“The far right has won the battle on the Internet, for lack of fighters on its face”

VWinner of the presidential election in the United States, Donald Trump was supported by creators of racist, masculinist, nationalist or pro-firearms content. Proof that the online far right has an influence on minds and votes. The explicit support that Trump received from Elon Musk, owner of the social network X (formerly Twitter), is an edifying example. On these same social networks and with similar techniques, influencers advancing more or less masked are working in France for a victory for these hateful ideologies, hostile to emancipation movements.

It just is! : While browsing YouTube, you can come across videos like “My physical transformation”, “Why she friendzones you”, “Top 10 SHOCKING books” or even “I’m testing the best restaurants in France”… At first glance, the content does not appear explicitly political. However, these videos were all created by far-right influencers. How do we recognize them?

Pierre Plotto: Pop art, pop music, pop culture… and “pop fascism”. Above all, we are talking about a subcategory of pop culture which defines this new strategy and this new fascistosphere in itself. The old dusty conferences with guys in suits – there were only guys at these events, old gentlemen with gray hair – don't work. Since the advent of Alain Soral, who was the first to make videos and invest on the Internet with Equality & Reconciliation, things have changed. He established a star format: the man alone, on his red sofa, who speaks in front of the camera, who talks for hours. It formed a whole new generation.

The Internet has this essential advantage for them: disintermediation. That is to say, removing the filter of journalism, in particular, between the transmitter and the receiver. They have a precise credo: lifestyle. They will talk about sport, the physical, well-being… Surfing on the fable that physical well-being brings mental well-being, but also on “the atmosphere between friends”. Some organize meals broadcast via videos, for example. Others tell you why you can't find a girlfriend – based on a very monolithic vision of male-female relationships and (heterosexual) couples. Still others talk about books, history…

Once this scene is set, of course, these people try to present the image not of someone who is going to talk to you about politics, but of someone who is going to tell you “the real things”, to you, since you are in their community. Many start their videos by calling their community “friends”. It's a gimmick that comes up a lot because belonging to a community means belonging to one another, finding friends. This is something that people search for a lot on the Internet. We will therefore tend to trust this person who speaks to us as a friend sitting on the sofa opposite.

How can we recognize them, then? Do they have points in common, clues, that allow us to identify them?

Racism, anti-progressivism, masculinism, anti-“wokism”… A reactionary vision which very quickly emerges through the speech, for anyone with a slightly trained eye. There are people who feel distant from politics, especially young people. I have friends who watched videos from some of these influencers for a long time and who thought it was good, who found it funny, who took it as humor. There is no specific advice for detecting them… And that's why it works. They themselves will defend themselves from being far-right, most of the time. They present themselves as “the true right”.

What importance do they have on the Internet, compared to others?

The Internet is a bottomless pit. There are years of videos published every day on YouTube, billions of clicks just on the French-speaking web. In absolute terms, the videos of far-right influencers do not represent much. Let's be clear. However, in terms of communities, there are millions and millions of people subscribed. In my opinion, we have to look at the problem backwards. Rather than knowing what weight this or that weighs, since we are talking about people who advocate ideas and lead a cultural and political fight, we must analyze how their racist ideas, including anti-Semitic, and anti-progressive ideas infuse.

The example of the “Great Replacement,” I think, is telling. This thesis is gaining importance in particular because it is taken up by this whole movement on the Internet, which is widening the Overton window with great kicks. [les discours considérés comme acceptables ou non choquants par une majorité de l’opinion publique, ndlr]even makes it explode. So much so that personalities like Valérie Pécresse will use this expression. However, Valérie Pécresse is not Éric Ciotti, she does not come from the same right. But these fantasies have become so infused and spread so much that in the end, everyone knows this expression. In this sense, the question is not “How many clicks, subscribers?” » The question is that of the penetration of their ideas. And their ideas are everywhere.

Social media formats, without intermediaries, make this reversal easier…

Obviously. If we put these influencers in front of someone who is going to give them three references, it risks being complicated – they haven't read them. The absence of the journalist, the absence of annoying questions, the absence of perspective, the absence of the slightest obstacle which would make it possible to avoid making nonsense or contradicting oneself from one sentence to another during a two-hour video… All that is blessed bread for people whose fight does not lie in work, but in speech.

I also prefer to avoid giving the names of influencers, because that's what they're looking for. This is a common technique on YouTube, the clash. They will constantly look for enemies. This allows them to create artificial buzz and get people talking about them.

