and subjects, including what exactly is meant by the term ‘identity.’

2 How Does Generation Identity Define and Theorise Identity?

Each chapter of A Declaration of War represents a lamentation of a moral, spiritual, cultural, social or economic deficiency of modern European society, including loneliness, Islam, and the breakdown of the traditional family unit, heavily criticising the perceived loss of traditions and traditional values which Identitarians consider as the consequences of 1968 and as an affront to their European identity. As a manifesto, it is and comes across as a commentary rather than a political ideology. It offers little more than criticisms of the problems it wants to fix and proposes nothing in terms of radical new proposals or solutions. For instance,

Willinger claims that liberal environmentalism has failed, but offers no alternative theory of environmental protection, beyond ‘watch us and learn how one really protects the environment.’93Amongst the comprehensive list of values that GI opposes, which includes individualism, sexual freedom, multiculturalism, secular atheism and globalisation amongst many others, there lies within A Declaration of War a selection of values that the Identitarian movement does stand for, including the ‘right to difference’ as theorised by Benoist, traditional gender roles, and cultural preservation.

It is from amongst these positive values that A Declaration of War finds two areas in which it attempts to innovate. One area is the repackaging of values like race, culture, heritage and ethnicity into a single category called ‘identity.’ Prior to GI, the intellectual FRMs in Europe,

93 Ibid., 36.

38 spearheaded by the ENR, proposed counter ideals to the liberal order through the rejection of liberal notions such as egalitarianism and individualism while promoting others such as the

‘right to difference,’ meaning that ‘each culture must pursue its own development, if possible on the territory it was formed.’ Such concepts were often controversial and contentious, bordering on and , and, as the ENR was closely linked to Fascism, were generally highly nationalistic.94 Other far-right, Fascist movements such as the Front National headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and the Movimento Sociale Italiano in that spread across Europe after the Second World War were also highly nationalistic, each offering a slightly different version of Fascism based on different national priorities. This is where

Willinger’s book offers a second innovation – the application of the category of ‘identity’ to a

Europe-wide in-group that can be understood as a standardised, European Fascism. This new

Europe-wide perspective enables GI to deny claims of racism and nationalism, allowing them to claim to be ‘the real representatives of diversity’ and promote a new interpretation of the theorisation of identity.95

Willinger’s version of a European in-group is expanded further by GI’s leading activist, Martin

Sellner, whose claims that identity cannot be created, but is something that has always been there and must be rediscovered.96 Sellner’s expansion of Willinger’s notion of a European in- group involves dividing a person’s identity into three segments – European, National and

Regional – with each segment being influenced equally by ethnicity and culture, although an emphasis on heritage implies that there is an ethnic exclusivity that predetermines

Europeanness. While also emphasising its Europeanness, GI actually operates as a collection of independent national branches, and its ideology fits Anthony D. Smith’s six-point list of criteria that define nationalism.97 Moreover, many of the pieces that fit into the puzzle of

94 Feder and Buet, ibid. 95 Willinger, Generation Identity, 44. 96 Pettibone, “What Is Generation Identity?” YouTube. October 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIZ3DVozFv8. 97 Smith, “National and Other Identities,” 10.

39 Identity constructed by GI are linked to territory, with heritage, culture and ethnicity being blended together to form ‘identity,’ with Willinger claiming that ‘to possess it [identity] is our ancestral right,’98 indicating the belief that identity can only be transferred generationally, and thus implying that a European identity is unavailable to the genetic, cultural or ethnic outsider, which locates GI within the primordial paradigm of nationalism proposed by Smith.99

This discriminatory theorisation, which delegitimates any claim to European identity made by an outsider, is not the only area of identity over which GI tries to play the role of gatekeeper.

By attacking liberals, capitalists, multiculturalists and globalists, Willinger portrays European identity as an exclusive and protected category, inaccessible to those who do not conform to its rules, and non-conformity is met not only with the punishment of non-acceptance, but with the charge of burying or annihilating European culture.100 Those who do not conform to

‘traditional values’ are severely criticised, with Willinger also lamenting the ‘battle against the sexes’ waged by the ’68ers that has ‘taken the manliness out of men’ and turned women into

‘a scowling feminist or jutting manjaw.’101 However, while Willinger expresses his unwelcoming distaste of ‘queers and transvestites,’ the sexually liberal and masculine females, his most cutting, and more frequent, remarks are reserved for those who do not belong in

Europe based on religion, race, culture, or ethnicity.

Moreover, despite claims such as ‘we all reject racism,’ it is clear that GI operates on a model of identity that at some level is based on ethnicity or race.102 For example, Willinger questions whether the belief in the differences ‘of peoples, cultures and identities’ really is racist, thus intertwining identity with race and culture. This intertwinement extends to religion, most prominently in the form of the belief that a European identity and an Islamic identity must be

98 Willinger, Generation Identity, 18. 99 Bloom, “Nation-Building,” 61-62. 100 Willinger, Generation Identity, 40. 101 Ibid., 27-28. 102 Ibid., 58.

40 mutually exclusive. In Chapter 24 of A Declaration of War, entitled ‘On Islam,’ Willinger actively puts forward a discourse that creates a distinct, polarising alterity between European and Islamic identity. Interestingly, Willinger manages to attack not only Islam as its external

Other, but also the ’68ers, who he blames for inviting Muslims to live and ‘proselytis[e] in the heart of Europe.’103 Willinger presents GI’s conception of identity as a ‘primal drive’ by stating that Muslims can never integrate into Europe as ‘that would mean that they would have to give up their identities.’104 This is also where Willinger attempts to position Identitarians once again as representatives of diversity, claiming that it is not GI’s mission to ‘disturb the identity of

Muslims,’ by which he means only allowing them to live in Islamic countries. However, it is the growing Islamic presence within a changing European ethnoscape that provides the alterity and perception of threat to European identity needed for GI’s version of nationalism to emerge and maintain itself. Of course, the rejection of liberal values such as feminism, sexual freedom, and multiculturalism in favour of illiberal, exclusive values makes A Declaration of War a discursive tool that upholds the social power held by white, heterosexual, native males by delegitimating any claims to ‘Europeanness’ made by minority groups, liberals and their supporters.

Finally, the Fascist roots of Identitarianism are explicitly evident in this chapter, which

Willinger closes by referring to the Nazi concept of the ‘,’ writing ‘the question of Islam is one of the great questions of our time […] We will find a solution.’105 This echo of

National Socialist discourse belies GI’s position along the timeline of movements which, with roots stretching as far back as Joseph de Maistre’s counter-enlightenment philosophy of the

18th century, has served to sustain ‘the legacy of 20th century thinkers of the European far-

103 Ibid., 66. 104 Ibid., 85, 67. 105 Ibid., 66.

41 right like Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt’ as well as those of the ENR each of whom has contributed in some way or another to the theory or practice of Fascism.106

Moreover, the key concepts that GI has adopted from its predecessors, like Guillaume Faye’s

‘’ and ‘’ are inherently ethnic, religious, or racial in motivation.

Reconquista, a term appropriated from Spanish by Faye with the intention of deliberately invoking the Spanish Reconquest in which Christian powers attempted to reclaim Spanish territory from the rule of the Islamic Moors between the 8th and 15th centuries, relates to

Europeans taking back control of their land and culture in the face of ‘mass immigration,’ particularly of Muslim immigrants, led by the Fascist movement of Francisco Franco’s party

Falange.107 The adoption of the terminology of such movements is one of the ways GI pays tribute to and keeps alive the memories of its Fascist forefathers; in addition to Reconquista,

GI uses the English translation of Franco’s party, Phalanx, as the name of its clothing brand.

Moreover, these terms represent Fascist values such as ‘a fear of pluralism, advocating for homogeneity of ideas, cultural practices, and ethnicity’ that GI openly applies to itself.108

The other concept, remigration, relates to the forced repatriation of non-white, non-European migrants to their country of origin, with little between legal or illegal migrants, asylum seekers or refugees.109 This policy is typically justified by Identitarian activists through the discursive feature of ‘apparent sympathy,’ such as when Willinger claims in A Declaration of War that it would ‘more peaceful to send the immigrants home than let them stay.’110 In fact,

GI’s disassociation of itself from prior Fascist movements (‘We are the first generation to […] truly overcome National ’)111 while reviving its ideological elements is a typical and

106 Sharpe, ibid. 107 Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia “Generation Identity: A Millennial Fascism for the Future?” Europe Now. February 22, 2018. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/22/generation-identity-a-millennial-fascism-for-the-future/. 108 Ibid,. 109 “Demands” Generation Identity. https://www.generation-identity.org.uk/demands/ Accessed October 3, 2018. 110 Willinger, Generation Identity, 72. 111 Ibid., 46.

42 recurrent discursive strategy amongst post-war Fascist movements. Wodak and Richardson label this strategy as a ‘rebranding’ process through which emergent Fascist movements ‘both orientate towards and simultaneously deny any continuity with the arguments and policies of previous movements’ in order to shed negative associations curry new favour with potential ideological recruits.112

Linked to Willinger’s claim of peacefully sending migrants ‘home’ is the concept of

‘Ethnopluralism.’ This is the Identitarian rebranding of the concept of ‘ to difference’ as propounded by the ENR, which means that ‘every culture requires its own space in which to develop and structure everyday life according to its own manner’ as if the territory and culture are organically, primordially attached.113 GI also makes direct references to threats to the white European race. On their website, GI refers to the ‘Great Replacement,’ a concept which they claim ‘outlines an irreversible process at the end of which Europeans no longer represent the majority population in their homelands.’114 In other words, it is a theory which says that through mass immigration and low birth rates, ethnic White Europeans are being ‘replaced’ in their homeland.

Overall, the discourse produced by GI on the subject of identity has theorised European identity as an inherent combination of culture, race, and heritage, whose defence must involve the exercising of social power by, for example, delegitimising claims to Europeanness made by outsiders, criticising those from within who do not conform to traditional values, or through the forced ‘remigration’ of ethnic minorities. GI’s ultimate aim is to achieve cultural hegemony of this interpretation of identity, and in order to fulfil this goal it has adopted a strategy based on Faye’s interpretation of metapolitics as an ‘effort of […] that diffuses an

112 Ruth Wodak and John E. Richardson, “Introduction” in Analysing Fascist Discourse: European Fascism in Talk and Text. (New York: Routledge, 2013): 3. 113 Sharpe, ibid.; Willinger, Generation Identity, 72. 114 “About Us” Generation Identity. https://generation-identity.com/about-us. Accessed October 22, 2018.

43 ideological body of ideas representing a global political project’ into the mainstream, taken from his book, Why We Fight.115 Therefore, GI not only theorises the product of ‘identity,’ but also plans its transportation and delivery via the vehicle of metapolitics.

2.1 How does Generation Identity Instrumentalise Identity?

Martin Sellner, a 29-year-old graphic designer from who acts as Generation Identity’s most prominent activist, runs a prolific and comprehensive YouTube channel that promotes

Identitarian ideals and actions, including instructive videos on the metapolitical process followed by GI. Metapolitics is the process through which GI claims to seek legitimacy and foster an environment in which its Fascist and far-right ideology can become no longer taboo.

By distancing itself from a neo-Nazi perception of the far-right, GI promotes itself as a collective of intellectual and presentable young activists. Sellner’s YouTube channel itself is one aspect of the metapolitical process, which requires the domination of cultural and social power prior to the capture of political power. In Sellner’s own words, metapolitics is ‘not so much about these [far-right political] ideas and issues,’ but ‘about the tactics, how we act in what we’re doing.’116 This plan also includes ‘using the tactics [and] strategies of the Left,’ which the Identitarian movement believes has been ‘winning the ’ for decades,117 with Sellner giving the example of ‘egalitarism, universalism, globalism,’ whose activists used actions such as the occupation of buildings as symbolic methods of eventually occupying the minds of those who supposedly oppose their ideologies, quoting Faye’s line: ‘metapolitics is the occupation of culture, politics is the occupation of territory.’118 Through this theory of metapolitics, GI believes it can achieve this by not only setting the terms of debate, but by also

115 Murdoch et al. A New Threat?, 14. 116 Martin Sellner, “The American and European Right - , Brittany Pettibone & Martin Sellner.” YouTube. September 29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgwerO355t0. 117 “Understanding Our Activism” Generation Identity. https://www.generation-identity.org.uk/understanding-our-activism/. Accessed October 22, 2018. 118 Martin Sellner, “Metapolitics - Metapolitical Dictionary Ep2.” YouTube. November 23, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv5fgEdmRSM.

44 controlling the media through which debate takes place. In order to achieve this goal, GI has been actively promoting the distribution and reading of far-right literature, using book clubs and study circles to ‘crystalize in a really cunning and deliberate way […] a Fascism that doesn’t look like a duck and doesn’t quack like a duck — it looks like high-grade intellectual activity.’119

Not only has GI consciously attempted to disguise its far-right identity, it has also ‘borrowed organizing strategies from the left,’ imitating social movements such as Greenpeace, whose banner unfurling actions it has replicated on several occasions, and , who operate as autonomous, local outfits carrying the same banner.120 Another part of this metapolitical process is evident in mainland Europe, where GI has developed to a degree that some national movements often have several active branches and have invested in ‘significant infrastructure,’ such as gyms and bars, creating a culture in which its ideology is not just present, but is becoming normalised. This infrastructure has been developed to the extent that

Identitarians across Europe now have access to stores, cafes and websites that offer

‘Identitarian food, clothing, beer, and books,’ while GI’s activists offer a range of services including ‘camps,’ ‘lectures,’ ‘militant training exercises’ and ‘classes on marketing and graphic design for the purposes of outreach to promote a Europe free of Islam.’121 GI is thus attempting to make metapolitical Identitarianism transcend cultural domination to achieve what Willinger calls ‘controlling the Zeitgeist,’ through which GI ‘will write our own essays and books, sing our own songs, make videos, design graphics, create art’ in order to weaken the ‘’68ers’ grip on intellectual superiority.122

119 Feder and Buet, ibid. 120 Valencia-Garcia, “Generation Identity,” ibid. 121 Ibid. 122 Willinger, Generation Identity, 81.

45 Despite these co-ordinated efforts, GI has had only limited success in countries like the United

Kingdom, where the British branch of GI could only convince forty supporters to attend its launch. This failure was due in part to the fact that the British has blocked far-right activists such Sellner, Canadian Brittany Pettibone and American Lauren Southern from entering the United Kingdom. However, GI has not been put off by such obstacles and has become ‘the most active far-right group in the UK with actions of varying scale and ambition taking place up and down the country every week,’ thus still ensuring that its actions have remained in the public eye.123 However, while success in terms of public presence on the streets may not yet be at the level GI desires, they are fomenting a formidable presence online, where the use of social media has ‘facilitated the reconstitution of the far-right,’ enabling movements such as GI to destigmatise certain subjects and, perhaps most importantly, to develop ‘digital imagined communities,’ a far-right interpretation of Benedict Anderson’s theory of nationhood.124 GI’s transnational nature equates to a form of illiberal cosmopolitanism and is an example of Resnick’s ‘integrated European democratic space,’ with GI activists collaborating across European borders, acting as citizens movements to achieve common objectives of creating political will at a societal level.

GI seeks to take advantage of Twitter’s policy that promises to ‘facilitate all voices equally,’ thus giving parity of status to all who use the platform, including those who use it to promote far-right propaganda.125 While this basis of equal platforming, in theory, allows the user to discuss the latest movie they have seen as freely as they can discuss their opinions on Islam in

Europe, the reality is that politically-motivated subjects are the ‘most popular subjects of conversation’ on social media. Moreover, as users are likely to gravitate towards political subjects, they are also likely to congregate with and follow like-minded people, which creates

123 Murdoch et al. A New Threat?, 13. 124 Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, “The Rise of the European Far-Right in the Internet Age” Europe Now. January 31, 2018. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/01/31/the-rise-of-the-european-far-right-in-the-internet-age/. 125 Kreis, “#refugeesnotwelcome,” 501.

46 ‘echo-chambers’ where platform-users will likely only see material which is of direct interest to them or supports their already held views. Aided by tools such as hashtags, such congregations become ‘in-groups,’ which range from innocuous groups who share photographs of pets to political movements which have sped up processes such as the Arab Spring.

While Twitter allows activists such as Sellner to contribute to discourses in an interactive way,

GI has also effectively used the system of one-way communication offered by YouTube, with a community of Identitarian vloggers and contributors posting videos that develop on

Identitarian themes of ethnopluralism, anti- and genetic superiority. YouTube has been chosen by GI as a discourse platform as it enables to GI to exercise control over

Identitarian discourse. While GI has full control over the content it includes in its videos,

YouTube allows it to provide access to and ‘generate relations’ with new audiences and potentially ‘recruit new activists.’126 YouTube also gives GI an opportunity to create a visual profile of itself and the , the Greek symbol GI has chosen as its logo, is ever-present throughout Identitarian videos while emotive depictions of aesthetics that ‘conflate Nordic lore, ancient Rome, and an ad hoc mixture of “barbarism”’ create a sense of ‘Europeanness’ intended to instil a sense of identification amongst its viewers.127 An example of how indulgently some

Identitarians use this aesthetic can be seen in the YouTube channel of Marcus Follin, a Swedish nationalist and self-declared Identitarian, who posts videos under the pseudonym ‘The Golden

One’ that frequently decry ‘immigrants, cultural Marxism, globalists [and] multiculturalism.’128 Follin’s viewers, whom he refers to as ‘proud sons of Rome,’ number over seven million. The usage and blending of folklore-type images with references to Europe’s great empires represent an ethno-symbolic strategy of identity construction undertaken by GI.

Ethno-symbolism, as described by Anthony D. Smith, is a process through which cultural

126 Mattias Ekman, “The Dark Side of Online Activism: Swedish Right-Wing Extremist Video Activism on YouTube.” Mediakultur Journal of Media and Communications Research, 2014: 82. 127 Valencia-Garcia, “Generation Identity,” ibid. 128 Ibid.

47 continuity across generations is attained via the reproduction of ‘shared values, memories, rituals and traditions’ combined with ‘widespread acceptance of collective symbols such as the flag, anthem or national holiday.’129

However, despite an increasingly popular and influential online presence, GI’s aims for cultural hegemony require it to be known and recognisable beyond digital community. For this purpose, it has courted controversy through intentionally inflammatory actions, such as its campaign to give pork dinners to homeless people in order to exclude homeless Muslims.130 In 2017, GI raised money through a crowdfunding campaign to perform its biggest action to date, Defend

Europe, in which it purchased a ship for the purpose of blocking the entry of refugees, whom it referred to as ‘parasites’ into Europe from the Mediterranean.131 This action received

‘fawning coverage’ by far-right media such as Breitbart and Altright.com, organisations with whom GI has significant relationships with and which I will explore in Chapter Three, as well as boosting GI’s profile among mainstream media, where it was reported in internationally renowned newspapers such as The Guardian, The Post and The New York Times.

While some of these reports have painted GI and Defend Europe as examples of modern-day

Fascism, other media outlets have since reported on the cleaned-up image of a group of young intellectuals that GI has been seeking to construct, with the Daily Mail branding GI activists as

‘hipster Fascists,’ showing that its metapolitical strategy of carefully controlling the production, reproduction and platforming of Identitarian discourse to normalise its terms of debate is having some success.

129 Smith, Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism, 25. 130 Paul Bracchi, “The Hipster Fascists: Well-dressed, Highly Educated and from Respectable Families. Why This New British Far-Right Group Is the Most Sinister and Dangerous Yet.” Daily Mail Online. May 25, 2018. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5773155/The- Hipster-Fascists-Meet-Britains-sinister-far-Right-group.html. 131 David Holthouse, “Full of Ship: Behind Generation Identity’s High Seas Publicity Stunt.” Southern Poverty Law Center. November 13, 2017. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/11/13/full-ship-behind-generation-identitys-high-seas-publicity-stunt.

48 Chapter 2: Generation Identity and Arktos Media

I have analysed how Generation Identity’s interpretation of identity is an amalgamation of cultural, ancestral, ethnic and religious markers designed to exclude and discriminate against ethnically and culturally non-European, non-white and particularly Islamic residents in Europe, as well as other protected demographics such as the LGBTQ+ community. I have also assessed the concepts and actions that GI employs to discursively implement this interpretation of identity as a social cognition, such as through the instrumental process of ‘metapolitics’ as well as discourses based on Identitarian concepts including the ‘Great Replacement,’ ‘Remigration’ and ‘Reconquista.’

From this basis, I will investigate how GI’s process of the instrumentalisation of identity is facilitated by the far-right publishing house Arktos Media (AM). By analysing the relationship between the two organisations and how they use literature as a supplementary feature of a metapolitical strategy, I will seek to ascertain the extent to which their control over discourse implements both dominance and hegemony. In this chapter, I will examine how AM positions itself politically by assessing its contributions to the theorization of identity via its four most influential personnel, John B. Morgan, Jacob Senholt, Jason Reza Jorjani and Daniel Friberg, and its subjects of publication. Secondly, I will look at the way AM acts as a facilitator to GI’s process of identity instrumentalisation through literature and other media. Finally, I will analyse how Identitarian discourse is produced and reproduced by AM, what control it has over said discourse and how it manages access towards it.

1 What is Arktos Media and What Contributions Does it make to the Field

of Far-Right Identity Theorisation?

49 Arktos Media, in its own words, is the ‘principal publisher in English of the writings of the

European “New Right” school of political thought.’132 Within its catalogue it boasts original translations of some of the works of the ENR’s luminary figures, including those adopted by

Generation Identity such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye. This is in addition to an array of titles from authors spread along the illiberal spectrum, ranging from Indian Nationalist

Bal Ganghadar Tilak, to Italian Fascist Julius Evola,a and Generation Identity’s Markus

Willinger. AM’s political position can best be analysed by studying its strategic and corporate development, particularly by focusing on its most influential employees and how, through the subjects they have chosen for AM for publication, they have contributed to AM’s reputation as a Fascist and White Supremacist organization.

Credited by European Now as ‘co-founders’ of AM, John B. Morgan and Jacob Senholt actually derive from Integral Traditional Publishing (ITP), an earlier, Danish-registered company operating in India to reduce costs, which was ‘supplanted’ by AM during a takeover in 2009.133 Though small, ITP developed a reputation as a reliable publisher on subjects including Fascism, the ENR, and Counter-Enlightenment ideologies, with Morgan taking particular pride in producing the first English translation of Julius Evola, one of modern

Fascism’s most influential philosophers. As ITP, Morgan and Senholt promoted Evolian theories related to the eschewing of modernity in favour of the restoration of an ‘imagined, glorious past,’ as well as the strategic coding of fascist or xenophobic language as

‘traditionalism.’ Evola’s idealization of a traditional past ‘rooted in a pre-enlightenment, imagined, homogeneous idea of Europe,’ dressed up in esoteric mysticism, particularly resonated with Morgan and Senholt, who each possessed an ‘affinity for orthodox texts,’

132 “About Arktos.” Arktos. https://arktos.com/about/. Accessed October 22, 2018. 133 Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, “ABCs of Arktos: People, Ideas, and Movements.” Europe Now. August 02, 2018. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/08/abcs-of-arktos-people-ideas-and-movements/.