What are these influencers defending when they make “lifestyle” content – ​​meals, content on their physical transformation, etc.? ?

They all try to bait people without talking about politics, but by talking to them in fine of politics. One of their first activities is to glorify the “France before” which supposedly disappeared because “we want to make it disappear”. “We” is the left, progressivism, and for some, including Soral, behind all these people, there is “the all-powerful Jew” who pulls the strings. There is little basis in their ideas other than attributing people's intentions.

They caricature the left's program, because that allows us not to have to talk about it, not to have to confront it. If we caricature the leftist as a blue-haired “soy man” weighing 60 kilos who eats seeds and who wants to forbid you from having children and flying, even when you are on the left, you can say to yourself: yeah, it’s a bit excessive, I don’t want to either.”

In any case, this is their strategy: caricature so as not to have to debate and create a foil. This is the typical example of this video in which far-right influencers shoot shotguns and stab a model with a Che t-shirt, a PCF badge, a leaflet from France Insoumise…

We can guess that in these videos like the one of the rifle shooting, the goal is for us to watch them, to talk about them, even beyond their political side. Is this a thought out strategy?

Of course. There is an objective of disseminating ideas to conquer heads and hearts before conquering the ballot papers. But, on the Internet, there is a real glass ceiling in terms of audience and distribution, which is extremely complicated to overcome. We talk about it in the book: there are a number of personalities who have never broken through this glass ceiling, typically on YouTube.

Some are group leaders, figures of the national identity movement, but are not successful in their careers as influencers. To break through this glass ceiling, there are strategies. The first is the featuring. For example, when Alain Soral was ultra dominant, it was important to refer to him. And otherwise, there is the clash strategy. The goal is to get people talking about yourself, for good or bad.

What is the role of social networks in this?

We live in the era of buzz. Social media algorithms are designed to spend the most time on their platform in order to collect as much data on users as possible. This is what is being sold. To make people stay, they realized that it's not what people like that makes them stay, it's what annoys them. It is therefore necessary to present divisive content to users.

How do these far-right influencers circumvent social media moderation, which they call “censorship,” to continue to disseminate ideas that are sometimes banned on these platforms?

One of the strategies is semantic reversal, the use of codes – the red pill [qui représente l’éveil à une prétendue vérité, ndlr]the “who?” » [sous-entendu antisémite qui fait référence à un « complot juif »]the golems [créatures de la mythologie juive utilisée par l’extrême droite antisémite en ligne pour désigner des personnes obéissantes et dociles]… Use circumlocutions to avoid being fooled by the algorithms. If I say “a small green amphibian animal that lives on water lilies”, we think of a frog. But not an algorithm. They play a lot on that.

It's all the easier in a community that is a subculture, “pop fascism”, which is very fond of and very aware of this necessity. And then, another solution: look for other platforms. Now, they are all on Telegram, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Deezer and Spotify for their podcasts… It requires resources, a loyal community, but the best known are spread everywhere.

The subtitle of your book is: “How the far right won the cultural battle on the Internet”. If the battle is already won, is it still worth fighting?

The far right has won the cultural battle on the Internet, yes, but not the war. I would add that she won the battle due to a lack of fighters facing her. These legislative elections have shaken everything up. We lived alive the experience of what everyone announced with envy or fear for 2027. We saw, the day after the dissolution, that everyone asked: “What majority for Jordan Bardella? »

Week two, we started to say “damn, how bad are these RN candidates in local debates” and the media started https://basta.media/ecrire/?exec=article&id_article= 9712 despite their nauseating, anti-Semitic and racist ideas [et ce, alors que le parti assure avoir pris ses distances avec ces idéologies, ndlr]. Politics, an electoral campaign, is a question of dynamics.

I think there was some kind of April 21, 2002 on the Internet. For the first time, the main force of the protest was online. This is where we saw influencers mobilize – whose courage we must salute – and collectives created to say “no” to the RN and take a position, despite the fact that their content is for many very far from the policy. We realized that it worked, that the young people who follow these left-wing influencers responded to the call.

The fascist sphere is an almost physical object. These are networks, strategy, key personalities, physical events, objects, businessetc. The sphere on the left doesn't really exist. Despite this, it is still more powerful than the fascist sphere. If, with a view to a next presidential election, the left already manages to understand its striking force, its power, its potential for striking force and that it tries to put into music, to create an equivalent sphere to counteract the far right, then she can win.

Emma Bougerol

Photo by Une: DR