50 particularly those which supported ITP’s belief in the ‘cycle of meta-history’ which enabled it to promote ‘alternative imaginings of the historical past.’134

Evola’s White Supremacist and occultist interpretation of Aryanism, which viewed light- skinned people as descendents of a superior, super-human race, castigated Jewishness as

‘feminine,’ calculating and rational, and favoured ‘tradition against progress, hierarchy against equality, rule from above against democracy and the primacy of aristocracy over plebeian values,’ was adopted by ITP due to Senholt’s interest in political esoterocism and, following the takeover of ITP by Arktos, was taken over almost exclusively by AM’s Culture Editor, the

Iranian-American Jason Reza Jorjani.135 Jorjani’s biggest contribution to Arktos has been an attempt to push the boundaries of what it means to be European by pushing the geographical boundaries of Europe itself to include ‘Persia,’ by assertively promoting the conception of

Aryanism. Aryanism is based on the mythology produced by the Indian Nationalist Bal

Gangadhar Tilak, who theorized that the Vedas – Hinduism’s holy texts – were written by the descendants of an ancient, arctic race of people he called the Aryans.136 In Evola’s reinterpretation of this mythology, the Aryans were a superior white race, who emigrated from a highly civilized arctic homeland which he refers to as ‘Hyperborea,’ whose ‘godlike powers’ were diminished both by their southward migration and interbreeding with local people. While at AM, Jorjani enthusiastically promoted Evolian Hyperboreanism, seeing in it the potential to de-Islamize Iran under the guise of an ‘Iranian United Front,’ as well as attempting to tie his

Persian heritage to that of the Aryan’s and ‘emphasize his own whiteness.’137 Moreover, Jorjani interweaves Aryanism with the concept of ‘Bodenständigkeit,’ a theory propagated by Martin

Heidigger that translates as ‘rootedness in the soil,’ through which he organically connects the

134 Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, “History Repeating Itself: The Rebirth of Far-Right Ideology and Internal Strife.” Europe Now. February 15, 2018. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/15/history-repeating-itself-the-rebirth-of-far-right-ideology-and-internal-strife/. 135 Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, “Julius Evola and the Kali Yuga,” in : Aryan Cults, , and the politics of Identity. (New York: New York University Press, 2003): 64-65, 70; Valencia-Garcia, “ABCs of Arktos,” ibid. 136 David Lawrence, “Hindu Mysticism and the Alt-Right.” HOPE Not Hate. June 27, 2018. https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/03/27/hindu-mysticism-alt-right/. 137 Ibid.

51 white, to its European homeland and, when combined with the subjects promoted by Morgan and Senholt, create a Fascist and White Supremacist discourse claiming that being

European is exclusive, primordial, and genetic that inherently belongs in AM’s DNA.

However, despite their contributions to AM, Morgan, Senholt and Jorjani have all parted ways with the company at the behest of its most influential player, Daniel Friberg. Initially one of the investors in AM’s takeover of ITP, Friberg has exercised increasing influence over the company, muscling his way to the top of its hierarchy and overseeing a change in strategy that has seen it shift from a ‘focus on occultism to one that more explicitly supported white nationalism.’138 This shift ultimately forced Morgan to defect to Counter-Currents Publishing,

AM’s direct competitor in a rivalry composed of what Searchlight Magazine claims are the

‘world’s two largest National Socialist publishing houses.’139

Considered as one of the most influential leaders of the global far-right, Friberg’s influence on

AM, which includes a relocation to Budapest, a hotspot for far-right activists who feel protected under Viktor Orbán’s illiberal leadership, has seen AM establish itself as ‘the world’s largest distributor of far- and alt-right literature.’140 Friberg’s strategy has been to modernize AM’s ideology and methodology, despite declaring its mission as being ‘to find alternatives to

Modernity.141 Friberg has also achieved this success without betraying AM’s fascist, esoteric roots, reflected in its translation of some of the works by , whom AM considers as a contemporary intellectual heir of Julius Evola. Dugin, who boasts a reputation as the ‘intellectual guru of Putinism,’ supports a Russianized interpretation of Evolian

Hyperboreanism, which indicates that AM intends to maintain its support of White

138 Valencia-Garcia, “ABCs of Arktos,” ibid. 139 Erik Olson, “International Nazi Movement Meets Again in Norway.” Searchlight. July 04, 2017. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/2017/07/international-nazi-movement-meets-again-in-sweden/. 140 Thomas Chatterton Williams. “The French Origins of ‘You Will Not Replace Us.’” . May 31, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/the-french-origins-of-you-will-not-replace-us. 141 Valencia-Garcia, “History Repeating Itself,” ibid.

52 Supremacist ideology.142 However, the recency of its production combined with its prestigious and vocal championing by public figures such as , is part of Friberg’s strategy to attract a new audience which identifies as young, white, male and – importantly – Identitarian.

2 What Role Does Arktos Media Play in Facilitating Generation Identity’s

Process of Identity Instrumentalisation?

While the value systems of Generation Identity and Arktos Media are not quite identical, with

GI promoting a single ideology while AM facilitates several, there is a significant overlap of certain values both parties believe in, such as traditionalism, anti-modernism and illiberalism.

GI acts as a grassroots movement which targets youthful activists; and while AM’s back catalogue supports and promotes fascist mysticism, philosophy, and intellectualism of authors like Tikal, Dugin and Evola at a level and complexity beyond most of GI’s desired recruitment, there has been a shift – an Identitarianisation – of strategy under Friberg which is allowing the new generation to become the ‘inheritors of this Fascist past.’143 Part of AM’s strategy has been

‘detoxifying and revitalising far-right ideology,’ and through its publications of classical right- wing political theorists like Evola, it gives GI such tools as Evola’s ‘coded language.’ This was a process through which the fascist rhetoric of Evola, a man who considered himself as ‘to the right of Fascism,’ disguised its racism and xenophobia with obscurant, occultist language, later encoding it as ‘traditionalism.’ Such euphemism enables GI to fight for a ‘traditionalist’ – and wholly imagined – homogenous past Europe, while labels such as ‘New Right,’ ‘Alt-Right’ or

‘Identity’ represent ‘contemporary iterations of Fascism.’144

142 David A. Bell, “Le Pen’s Long Shadow.” The Nation. May 08, 2017. https://www.thenation.com/article/le-pens-long-shadow/. 143 Louie Dean Valencia-Garcia, “How Fascist Is Arktos? A Traditionalist Confronting Fascism.” Europe Now. February 19, 2018. https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/19/how-Fascist-is-arktos-a-traditionalist-confronting-Fascism/. 144 Ibid.

53 Even more facilitative to GI’s process of Identity construction has been AM’s revival and translation into English of ENR authors, particularly authors such as Guillaume Faye, whose book Why We Fight, a seminal piece of anti-liberal propaganda, takes on the role of GI’s guidebook, with its metapolitical dictionary outlining a comprehensive list of terminology –

‘from Aesthetics to Xenophilia’ – that acts as GI’s ‘conception-of-the-world’ and historical view. Faye’s book proposes many of the concepts GI stands for and which are visible in

Willinger’s manifesto, including ‘the heritage of our ancestors and the future of our children,’ demographic renewal, an ‘intuitive Identitarian vision of the world,’ ‘European nationalism’ and also claiming the role of true ‘defenders of European identity’ for the Identitarians.145 In

2017, Martin Sellner ran a series of YouTube episodes on this book, entitled ‘Metapolitical

Dictionary,’ in which he discussed Faye’s theory with the intention of making it accessible to a new audience.146 Moreover, Faye brought the concepts of Remigration and Reconquista to the fore of Identitarian ideology.

Faye’s influence on GI’s ideology can perhaps be defined equally by its non-adoption of the concepts that Faye warns against in Why We Fight. While Traditionalism, in terms of the wish to revert to a nostalgic, former ‘Golden Age,’ is at the core of Identitarianism, the spiritual, mystical Aryanism of the Traditionalism of Evola and Dugin does not feature in GI’s interpretation of Identity, perhaps in response to Faye’s warning to be ‘wary of certain spiritual, metaphysical, and so-called 'philosophical' tendencies.’147

This is not to say, however, that AM’s publication of Evola and Dugin is not without influence on the Identitarian movement. In fact, under Friberg, a self-declared ‘metapolitical warrior,’

145 Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance. (London: Arktos, 2011). 146 Martin Sellner. “Metapolitics - Metapolitical Dictionary Ep2.” YouTube. November 23, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv5fgEdmRSM. 147 Faye, Why We Fight, 34.

54 AM has been advocating and supporting GI’s metapolitical process in many ways.148 One example is the publication of Eurasian Mission, AM’s second translation of Dugin. The first entry in Faye’s metapolitical dictionary is ‘aesthetics,’ and the geometric shapes and yellow and black colour scheme of the cover of Eurasian Mission are an intentional replication of the aesthetics Martin Sellner has designed for Generation Identity. Moreover, its short-form prose, introductory nature and accessible style bear distinct similarity to Willinger’s A Declaration of

War. While doesn’t quite align with Identitarianism, with Sellner seeing Russia’s

‘polyethnic and religious cultural identity’ as specific to Russia, Dugin’s ethnopluralist, anti- progressive-Liberalism and anti-modernist values resonate amongst GI’s activists.149

Moreover, Dugin uses the book to address the ‘Identitarians’ directly, telling them how he considers Alain de Benoist, GI’s ‘spiritual father,’ ‘to be brilliant – simply the best.’150

Alain de Benoist, whose definition of metapolitics as ‘providing those in power with ideological, philosophical, and cultural nourishment’ for the purpose of producing ‘cultural practice liable to influence political society of the long term’ is evident in the material published by AM and the actions of GI. While the revival of Benoist has provided GI with a metapolitical strategy, it has also become a major discursive element for the entire Identitarian movement, with Friberg, Sellner, Dugin, Faye and Willinger all making regular reference to his work in their discourses.

In essence, the acknowledgement and adoption of elements of GI’s strategy of identity instrumentalisation represent Friberg’s attempt to change the thuggish image of the far-right into one of a ‘generation of educated, well-dressed, upstanding nationalists and leaders’ who

148 Charles , Martin Locker, and John Bruce Leonard. “The Evolution of a Metapolitical Warrior.” Interregnum. April 04, 2018. https://arktos.com/2018/04/04/interregnum-the-evolution-of-a-metapolitical-warrior/. 149 Martin Sellner, “European Identitarianism and Russian Eurasianism.” Ethno-cultural Identity in Europe and Eurasia: The Decline of the West and Russia in Conservative Resurrection (November 2016): 20-26. 150 Feder and Buet, ibid.; Alexander Dugin, “Global Revolution” Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, ed. John B. Morgan (London: Arktos, 2014): 169.

55 are able to ‘write, speak and produce art,’ which he considers as essential in forming the metapolitical culture change deemed necessary for a new political environment that could accept far-right ideology.151 Such a culture change would represent hegemony, and to achieve hegemony, Friberg has actively sought to reproduce dominant discourses – of nationalism, racism, white , and illiberalism – while attempting to detoxify them so they can be accessed by as large an audience as possible. However, since the nature of such discourses is to discriminate and exclude non-Europeans, non-whites and other minority groups, the social dominance of white, European males is upheld. This process has seen Arktos translate its titles into twelve European languages, while it increasingly gears the content of its publications to reflect a ‘Fascistic, far-right, white supremacist ideology’ intended for a young, Alt-Right and

Identitarian audience.152 This multimedia approach is also reflected in an Arktos-produced audiobook of Markus Willinger’s A Declaration of War.

3 How, and Through What Processes, Does Arktos Media Facilitate

Identitarian Discourse?

While AM hosts and promotes a range of illiberal views as diverse as Indo-Aryanism,

Traditionalism and Fascism, a significant proportion of its material is used for the promotion and development of Identitarianism. Beyond the imitation of GI’s geometric visual aesthetic, the publication of GI-authored literature and a shift towards the publication of material increasingly geared towards an audience of young, white, European males that represents

Friberg’s Identitarianisation of AM’s publication strategy, its reputation as the primary publisher of ENR literature and international nature has given Identitarianism a boost in terms of prestige and legitimacy as well as the ability to permeate borders. In fact, AM’s motto,

151 Tom Porter. “Meet Daniel Friberg, the Swedish Mining Tycoon Bankrolling the Alt-right’s Global Media Empire.” International Business Times UK. March 06, 2017. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/meet-swedish-mining-tycoon-bankrolling-alt-rights-global-media-empire- 1608221. 152 Valencia-Garcia, “History Repeating Itself,” ibid.

56 visible on its own Twitter description, is ‘making anti-globalism global,’ a deliberately contradictory phrase intended to convey its aim of acting as a cohesive force for separate national anti-liberal and anti-global movements.153 Given the history of ITP and AM, who relocated its headquarters from Denmark to India and Hungary, it appears as a very modern, globalist business. AM’s transnational relocations have also been executed for purposes beyond the publication of its literature, and it has expanded its own network of right-wing actors. Its current base in Budapest, for example, was a strategic decision based on the perceived level of protection that far-right, illiberal movements seem to receive there in contrast to other European capitals, while Hungary’s ruling party and opposition, Fidesz and

Jobbik, both operate on highly nationalistic, anti-immigrant agendas. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz,

Hungary’s ruling party since 2010, now defines itself as a champion of ‘illiberal democracy,’ which Orbán describes as not a denial of liberal values such as freedom, but the application of

‘a specific, national, particular approach in its stead’ which echoes much of the illiberal rhetoric of AM publications and staff. 154 In fact, analysing AM’s staff and their profiles shows the process through which Identitarian discourse:

a) is produced and promoted by AM’s staff to instil social dominance;

b) is reproduced, distributed and controlled via an extended network that includes other

organisations run by Daniel Friberg, representing the access and control the Identitarian

movement has over its discourse; and,

c) attains hegemony through its reproduction by third parties within AM’s extended

network.

153 Arktos (@ArktosMedia), Twitter. https://twitter.com/ArktosMedia. 154 Csaba Tóth, “Full Text of Viktor Orbán’s Speech at Băile Tuşnad (Tusnádfürdő) of 26 July 2014.” The Budapest Beacon. October 23, 2014. https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech-at-baile-tusnad-tusnadfurdo-of-26-july-2014/.

57

AM’s website currently lists fifteen staff members based in at least five nations (the staff biographies listed on the website are incomplete) as diverse as the USA, India, Sweden and

Hungary. Of these staff, I have identified eight whose activity outside of AM involves the deliberate and purposeful dissemination of Identitarian discourse across an interconnected network of far-right organisations. Some of these staff have significant political backgrounds and connections, while others produce media and social media content, primarily through prolific and well-developed online presences. Through these connections and presences, AM’s staff regularly produce or facilitate the reproduction of Identitarian discourse, carefully controlling it and enabling access to it from audiences ranging from Generation Identity’s young activists to senior European politicians.

Starting at the top of AM’s staff hierarchy, Daniel Friberg is the person with the greatest influence in terms of having the ability to exercise control over the production of Identitarian discourse. This position comes from his sitting at the helm of a compendium of companies.

Beyond Arktos Media, which acts as the publishing wing of the Identitarian Movement, Friberg also acts as CEO and Responsible Publisher for Motpol, a Swedish-language ‘Identitarian and

Conservative Thinktank.’ Joining Friberg in connecting these two business is Patrik Ehn, who brings political experience through his previous role as an elected representative in the Västra

Götaland Regional Council for the ‘Sverigedemokraterna’ (Swedish Democrats) party to his positions as AM’s Assistant Art Director and Motpol’s Editor-in-Chief.155 Friberg and Ehn use

Motpol’s website to channel Identitarian and other illiberal thought to a targeted Swedish audience, with both men frequently publishing articles of Identitarian discourses including concepts from ENR intellectuals, evident through articles such as ‘Vad kan Donald Trump lära

155 “Curriculum Vitae,” on Patrik Ehn’s personal website. Accessed October 04, 2018. http://www.patrikehn.se/curriculum-vitae/.

58 av Alain De Benoist?’ (What can Donald Trump learn from Alain de Benoist?), reproducing discourses based upon metapolitics and theories and interpretations of concepts of Identity and

Identitarianism, including promoting Generation Identity.156

Motpol also aims to take its subject matter from the political to the cultural sphere, offering right-wing interpretations of contemporary cultural phenomena through articles such as

‘Traditional Themes in Batman Begins,’ which are intended to direct its readership to view the world around them through a far-right lens.157 In addition to its website, Motpol is also the instrument used by Friberg to host debates, seminars and conferences to discuss right-wing ideologies, including a series of ‘Identitarian Ideas’ conferences whose attendees are members of diverse, international far-right movements which I will explore further in Chapter Three.

Motpol and AM’s multimedia production facilities are also part of the Identitarian movement’s metapolitical strategy of producing and reproducing Identitarian discourses through as many avenues as possible, another of which is .org, a ‘metapolitical encyclopaedia’ established by Friberg and Motpol that offers a far-right alternative to Wikipedia.158

Metapedia describes its mission as focussing on topics ‘that fall outside of […] mainstream encyclopaedias,’ with the purpose of influencing, via metapolitics, the ‘mainstream debate, culture and historical view.159 However, it does not make any attempts to cover its ideological lens and frequently alludes to its own illiberalism, racism and xenophobia, as well as indulging in far-right , including Holocaust denial160. However, Metapedia bolsters

Friberg’s mission of cleaning up the image of the far-right by giving the appearance of

156 Patrik Ehn, “Vad Kan Donald Trump Lära Av Alain De Benoist?” Motpol.. January 30, 2016. https://motpol.nu/patrikehn/2016/01/30/vad- kan-donald-trump-lara-av-alain-de-benoist/; Daniel Friberg, “Metapolitik Från Höger.” Motpol. November 20, 2015. https://motpol.nu/danielfriberg/2015/11/20/metapolitik-fran-hoger/.; Joakim Andersen, “Generation Identitet.” Motpol. September 29, 2013. https://motpol.nu/oskorei/2013/09/29/generation-identitet/. 157 Joakim Andersen, “Traditional Themes in Batman Begins.” Motpol. February 22, 2016. https://motpol.nu/oskorei/2006/02/22/traditional- themes-in-batman-begins/. 158 Valencia-Garcia, “ABCs of Arktos,” https://www.europenowjournal.org/2018/02/08/abcs-of-arktos-people-ideas-and-movements/. 159 “Main Page - Metapedia.” Accessed October 18, 2018. https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. 160 Alexis Sobel Fitts, “Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right | Backchannel.” Wired. June 21, 2017. https://www.wired.com/story/welcome-to-the-wikipedia-of-the-alt-right/.

59 objective, fact-based material that authoritatively balances the subjective and selective journalism offered in, for example, the opinion pieces of Motpol.161 By creating entries on subjects relevant to Identitarian discourse, such as ‘Reconquista,’ it is able to promote the discourses while providing an opportunity for cross-reference. However, while Metapedia’s influence is limited, receiving only fraction of the traffic of other ‘alternative Wikipedias’ such as Infogalactica, it still offers the Identitarian movement an additional resource and platform from which it can produce discourse.

Creating even more avenues for the reproduction of Identitarian discourse are a number of independent online businesses to which members of AM’s staff contribute, including altnorden.se, an Alt-Right Scandinavian Nationalist news website, co-founded by Gustav

Hörngren, one of AM’s translators. The content and style of Altnorden.se’s ideology, posted on its website, resembles that of the Identitarian movement, reproducing such notions ‘people need an authentic identity,’ criticisms of ‘the individualism of liberalism, references to ENR intellectuals (‘Alain de Benoist’s words are also ours;’ ‘we shall, according to Julius Evola's recommendation, “cover our enemies with mockery, rather than chains”’), a Europe united by

‘ethnic pluralism’ but not a European Union, the ceasing of mass immigration and emphasising that ‘Our method is instead the metapolitical.’162 Another of these independent businesses producing Identitarian discourse is The Warden Post, an Identitarian online magazine whose

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Aleksandar Todorovski, acts as translator and editor at AM. The

Warden Post is inspired by Guillaume Faye’s book Archeofuturism, the title of which is a concept described by The Warden Post as preserving ‘the advancement of the white race by

161 Porter, “Meet Daniel Friberg,” ibid. 162 , “Vad Vill Vi?” Nordisk Alternativhöger. https://www.altnorden.se/vad-vill-vi/.

60 revitalizing it through a combination of archaic traditions and futuristic visions.’163 The

Identitarian movement frequently refers back to the concept of archeofuturism; it is part of

Generation Identity’s essential reading list164, Motpol and Altright.com165 have written articles about it and Sellner refers to it in his Metapolitical Dictionary YouTube series, and each of them use the concept to refer to how European civilisation is facing crisis due to a weakening of identity caused by modernity. While The Warden Post’s article on archeofuturism is an example of the many channels through which Identitarian discourse is reproduced, The Warden

Post’s status as an American publication catering to a primarily American audience represents an expansion of the boundaries of the Identitarian movement across . In fact, the exportation of Identitarianism to the USA, which I will discuss in further detail in Chapter

Three, is part of Friberg and the Identitarian movement’s metapolitical strategy, and The

Warden Post is joined by , a White Supremacist and anti-Semitic blog contributed to by AM’s Chief Administrative Officer, Charles Lyons. All of these publications align themselves as either Alt-right or Identitarian and, despite some ideological differences, repeat discourses of anti-immigration, anti-liberalism, metapolitics and nationalism. The metapolitical aspect comes from the range of material this group of businesses is able to produce, with podcasts, news articles, blog posts, opinion pieces and YouTube videos covering topics as wide-ranging as interviews, activism, explanations of politics and anti-immigrant propaganda all being used to complement and supplement the tenets of Identitarianism published by AM, promoted by Motpol and catalogued by Metapedia.

Another significant and perhaps more prolific example of AM staff reproducing Identitarian discourse is its relationship with TV, a Swedish website and YouTube channel that

163 Constantin Von Hoffmeister, “Archeofuturism: I Have a Dream!” The Warden Post. March 31, 2018. http://thewardenpost.net/archeofuturism-i-have-a-dream/. 164 Dr. Joe Mulhall, “HNH explains… the Identitarian movement and the alt-right.” HOPE Not Hate. October 31, 2017. https://hopenothate.com/2017/10/31/hnh-explains-identitarian-movement-alt-right/ 165 Joakim Andersen, “Guillaume Faye – Archeofuturism 2.0.” Motpol. July 27, 2017. https://motpol.nu/oskorei/2017/07/27/guillaume-faye- archeofuturism-2-0/; Ann Sterzinger, “Guillaume Faye Does Fiction: Archeofuturism 2.0.” Altright.com. December 15, 2016. https://altright.com/2016/12/15/guillaume-faye-does-fiction-archeofuturism-ii/

61 specialises in radio and video productions, as well as publishing news related to matters regarding globalisation, immigration, nationalism and .166 Current staff at

AM such as Daniel Friberg, Melissa Mészáros (Translator and Editor) and Tito Perdue

(Author) and previous staff Jason Reza Jorjani and John B. Morgan have all made numerous contributions to Red Ice’s YouTube channel and radio stations, in addition to other Identitarian activists such as Martin Sellner and all of the videos from the Identitarian Ideas conferences held by Motpol.

As well as contributing to Identitarian discourses produced by Identitarian and related movements such as Red Ice, AM has also been successful in exporting its ideas to movements whose ideology is less obviously Identitarian. An example of such a movement is the

Traditional Britain Group (TGB), a Traditionalist-Nationalist group from Great Britain whose

Vice President is Gregory Lauder-Frost, a British ex-politician who formerly belonged to the

Conservative Party, also holds the title ‘Head of Arktos UK.’ The TBG has received much criticism in the mainstream British press for producing racist and xenophobic discourse, many of which echo values put forward by the Identitarian movement, including calls ‘for the repatriation,’ or in Identitarian terms, remigration, ‘of black people to their “natural homelands.”’167 While the values of Traditionalism and are the primary issues that the TBG focuses on, it has been introducing ever more discussion of Identity into the discourse it produces since 2013, when Generation Identity’s Markus Willinger addressed a

TBG conference about his book A Declaration of War.168 This was the beginning of a relationship between the TBG and the Identitarian movement; Identitarian speakers have

166 “News,” Red Ice TV. Accessed October 18, 2018. https://redice.tv/news. 167 Simon Childs, “Trump’s Visit Is Bringing Britain’s Alt-right out the Woodwork.” . July 14, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/trump-uk-visit-tory-party-alt-right-bow-group-breitbart-tommy-robinson- a8445246.html. 168 “Traditional Britain Conference - ‘A Europe of Regions and Identity’ - Markus Willinger.” Traditional Britain Group. Accessed October 18, 2018. https://traditionalbritain.org/blog/traditional-britain-conference-europe-regions-and-identity-markus-willinger/.

62 spoken at each of its conferences since 2015, including John B. Morgan, AM’s then Editor-in-

Chief, and Martin Sellner, GI’s leading activist.169

While the TBG’s hosting of Identitarian speakers means it is more of a discourse facilitator than producer, it provides a useful example of how those inside the Identitarian movement – in this case Lauder-Frost acting on behalf of AM – adeptly use their connections to export it to a wider audience. Companies such as Motpol and Red Ice are constructed by (mostly) young

European Identitarians for, primarily, a young European Identitarian audience. In this case, the

TBG, despite hosting speakers from other nations, is explicitly targeted at a British, Nationalist audience and run by its elected officials Gregory Lauder-Frost, Lord Sudeley and Samuel

Swirling, all of whom are over seventy years of age. I have discussed how part of the

Identitarian movement’s metapolitical strategy involves the exportation of Identitarianism to non-European audiences such as that of the . In the case of the TBG,

Identitarianism is being exported to a national nationalist audience, as opposed to a pan-

European nationalist audience, which represents a flexibility of approach that the Identitarian movement has undertaken in order to maximise its followers and advance the likelihood of achieving cultural hegemony.

Overall, AM’s revival of classical Identitarian literature in conjunction with publications of new Identitarian literature make it an effective producer and reproducer of dominant,

Identitarian discourse. Aside from the discourse produced by GI activists, AM is able to exercise control over the content of newly-produced Identitarian discourse and, moreover, its crafted network of discourse producers enables AM to control the platforms through which

Identitarian discourse is published and accessed, making AM the dominant force in the field of

Identitarian discourse.

169 “Events.” Traditional Britain Group. Accessed October 04, 2018. https://traditionalbritain.org/events/.

63

64 Chapter 3: The Global Identitarian Sphere and Identitarian Hegemony

In the previous chapter, I analysed the contributions made by Arktos Media to the field of identity theorisation and instrumentalisation, and how the publisher collaborates with both

Generation Identity and a portfolio of businesses run by Daniel Friberg to produce and control discourses of Identitarianism. In this chapter, I will further analyse the global reach of the

Identitarian network, paying particular attention to its American connections, primarily through Daniel Friberg’s partner at Altright.com, Richard Spencer. I will analyse what role these men play in establishing connections between a network of seemingly independent far- right movements on an international scale, while also assessing whether this implicates the parties involved as identifiably Identitarian. I will also argue that this network is extensive enough, collaborative enough and contains enough independent contributors to the discourse to constitute what I will call the Global Identitarian Sphere (GIS).

Within this sphere, I will analyse what status, influence and platforms are given to Generation

Identity, and how it uses them to instigate Identitarian discourse. I will also investigate any collaboration that takes place between members of the GIS, analysing what form it takes and assessing whether or not its members can be considered as part of a wider Identitarian movement, as well as analysing the obstacles or hindrances that obstruct connectivity and collaboration.

1 How Extensive is Friberg and Spencer’s Network and What Influence

Does the Identitarian Movement Have Within it?

In the previous chapter, I analysed how Arktos, through Gregory Lauder-Frost, employed a flexible approach in exporting Identitarianism to a group that does not align directly with its

65 ideology. While making connections with a Traditionalist- brought

Identitarianism a degree of legitimation within a fringe section of the British far-right, its exportation of Identitarianism to America has been more fruitful, and perhaps holds the key to its metapolitical ambition of attaining cultural hegemony. In order to do this, AM has carved itself out two pathways along which Identitarian discourse can be produced and reproduced across the Atlantic. One is through the Head of Arktos US, William Clark, an American

Identitarian activist who is involved with Identity Evropa (IE), while the other is through

Friberg’s connection to Richard Spencer, the Alt-Right’s most public activist, and the founder of the National Policy Institute, a White Supremacist thinktank based in Montana, USA.

IE is an American equivalent of Generation Identity, which directly takes its ideology and its style directly from European Identitarianism, reinterpreting it and moulding it to be accessible to an American base.170 In particular, IE demonstrates its metapolitical strategy of drenching social media platforms and College campuses with discourses taken directly from the

Identitarian movement, including those of European heritage and identity, anti-immigration and remigration, and ethnopluralism. It has produced a geometric logo for itself similar to that of GI’s, as well as imitating actions such as the unfurling of banners featuring anti-immigration slogans performed by GI and its Defend Europe project. However, there are some differences between this Americanised version of Identitarianism and its European equivalent, perhaps most visible in its more highly racialised discourses that tie ‘whiteness’ more closely to

European Identity than those produced in Europe, where GI activist’s racial discourse is inhibited by higher levels of taboo and therefore focuses on religious and foreign groups, rather than racial groups. In comparison, whiteness is brought to the fore of IE’s interpretation of

Identity and Europeanness, with founder Nathan Damigo, who discusses his attainment of

170 Anonymous, “Nathan Benjamin Damigo.” Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed October 04, 2018. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting- hate/extremist-files/individual/nathan-benjamin-damigo.

66 ‘racial awareness’ through reading literature written by prominent racists such as the Ku Klux

Klan’s Grand Wizard while in prison, claiming ‘America was founded as a white country – as a country for people of European heritage.’171

Prior to IE, Damigo had been inspired by the way student-organised protest movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) had brought light to cases of racial discrimination and he founded the short-lived National Youth Front, copying Black Lives Matter’s tactic of college campus protests to ‘make ideological recruits.’172 However, despite some success in initiating five chapters of the National Youth Front across the USA, the effort dissolved when it was discovered that the wife of its elected chairman, Caleb Shumaker, was Hispanic. Following its dissolution and realising that his College campus protests – essentially physical manifestations of Damigo’s White Supremacist ideology – reflected GI’s metapolitical strategy in that it occupied ‘both figurative and literal space,’ Damigo began to align himself more closely with the Identitarian movement. Inspired by its discourses focussed on European identity, ethnopluralism and anti-immigration, Damigo reinterpreted Identitarian discourse in such a way that enabled him to focus on creating a ‘more explicitly pro-white’ movement which in

2015 became founded as IE. In order not to repeat the failure of the National Youth Front, part of Damigo’s pro-white strategy involved subjecting potential members to vetting processes, with accession granted only to those of European, ‘non-Semitic heritage.’173 Another part of this strategy took the form of Damigo attempting to de-controversialise the term ‘racism.’ By adopting tactics of accusation reversal, Damigo told counter-protesters who called him and his fellow protesters racists that the term ‘racist’ was ‘anti-white and used to undermine legitimate European interests.’174 Through fudging and denial of the meaning of

171 Anonymous, “Nathan Benjamin Damigo.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/nathan-benjamin-damigo. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid. 174 Anonymous, “Identity Evropa.” Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/identity- evropa.

67 such terminology, Damigo ultimately hopes to render it meaningless. This is also a tactic used by GI activists such as Willinger, who reverse-accuses the ‘’68ers’ of being the true Nazis.

Creating confusion around such terms also benefits the Identitarian movement, who have used it to create a cognitive difference between what their discourse actually is, i.e. White

Supremacist discourse, and what they present their discourse to be, i.e. merely promoting in- group self-interests. All the while, IE has taken advantage of a racially-tense political atmosphere created by Donald Trump’s controversial election victory in 2016, which it used to kickstart a recruitment campaign based on slogans such as ‘Protect Your Heritage’ across more than twenty campuses across America, which boosted its membership from fifteen to over seven hundred members. While this was not enough to elevate them from the status of a

‘fringe’ movement, it put them on the radar of Richard Spencer, the lead activist of America’s

‘Alt-Right.’

Friberg’s partnership with Spencer, with whom he founded Altright.com, represents AM’s second avenue for the exportation of Identitarianism to the United States and brings together not just Identitarian groups but groups from all along the far-right spectrum, making it perhaps the most influential point of collaboration in terms of giving the far-right the chance to attain cultural hegemony.175 Altright.com was set up by the two men to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for global far-right movements such as Identitarianism, producing more controversial, incendiary and explicitly racist material than Friberg’s other publications. Cannily exploiting the lower threshold of taboo in the USA compared to Europe as a way in for publishing ideologies such as Identitarianism, Altright.com is able to go a step further in producing dominant discourse compared to, for example, RightOn.net, Friberg’s Swedish precursor website which was absorbed into Altright.com that peddled Identitarian and other far-right propaganda to a

175 Porter, “Meet Daniel Friberg,” ibid.

68 smaller, European audience.176 Using Spencer’s notoriety in the American far-right movement from his position as founder of the NPI, Friberg, Spencer, and Charles Lyons, AM’s Chief

Administration Officer, consistently publish articles following Identitarian discourses for

Altright.com with the aim of being ‘as accessible as possible – to reach new hearts and minds

– while being as […] groundbreaking and challenging as possible.’177 Identitarianism has been adopted by the Alt-Right, an American Fascist and White Supremacist movement, separate from but similar to IE. There are distinct parallels between much of the discourse produced and reproduced by the Alt-Right and the Identitarian movements. For instance, both movements support radical approaches to defend their Southern border from their Other – in Europe this approach took the form of Defend Europe which involved buying a boat to patrol the

Mediterranean Sea to prevent refugee crossings, while in America it involves fervent support for President Donald Trump’s campaign to ‘Build the Wall’ along the entire United States-

Mexico border.

Friberg and Spencer have also worked steadfastly to spread their ideologies while providing a sense of unity to various far-right movements across the globe, collecting and connecting their ideas in the way a bee collects and deposits pollen across different flowers to support a hive of far-right ideologists. Friberg and Spencer have been attempting to build this network since plans to host The National Policy Institute Conference in Budapest in October 2014 collapsed, resulting in a three-year ban on entering the EU for Richard Spencer.178 Upon the expiry of this ban, Friberg and Motpol crowd-funded an Identitarian Ideas conference in Stockholm in

2017.179 This conference brought a diverse collection of right-wing speakers from a range of countries including America, Estonia, Austria and Sweden. Not only did its guests come from

176 Valencia-Garcia, “ABCs of Arktos,” ibid. 177 Ibid. 178 Hatewatch Staff, “White Nationalists Gather in Hungary, Richard Spencer Arrested.” Southern Poverty Law Center. October 6, 2014. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/10/06/white-nationalists-gather-hungary-richard-spencer-arrested. 179“Jason Reza Jorjani’s and Isac Boman’s Speeches at Identitarian Ideas.” Arktos. March 13, 2017. https://arktos.com/2017/03/13/jason-reza- jorjanis-and-isac-bomans-speeches-at-identitarian-ideas/.

69 different nations, they also brought a variety of ideologies and methodologies, intending to give its attendees as much information as possible relating to the spreading of far-right ideology. The backgrounds of the guests, in addition to Arktos Media staff and Generation

Identity activists, ranged from online activists such as Paul Ramsey, an American Alt-right blogger under the pseudonym RamZPaul, to offline grassroots activists such as the Estonian

Ruben Kaalep, responsible for anti-immigrant torchlight marches in Latvia, and Lana Lotkeff, an American-Russian television presenter. Such a range of personalities and backgrounds was chosen to demonstrate how the Identitarian movement’s metapolitical aim of ‘controlling the

Zeitgeist’ was being actualised, which was further demonstrated by the conference’s livestreaming on YouTube through Red Ice, with some of the videos receiving more than eighty thousand views.180 Furthermore, Identitarian Ideas diverse cast produced speeches on almost as many subjects as there were speakers – for instance, AM’s then Editor-in-Chief Jason Reza

Jorjani used the conference to plug the recently founded Altright.com and to discuss the ‘failure of democracy,’ Ruuben Kaalep discussed an Estonian Nationalist reinterpretation of Faye’s

Archeofuturism, named ethno-futurism, and Isac Boman, author of Money Power, discussed the effect of money and banking on European identity. However, certain Identitarian subjects remained at the core of all of the conferences discussions, which can be seen in the ‘table of contents’ for the programme, including denigrations of the ‘toothless right’ and the left; the roles played by the ENR, the Identitarian movement and the Alt-right; religion and immigration and ‘owning the streets’ through metapolitics and cultural hegemony, all of which are themes listed in Willinger’s A Declaration of War.181 Moreover, the conference provides another example of the control Friberg has over Identitarian discourse. Whereas the aspects of

Identitarian discourse I have so far analysed such as GI-produced literature and YouTube

180 Tom Porter, “Inside the Alt-right: Stockholm Conference Brings Together US and European White Nationalists.” International Business Times UK. March 03, 2017. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/kate-do-not-publish-inside-alt-right-us-european-white-nationalists-join-forces- stockholm-1608944. 181 “Identitarian Ideas IX - Rising from the Ruins.” Kickstarter. Accessed October 04, 2018. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/motpol/identarian-ideas-ix-rising-from-the-ruins.

70 videos, AM publications, and online sources connected to Friberg have produced discourse, the Identitarian Ideas conference was a platform set up by the Identitarian movement to receive discourse from other far-right movements. However, this still represents an ‘enactment of power’ by Friberg, as by setting the terms of participation and themes of discourse for the conference, he ‘limit[s] the “discourse rights” of other participants’ speaking on an already exclusive platform.182

While the Identitarian movement is not the first to host congregations of international far-right groups or protest on behalf of Europe as a whole, it has adopted tactics from previous groups, such as the Fest der Völker (Festival of the Peoples, FdV), a pan-Europeanist ‘right-wing extreme rock’ festival that was held in Thuringia, Germany between 2005 and 2011. There are many parallels between the ideologies and events held by the Identitarian movement and the

FdV, including crossovers in beliefs such as ethnopluralism and rallies against globalisation, the translations of discourses into a range of European languages and the use of cultural events as a venue to combine social and political discourses. In particular, the focus posited on pan-

European identity and values represents what Sidney Tarrow has labelled a ‘Europeanisation of protest.’183 Tarrow proposes that when opportunities for cross-border exchanges are presented, activists engage with them to collaborate internationally on social and political issues. According to Raphael Schlembach, this occurs almost organically and is not restricted to any part of society or of the left-right spectrum, citing examples that can be seen in ‘far-right factions in the European Parliament’184 and neo-Nazi music festivals as well as the ‘mass-scale anti-war protests of 15 February 2003,’ described by Jurgen Habermas as the birth of the

European Public Sphere.185 Schlembach describes how, despite struggling to overcome obstacles such as a lack of organisation, inconsistency in forming and maintaining far-right

182 Van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 255 183 Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” 1331. 184 Ibid., 1331. 185 Habermas and Derrida, “February 15,” 291.

71 coalitions and difficulty in finding a ‘long-lasting common denominator,’ European far-right movements found an increased awareness of their Europeanness and began to settle on

‘identity’ as the factor of Europeanisation required for unity.186 However, the movement also sought to ingratiate itself with movements such as Blood & Honour, a European neo-Nazi music movement that provided most of the festival’s attendees, bands and speakers, fully embracing the ‘Nazi skinhead’ aesthetic. This contributed to an objectionable and inaccessible, unpalatable image which ultimately attracted large counter-protests that resulted in the termination of the festival.

However, learning from the mistakes of the FdV and fusing its international and social characteristics together with the engagement of activists across borders in the style of Tarrow’s

Europeanisation of Protest, the Identitarian movement has innovated in order to unify

Identitarians on both sides of the Atlantic. Through a somewhat paradoxical process, European identity is deterritorialised and ethnicised through its exportation to the United states, where the version of Identitarian doctrine implies that identity can only passed on culturally and ancestrally, while at the same time, physical, continental Europe is reterritorialised and is coveted and mythologised by American Identitarians as a cultural and spiritual home, in essence a metaphysical homeland. Symbolic references to Europe are repeatedly made, such as IE’s frequent reproduction of images of Greco-Roman statues, as well as the stylistic choice of the ‘v’ in ‘Evropa,’ intended to ‘evoke a sort of pseudo-Latinate/European tradition.’187

Moreover, symbolic references to European aesthetics occurs in tandem with an emphasis placed on Europe’s geographical and territorial characteristics, such as the defence of borders and a heightened sense of jus sanguinis and the need to protect and maintain local and national cultures, being discussed and emphasised by European Identitarians, henceforth producing a

186 Schlembach, “The Transnationality of European Nationalist Movements,” 1332. 187 Valencia-Garcia, “Generation Identity,” ibid.

72 single ideology in which Europe exists as both a defined physical space and a metaphorical and theoretical entity that is able to unify both American and European Identitarianism as well as culturally and ethnically expanding ‘Europe’ to encompass the USA, thus enabling

Identitarians to collaborate to form a transatlanticisation of protest and the formation of a

Global Identitarian Sphere (GIS).

This sphere enables discourse, ideas, resources and communication to bounce back and forth across the Atlantic, facilitating the realisation of events such as Identitarian ideas. Online discourse in particular has been a powerful tool for such groups whose with a high proficiency in using mainstream social media such as and Twitter. Like its European cousins, the American Identitarian movement takes advantage of the free and public nature of websites like Twitter to create echo-chambers, perhaps being even more proactive than the Europeans in making use of the internet’s memetic qualities, with activists such as Damigo actively encouraging Identitarians to spend ‘20 minutes a day commenting on YouTube channels’ in order to normalise ideas and ultimately draw new activists in.188 The term memetic refers to the propensity of online content to go viral and quickly be shared to vast numbers of viewers.

When an example of such content – typically an image that represents a meaning accompanied by text that can be modified according to different contexts – has achieved virality and becomes recognised and understood by relevant internet users, it becomes a meme. In the case of the

Identitarian movement, and particularly the Alt-Right in the USA, memetics has been used to create an online sub-culture that focuses on producing and sharing far-right memes.189 The proliferation of such memes has been facilitated by unmoderated chat sites such as and specialist websites such as .ai, a far-right reconstruction of Twitter, enabling far-right and

Identitarian groups to forge ‘alternative public spheres on the web’ which distil and distribute

188 Anonymous, “Identity Evropa.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/identity-evropa. 189 Anonymous, “Explaining the Alt-Right ‘Deity’ of Their ‘Meme Magic’”. Southern Poverty Law Center. August 8, 2017. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/explaining-alt-right-%E2%80%98deity%E2%80%99-their- %E2%80%98meme-magic%E2%80%99

73 specialised, focused, dominant discourses while fostering a sense of belonging.190 Through these new online public spheres, online activists have created space in which they can ‘establish ethno-national in-groups through discursive strategies, rhetoric of exclusion and a sense of belonging’ that also carries the attribute of being a highly efficient producer of viral political content.191

2 How Can the Identitarian Movement’s Aim of Achieving Cultural

Hegemony be Analysed and Evaluated?

I have assessed how the Identitarian movement has created a Global Identitarian Sphere (GIS) which simultaneously deterritorialises and reterritorialises European Identity to unify

American and European Identitarian movements under a single ideology. While American

Identitarianism proposes an almost mythological image of Europe as a cultural and ethnic conception that encompasses North America, extending the boundaries of Resnick’s integrated

European democratic space, its territorial geographical qualities, particularly its borders, are emphasised and instrumentalised by European Identitarianism. Key to binding both branches of Identitarianism has been the activism discussed and organised by a well-organised network of right-wing movements, including Generation Identity, Friberg’s several businesses and

American Identitarian movements such as Identity Evropa. This network has created a multi- faceted and all-encompassing discourse-producing machine that brings Identitarian subjects through a range of media including ‘news’ websites such as Altright.com and Alt-norden.se,

YouTube videos such as those hosted by Friberg’s Motpol or GI’s Martin Sellner’s personal channel, online magazines such as The Warden Post, podcasts hosted by Arktos Media staff,

Identitarian Ideas and the Traditional Britain Group conferences, summer camps hosted by

190 Gillian Tett, “Why the Alt-Right is Winning the Meme War.” Financial Times. January 19 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/be8ca142- fb0f-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a; Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski. “Right-wing populism in Europe & USA.” Journal of Language and Politics 16, no. 4 (2017): 476 191 Kreis, “#refugeesnotwelcome,” ibid.

74 Generation Identity and the retailing of Identitarian-branded products such as clothing and beer.

This assault on the Zeitgeist is part of the Identitarian movement’s metapolitical strategy of achieving cultural hegemony, which is the successful transformation of political will at a societal level to a particular ideology achieved through the cultural seeding of that idea. I will assess the extent to which the Identitarian movement’s carefully controlled discourse has escaped the GIS and entered into mainstream political and cultural discourse, and how it has done so via sources such as social media and through mainstream political actors and the Unite the Right rallies that took place in Charlottesville, West Virginia as part of the ‘summer of hate’ in 2017. I will also assess the obstacles to hegemony that the Identitarian movement has faced during its metapolitical campaign.

I have discussed the proficiency of Identitarian groups in using online platforms to distribute their discourses via an array of social media, news, magazine and other publishing websites.

When considered as part of the Identitarian discourse machine that also contains cultural and social events and merchandise, it becomes evident that such a clogging of the airways reflects

GI’s metapolitical aim expressed by Willinger as: ‘will write our own essays and books, sing our own songs, make videos, design graphics, create art’ in order to control the Zeitgeist.192

Social media, in particular, are highly effective tools for a movement looking for recruitment to its ideology, particularly through free-to-use websites such as Facebook, Twitter and

YouTube. Not only are the services of these websites free, but proficient users can quickly gain substantial numbers of followers, while posts with high memetic value can go viral and be seen by millions of people. A HOPE not Hate study into the British branch of GI’s social media usage reveals how the group has spun a web that entangles far-right activists as high-profile as

192 Willinger, Generation Identity, 81.

75 , a former Mail Online columnist infamous for her derogatory anti-immigrant discourses, and Tommy Robinson, the co-founder of the far-right movement.193 Robinson in particular has provided an example for how social media’s memetic qualities have had a unifying effect on the Identitarian movement. In 2018, Robinson tried to provide coverage outside a court hearing regarding a case of child abuse rings in which the suspects were Muslim.194 In doing so, Robinson breached a court order prohibiting coverage outside the courthouse during proceedings and was arrested, later being charged under contempt of court laws. His imprisonment was seen as an attack on freedom of speech by the far-right, who rallied behind a ‘#freetommy’ hashtag campaign on twitter.195

Hashtag activisms like this are particularly unifying as the ‘dialogicality and temporality of

Twitter create a unique feeling of direct participation,’ enabling users ‘who are territorially displaced to feel like they are united across both space and time.’196 Moreover, there is a particular attraction towards hashtag activism by groups who feel they are ‘most misrepresented in the media,’ who feel a sense of belonging to a community shrouded in anonymity and acceptance of the unacceptable.197 In adopting the strategy of hashtag activism of left-wing groups such as Black Lives Matter, the Identitarian movement seeks to capitalise on the viral and memetic ability of hashtags to be shared wide and quickly, with the ultimate intention of legitimising bigotry. As a form of metapolitics, hashtag activism has been successful in enforcing political changes by influencing public opinion. As public opinion shifts (or is perceived to shift), policies change.198 For example, during the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2014, the

193 Murdoch et al., A New Threat?, 9. 194 David Neiwert, “‘Free Tommy!’ UK Provocateur’s Arrest Creates Latest ‘free Speech’ Martyr.” Southern Poverty Law Center. June 04, 2018. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/06/04/free-tommy-uk-provocateurs-arrest-creates-latest-free-speech-martyr. 195 Mark Townsend, “#FreeTommy – the Making of a Far-right English ‘martyr’.” The Guardian. July 29, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/29/tommy-robinson-far-right-resurgence-steve-bannon-us-support. 196 Yarimar Bonilla and Jonathan Rosa, “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag , and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 42 (January 15, 2015): 7 197 Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, “Make No Mistake about It: The Alt-right Is a Cult, and This Is How They Lure People in.” The Independent. September 10, 2017. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alt-right-neo-nazi-donald-trump-hitler-memes-pepe-the-frog-ubermensch- based-stickman-a7938911.html. 198 Brad Blitz, “Another Story: What Public Opinion Data Tell Us About Refugee and Humanitarian Policy.” Journal on Migration & Human Security Volume 5 Issue 2 (June 2017): 379.

76 hashtag ‘#refugeesnotwelcome’ was introduced to Twitter by various far-right groups, including Martin Sellner.199 This led to the development of an anti-refugee ingroup on the platform, which in turn developed into part of an influential, wider anti-immigrant movement which emphasised and exaggerated concerns of security and integration. European politicians responded to these concerns by ‘introducing restrictive policies on asylum and humanitarian assistance,’ for example with the UK government, in 2017, scrapping the ‘Dubs’ scheme, which intended to provide a safe route for separated child refugees.200 Such policy changes which appear ‘antithetical to the universal right of asylum’ follow a public discourse that has shifted to blur the distinction between refugee and immigrant, speculated upon the ability of migrants to integrate, and introduced the logic of ‘human capital’ through which skilled migrants are prioritised. Despite this discourse addressed to a significant population arguing the case against humanitarian policy towards refugees, policies such as this ‘are at odds with public sentiment’ and do not reflect the ‘great public sympathy’ towards migrants and refugees that became evident in the mass protests and demonstrations against Donald Trump’s executive order commonly known as the ‘Muslim ban’ or ‘travel ban.’ Such demonstrations throughout the refugee crisis revealed that European publics, in general, believe in the principle of asylum.

Mark Littler and Matthew Feldman believe that part of the success of such campaigns can be attributed to the decline of the ‘cordon sanitaire,’ which they describe as the responsibility of traditional media platforms to ‘act as guardians of the public conversation’ and deprive those

‘with extreme political views […] of a platform.’201 Littler and Feldman reflect that new

‘sharing’ cultures developed by social media and the emergence of new, online-only media platforms have created an environment in which a pluralisation of new voices can use new technologies to bypass traditional media platforms and reach their audiences. The Identitarian

199 Kreis, “#refugeesnotwelcome,” ibid. 200 Blitz, “Another Story,” 379. 201 Littler and Feldman, “Social Media and the Cordon Sanitaire,” 512.

77 movement has taken advantage of circumstances in which the ‘low-cost barriers and lack of moderating forces […] influencing online news sites’ have allowed new news and media platforms to penetrate spheres of discourse, adding their own platforms such as Altright.com and Metapedia to their use of social media campaigns.202 While social media enabled

Identitarian and other far-right groups to spread hashtags and memes quickly, the more carefully organised approach taken by Daniel Friberg and Richard Spencer through these websites was intended to spread particular messages – particularly those based on anti-immigrant discourses

- out to their readerships.

Such organisation enabled activists within the GIS to co-ordinate a series of related protests and events in both Europe and the USA in the summer of 2017, dubbed by American neo-Nazi

Andre Anglin as the ‘Summer of Hate,’ representing the biggest flexing of Identitarian muscles to date.203 These events included the Defend Europe migrant boat event as well as the most notorious event, the in Charlottesville, West Virginia, encapsulating the transition of the Identitarian movement’s metapolitical strategy from theory to action, via online activism. The Unite the Right rally was attended by between 500 and 1500 protesters from far- right groups as diverse as Identity Evropa and the , whose chants reflected many of the concepts promoted by the Identitarian and Alt-Right movements, such as White

Supremacism (‘White lives matter,’) anti-immigration (‘One people, one nation, end immigration,’) anti-Semitism (‘ will not replace us’).204 Such exclusive discourse was met by a vastly more numerous crowd of counter-protesters, sparking clashes of violence culminating in the death of a counter-protester when a vehicle deliberately drove into the crowd.205 Such controversy captured the attention of the world’s media, and while most cast

202 Ibid., 513 203 Anonymous, “Identity Evropa.” https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/identity-evropa. 204 Cas Mudde, “The Far Right Hails ‘Unite the Right’ a Success. Its Legacy Says Otherwise” The Guardian. August 10, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/10/unite-the-right-rally-alt-right-demise. 205 Joe Heim, Devlin Barrett, and Hannah Natanson, “Man Accused of Driving into Crowd at Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ Rally Charged with Federal Hate Crimes.” . June 27, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/man-accused-of-driving-into-

78 the spotlight of condemnation upon the Alt-Right, President Trump refused to lay the blame squarely at the hands of the organisers, instead blaming ‘this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides,’ and later adding that there were ‘very fine people on both sides.’206 While Trump’s not-quite-endorsement of the Identitarian and Alt-Right groups involved in Unite the Right cannot be directly equated to an acceptance of Identitarian views, the New York Times claims that it has given the Identitarian movement an ‘unequivocal boost’ and it is not the only source of Identitarian-influenced discourse emanating from the White

House.207 Other discourses and policies produced by Trump, such as the ‘Muslim Ban’ and the

‘America First’ inauguration speech, convey distinct Identitarian connotations, lamenting globalism and Islamic immigration and promoting protectionistic nationalism.

Meanwhile in Europe, populist parties running on highly nativistic, anti-immigrant campaigns have achieved electoral majorities in Hungary, Greece, Poland and Italy.208 Lorenzo Fontana,

Minister for Family and Disability under Italy’s populist ruling party Lega, claims to see ‘an

Identitarian conception of politics awakening all across Europe,’ while Lega’s leader, Matteo

Salvini, has invoked the memory of GI’s Defend Europe action by closing Italy’s ports to NGO ships rescuing migrants.209 Moreover, Steve Bannon, founder of the White Supremacist news website Breitbart and former Chief Strategist under Trump, is known to be an avid fan of Julius Evola, highly praising the Arktos-published book A Handbook for Right-Wing

Youth, while Jason Reza Jorjani, Arktos’ former Editor-in-Chief, boasted of the Alt-Right’s connections to Bannon, expressing their intention ‘become like a policy group for the Trump

crowd-at-unite-the-right-rally-charged-with-federal-hate-crimes/2018/06/27/09cdce3a-7a20-11e8-80be- 6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.36344a840187. 206 Ben Jacobs and Warren Murray, “Donald Trump under Fire after failing to Denounce Virginia White Supremacists.” The Guardian. August 13, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/12/charlottesville-protest-trump-condemns-violence-many-sides. 207 and , “Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/us/politics/trump-charlottesville-white-nationalists.html. 208 Chris Harris, “Explained: The Rise and Rise of Populism in Europe.” Euronews. March 21, 2018. https://www.euronews.com/2018/03/15/explained-the-rise-and-rise-of-populism-in-europe. 209 Jacopo Barrigazzi. “Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Populist-in-chief.” . May 15, 2018. https://www.politico.eu/article/matteo-salvini-italy- populist-in-chief-league-far-right/; Silvia Sciorilli Borelli, “Matteo Salvini: Italy’s Ports Are Closed to Migrant Vessels.” Politico. June 16, 2018. https://www.politico.eu/article/matteo-salvini-migration-italy-ports-closed-to-migrant-vessels/.

79 administration.’210 While Bannon has since left the White House following the deterioration of his relationship with Trump, his dedication to and influence within the far-right sphere has resulted in him bringing his politics to Europe to nurture a type of ‘“alt-right” transatlanticism’ that appears as a populist version of Identitarianism.211 While there is little beyond Jorjani’s claims of Bannon being the link between the Alt-Right and the White House to connect Bannon to the Identitarian movement, both parties promote a ‘Gramsci-style culture war against “elites,”’ criticise ‘liberal and universalist values’ and want a Europe of

‘free and independent states,’ and it could be that both parties are trying to achieve the same goal by targeting different audiences.212

Furthermore, the White House is not the only office of state to have affiliations with the

Identitarian movement; the foreword to the aforementioned A Handbook for Right-Wing

Youth was written by Gabor Vona, the former leader of ,213 while the foreword to

Willinger’s Identitarian manifesto Generation Identity was penned by Philippe Vardon, a former member of Bloc Identitaire who was appointed Vice-President of the Côte d’Azur branch of the Front National by , who came second during her recent election campaign in France.214 While Le Pen’s defeat was seen as a setback for the far-right, it came amid electoral victories for Donald Trump, Victor Orbàn, Vote Leave, and the populist Italian parties Movimento 5 Stelle and Lega, which demonstrates the extent of the success of a global illiberal push. The case of Hungary in particular is significant for the development of the global far-right, where a ‘safe haven’ has been created for the far- and alt-right, and while Orbàn’s form of illiberal democracy may not have been influenced or targeted directly by the

210 Hatewatch Staff, “Identity Evropa and Arktos Media - Likely Bedfellows.” Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed June 04, 2018. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/09/26/identity-evropa-and-arktos-media-—-likely-bedfellows. 211 Natalie Nougayrède, “Steve Bannon Is on a Far-right Mission to Radicalise Europe | Natalie Nougayrède.” The Guardian. June 06, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/06/steve-bannon-far-right-radicalise-europe-trump. 212 Ibid. 213 Carol Schaeffer, “How Hungary Became a Haven for the Alt-Right.” The Atlantic. May 28, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/how-hungary-became-a-haven-for-the-alt-right/527178/. 214 Marc de Boni and Emmanuel Galiero. “Au FN, La Revanche Des Identitaires.” . October 12, 2017. http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2017/10/12/01002-20171012ARTFIG00304-au-fn-la-revanche-des-identitaires.php.

80 Identitarian movement, much of the rhetoric produced by either party resonates with that of the other.215 For example, former British Nationalist Party leader Nick Griffin had his attention brought to Budapest’s welcoming atmosphere to the far-right by Stop Operation Soros!, a conference run by the Hungarian Identitárius Egyetemisták Szövetség (Association of

Identitarian University Students), and he relocated there to head The Knights Templar

International (KTI), a far-right radical Christian organisation. This welcoming atmosphere was boosted by Hungary’s two biggest far-right parties, becoming the ruling party and the opposition respectively, with far-right and Identitarian groups feeling that ‘in Hungary there is a leader that represents their values.’216 Victor Orbàn’s 2017 State of the Nation address, in which he proclaimed that Hungary ‘shall let in true refugees […] terrified politicians and journalists who here in Hungary want to find the Europe they have lost in their homelands,’ echoed amongst those nationalist and Identitarian beliefs, drawing them in to Budapest from

Europe and North America.217 Meanwhile, in Europe, ten members of GI including Sellner were put on trial in Austria on charges of ‘criminal association and hate speech,’ ultimately to be found not guilty,218 giving the Identitarian movement a platform from which they can refute accusations of racism and intolerance, with Austria’s anti-terror chief Peter Gridling stating they ‘are now strutting around trying to use the verdict as proof that they are not right-wing extremists.’

2.1 Obstacles and Barriers to Identitarian Hegemony

The Identitarian movement’s path toward culturally implementing an illiberal new world order has not been smooth, and it has suffered a series of financial, organisational and legal setbacks.

Arktos Media, for example, has experienced a high turnover of staff; Jason Reza Jorjani left to

215 Schaeffer, “How Hungary Became a Haven for the Alt-Right,” ibid. 216 Ibid. 217 Ibid. 218 Tim Hume. “Europe’s Far-right Just Got a Dangerous Boost from an Austrian Judge.” Vice. July 30, 2018. https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/ne53pk/europes-far-right-just-got-a-dangerous-boost-from-an-austrian-judge.

81 pursue his Aryanism-inspired goals of ushering in an ‘Indo-European World Order’ by forming the Iranian United Front, while John B. Morgan and Jacob Senholts, founders of AM’s predecessor company Integral Traditional Publishing, were pushed out by Daniel Friberg in unclear, but acrimonious, circumstances.219 In another incident, several Arktos staff were dismissed amid accusations of racial discrimination and embezzlement levelled against Daniel

Friberg in 2017, resulting in the freezing of its PayPal payment system, almost causing the organisation to collapse.220

Furthermore, there is disparity among the Identitarians themselves as to what direction the

Identitarian movement should take, despite a growing following, with disputes within the movement causing rifts amongst members that have cast doubt upon its future. One of the leaders of Generation Identity’s British branch, Tom Dupré, walked away from the group after discovering the neo-Nazi background of one of his GI colleagues, with HOPE not Hate claiming that ‘the organisation lacks other capable leaders, and it remains to be seen whether the UK branch can survive without Dupré.’221 There are also doubts within GI about the transatlanticisation of Identitarianism, with Martin Sellner and Richard Spencer publicly disputing the validity of American Identitarianism and American claims to European identity over Twitter,222 while Cas Mudde explains that the American focus on race is too disparate from the European focus on local ethno-cultural identities for a unified Identitarian movement to maintain itself in the future.223 Mudde also points out that while the Alt-right claim a boosted media profile as proof of the success of achieving their two goals, namely ‘to show the country that the alt-right is not just a social media phenomenon, and […] to bring various far right

219 David Lawrence, “Hindu Mysticism and the Alt-Right,” Ibid.; John B. Morgan, “The Truth About Daniel Friberg,” Counter Currents. June 27, 2017. https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/06/the-truth-about-daniel-friberg/. 220 Valencia-Garcia, “History Repeating Itself,” Ibid. 221 “Generation Identity UK Suffers Splits following Nazi Revelations – HOPE Not Hate.” HOPE Not Hate. August 15, 2018. Accessed October 04, 2018. https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/08/14/generation-identity-uk-splits-following-nazi-revelations/. 222 Martin Sellner. Twitter. January 11, 2018. https://twitter.com/martin_sellner/status/951517879513600006?lang=en. 223 Anonymous, “American Racists Work to Spread ‘Identitarian’ Ideology.” Southern Poverty Law Center. December 10, 2015. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2015/10/12/american-racists-work-spread-’identitarian’-ideology.

82 groups together,’ the reality is that the legacy of Unite the Right presents a diminished movement, fractured by dissent, competing ideologies and arrests.224 , organised for the anniversary of the previous rally, expected less than a third of the number of protesters as its predecessor.225 These examples of the division and diminishment of the

Identitarian movement are antithetical to its own strategic target of achieving cultural hegemony and indicate that the movement is not even able to achieve hegemony amongst its own activists.

Moreover, the movement has suffered from restrictions of access. It could be said that the control of discourse is the most important aspect of the Identitarian movement, and as I have analysed, the Identitarian movement has utilised its control over the content of and access to

Identitarian discourse as an ‘enactment of power.’226 It has used this power uphold social power, in terms of producing and reproducing dominant discourses that exclude, for example, cultural and ethnic non-Europeans and controlling (access to) these discourses in an exclusive manner. However, while the Identitarian movement may be able to exercise social power and dominance over particular groups such as ethnic minorities, it is not the dominant political force in Western society and there have been events that have curtailed its control over its own discourse. For example, Richard Spencer has been banned again from entering the EU, while

Sellner, along with his wife, the Canadian Identitarian activist Brittany Pettibone, and

American Identitarian Lauren Southern have all been banned from entering the UK.227 In all of these cases, the activists were given travel restrictions or bans while due to give speeches at far-right conferences, therefore relinquishing the movement of some of its control and access to Identitarian discourse. Moreover, Spencer is one of a number of Alt-right activists who have

224 Mudde, “The Far Right Hails ‘Unite the Right’ a Success,” ibid. 225 Ibid. 226 Van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 55. 227 Jacqueline Thomas. “Richard Spencer Stopped by Authorities While Traveling in Europe: Report.” . July 06, 2018. https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/395745-richard-spencer-confirms-ban-on-traveling-to-european-countries; BBC News, “Why 3 Anti-Islam Activists Were Refused Entry to the UK.” BBC News. March 14, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs- trending-43393035.

83 undergone suspensions from accessing Twitter, including the Identity Evropa activist Mike

Enoch and the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who received suspensions for their roles in organising Unite the Right.228 These restrictions of access to the discourse platform Twitter, have only been temporary, but they represent an arena over which the Identitarian movement is unable to set the topics of discussion and terms of participation as it desires, although it still retains access to the platform and some degree of control of the content it can produce there.

Finally, Generation Identity has faced many obstacles in 2018. In April 2018, GI hosted the

European Reunion conference in England intended to showcase the importance of its British branch as ‘its gateway to the Anglosphere’ and the Alt-right.229 However, the event, described by HOPE not Hate as ‘a shambles from start to finish,’ was poorly organised; technical issues interrupted multiple speeches, several planned speakers withdrew at short notice, and Martin

Sellner was denied entry to the United Kingdom upon arrival at Luton Airport. In the months following the conference, infighting within the British branch of GI contributed to the departure of one of its most talented leaders, Tom Dupré, while Facebook closed down all Generation

Identity pages on its website, permanently banning the group from the platform.230 This ban from Facebook means that GI is not only denied a platform to produce discourse and attract potential new recruits, but it also loses access to a social networking website through which it organised and promoted its conference, therefore significantly hampering the movement’s aim of achieving hegemony through metapolitics.

228 Rob Price and Peter Jacobs, “Twitter Has Unbanned and Verified a Prominent White Nationalist,” . https://www.businessinsider.com/white-nationalist-richard-spencer-unbanned-by-twitter-2016-12?r=US&IR=T; Michael Edison Hayden, “Ann Coulter Retweets White Nationalist Charlottesville Leader Who Attacked Trump with Conspiracy Theory,” . https://www.newsweek.com/ann-coulter-trump-white-nationalist-887699.; Selena Larson, “Twitter Briefly Suspends David Duke” CNN. https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/06/technology/twitter-suspends-david-duke/. 229 Murdoch, et al., “Generation Identity Conference: A Shambles from Start to Finish.” HOPE not Hate. April 14, 2018. https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/04/14/generation-identity-conference-shambles-start-finish/ 230 Luke Bailey, “Far-right Group Generation Identity Have Been Banned from Facebook Across Europe.” iNews. June 21, 2018.

84 Concluding remarks

Perceptions of mass immigration and a homogenisation of culture caused by globalisation have contributed to sentiments of identity precarity in In Europe and North America. The Global

Financial Crisis created an atmosphere of financial insecurity and mistrust in globalism, while the Refugee Crisis of 2015 exacerbated feelings of cultural insecurity, both of which gave ammunition to far-right discourses that that target Liberalism, globalisation, immigration and ethnic minorities. The efficacy of such illiberal discourse has seen the elevation of illiberals to the fore of modern Western politics, with far-right and populist movements receiving surges of support in Europe and the United States. Since 2012, an Identitarian brand of illiberal discourse has been developing, which repackages various elements of national characteristics, such as geography, history, and tradition, as identity.

This study of an international network with Generation Identity, Arktos Media and the Alt-

Right at its core has revealed the collaboration and co-operation that exists in the theorisation and instrumentalisation of the term ‘identity’ across a Global Identitarian Sphere. While this sphere glorifies the fascist political theory and strategies of its forefathers from the European

New Right, it has taken advantage of contemporary circumstances in which globalisation, mass immigration, identity precarity and financial uncertainty have enabled widespread disillusionment with Liberal Democratic politics. By exploiting fear and anxiety to entice new recruits, the Identitarian movement has been able to discursively promote the notion that

‘identity,’ meaning an amalgamation of ethnic, cultural and nationalistic characteristics, must be valued, cherished, protected and defended. Through concepts such as ethnopluralism,

Identitarianism intertwines national characteristics with ethnicity, meaning one’s identity is determined through their ancestry, and therefore implying that European Identity is only available to ethnic Europeans. Through the connection of identity with ethnicity and territory,

85 the Identitarian movement attempts to become the gatekeeper of ‘European Identity,’ which, through its definitions and theorisations, becomes something which is inherent, unobtainable and, therefore, exclusive.

Identitarianism has taken its cue to divide humanity this way from previous versions of Fascist ideology, adopting European New Right philosophers such as Alain de Benoist, Julius Evola and Guillaume Faye as its ideological mascots, most notably in its decision to operate through metapolitics, a far-right interpretation of Gramscian hegemony. This type of hegemony involves the seeding of a political notion through cultural methods in order to later instigate political change. The various components of the Identitarian movement attempt to achieve hegemony through a network that takes the shape of the Global Identitarian Sphere, which has been developed and maintained by American and European far-right activists and subsists on discourse produced by a multi-faceted network of media organisations, including Arktos

Media, Altright.com and Motpol.

The extent of this network spearheaded by Daniel Friberg, which contains multimedia organisations ranging from news websites to video hosting websites and encyclopaedias enables the Identitarian movement to control the content and accessibility of an international discursive movement that exercises social dominance by excluding and discriminating against cultural, religious and ethnic minorities. Moreover, as the members of Global Identitarian

Sphere control their own media platforms, they do not have to worry about breaching the cordon sanitaire set in place by traditional news institutions to deny extreme discourses a platform.

In fact, it is this control over its own output that has enabled the Identitarian movement to push itself to the fore of far-right, illiberal politics. The Identitarian movement specialises in the revival and translation of classical illiberal theory, particularly that of European New Right

86 intellectuals such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, and by reproducing and publishing such literature, it becomes the owner of Identitarian discourse. Through the connections of

Friberg and his staff at Arktos Media, the Identitarian movement is able to disseminate

Identitarian theory through a diverse range of publications and formats, including videos, merchandise, articles and books, thus realising Markus Willinger’s metapolitical aim of controlling the Zeitgeist, while creating access for as large an audience as possible.

It is arguable whether the metapolitical victories claimed by the Identitarian movement, such as the election of Trump followed by his nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-globalist rhetoric and the implemention of his ‘Muslim ban’ and the illiberalism promoted by Orbàn, have been achieved via its metapolitical strategy or otherwise. Nonetheless, it is now the case that immigration is the primary cause for concern within Europe while the rise of far-right political parties and movements – who put immigration at the heart of their manifestos – has been well- documented. With Trump holding the US presidency, and Xi Jinping, ’s authoritarian president, granted leadership for life,231 and Vladimir Putin’s re-election in 2018 puts him on the cusp of achieving the same fate,232 illiberals are now in charge of the world’s three superpowers.

However, while the ability to control (access to) discourse has been an essential aspect in the development of a Global Identitarian Sphere, the Identitarian movement suffers when its control over and access to discourse is impeded. Generation Identity, for example, is suffering after its access to Facebook was revoked which, in combination with the loss of one of its most talented activists, Tom Dupré, has cast doubt over the future of at least its British branch.

231 BBC News, “China’s Xi Allowed to Remain ‘president for Life’ as Term Limits Removed.” BBC News. March 11, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43361276. 232 Anton Troianovski, “Putin’s Reelection Takes Him One Step Closer to Becoming Russian Leader for Life.” The Washington Post. March 19, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/putins-reelection-takes-him-one-step-closer-to-becoming-russian-leader-for- life/2018/03/19/880cd0a2-2af7-11e8-8dc9-3b51e028b845_story.html?utm_term=.bb0edda840c2.

87 Moreover, arrests and travel bans have restricted the Identitarian movement’s access to some of its leading activists, such as GI’s Martin Sellner and Identity Evropa’s Michael Heimbach, leading to disappointing attendances to Unite the Right 2 and European Reunion, which were intended to be the Identitarian movement’s flagship events of 2018.233

Finally, Identitarianism is an extreme political movement, and the poor attendances of its flagship events may represent that the group has reached its peak in terms of attracting new followers. However, it is a political movement and not a , and its aim is not to build up its membership or accrue votes but to influence social cognitions through metapolitics to achieve cultural hegemony. Therefore, success for the Identitarian movement takes the form of a majority of citizens adopting Generation Identity’s political opinions, beliefs and grievances as their own. To achieve this success, it needs to discursively ‘manufacture such consensus, acceptance and legitimacy’ of its ideology.234

Therefore, it has created a discourse-producing network of media organisations that bring

Identitarian issues of national identity, immigration, illiberalism and anti-globalisation into public debates, with the intention of achieving hegemony through the onwards reproduction of such discourse by the public. Of these issues, immigration is seen as the most pressing issue in society by a majority of Europeans, while mistrust of liberalism and globalisation has seen populist parties receive electoral success in countries like Italy, Hungary and the United States.

Therefore, it could be said that while the of the Identitarian movement inhibits its ability to grow or develop into a political party, the discourses produced by the Global

Identitarian Sphere have benefitted benefitted populist parties, whio have adopted less extreme

233 Murdoch, et al., “Generation Identity Conference” ibid.; Brett Barrouquere, “How will Spend Part of His Summer,” Southern Poverty Law Centre. May 15, 2018. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/05/15/how-matthew-heimbach-will-spend-part-his- summer 234 Van Dijk, “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 255

88 versions of the same rhetoric to form social cognitions. Ultimately, the rise of populism poses an existential threat to the Liberal Democratic order, with implications of the loss of liberal values such as minority rights, freedom of speech, media pluralism and, ultimately, democracy itself.235

235 Jan-Werner Muller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2016).

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