Eviane, in your recent book, The Women of the Far Right, you explore the fascinating world of far-right women who are also influencers. You talk about the parasocial relationship that these women cultivate with their audience and some of the strategies they use. Could you talk a little bit about that? How do these women present themselves to their audience and how do their audiences, most of whom you specifically note are male, engage with their content?
The core argument of the book is that far-right women play a key role in normalizing and legitimizing far-right ideas to mainstream audiences. A major way in which they achieve this is by establishing parasocial relationships with their followers, who feel like they intimately know and feel close to an influencer. The strategies that far-right women influencers use to create such parasocial relationships are rooted in what media studies scholars have described as microcelebrity tactics of authenticity, accessibility, relatability, and responsiveness. By employing these qualities in their social media content creation and subsequent personal brands, this presents an opportunity for far-right influencers to deliver propaganda for a normalizing effect of their political ideology.
Another strategic aspect of this self-presentation technique is that far-right women influencers are particularly adept at leveraging different social media platforms to reach different types of audiences. On YouTube, they tend to be political commentators or react to current events, where they have a disproportionately male audience. With this knowledge of viewer analytics, these influencers tailor their content towards this demographic. For example, some popular videos on their channels directly target male viewers by focusing on issues of masculinity and claim that mainstream society is controlled by feminists who restrict men’s ability to exercise “natural, biological” masculine traits such as aggression, dominance, and leadership, but if men join the far-right they can exercise these traits in the movement and ideally find a traditional, submissive wife.
For far-right women influencers, political activism looks different compared to their male counterparts, but should be taken just as seriously in terms of both its intention and impact.
Whereas on Instagram, these influencers often post daily, banal content such as cooking dinner for their family or gardening with their children, and this tends to solicit more female followers interested in domestic labor and activities. For far-right women influencers, political activism looks different compared to their male counterparts, but should be taken just as seriously in terms of both its intention and impact.
Some of the figures you talk about have a background in feminism/gender studies. Can you talk about how these women understand feminism, and the tension between traditional female roles and identity and female entrepreneurship?
In narrating their backgrounds and life stories, some far-right women influencers discuss having previously identified as secular feminists when younger but now identify as “recovering feminists.” Many influencers grew up in middle class families and attended university, including one who obtained a master’s degree in women’s studies. They describe entering corporate jobs and living in urban areas after graduation, socializing with colleagues and friends. However, there is a specific moment in time in which these influencers describe feeling deeply unhappy and depressed with their life situation. In these moments, they begin attributing those feelings to feminism.
According to their worldview, mainstream society is controlled by leftist feminists intent on causing societal degradation by destroying the nuclear family unit through “unnaturally” forcing women into the public sphere of work. Far-right women influencers argue that traditionalism is the antidote to feminism, and that if society resorted to traditional gender roles—of the woman staying at home to be a housewife whilea the man acts as the breadwinner for the family in a public facing job—this will ultimately create a harmonic balance between the two genders and set the conditions for a happy, flourishing society.
Ironically, far-right women influencers have benefited greatly from the gains of feminist and women’s rights movements in their everyday lives. For instance, they have attended university, own bank accounts where they receive crowdsourced donations from followers or advertising revenue from social media platforms, they publish books and articles, and own property. These advances can all be attributed to the rights secured by the legacy of feminist activists.
On the other hand, far-right women influencers hold a very specific interpretation of feminism that is, admittedly, fairly representative of contemporary mainstream feminism discourse centered on gender equality in the public sphere. Yet, a nuanced understanding of feminism as a movement entails recognition of divisions that have occurred in past waves of feminist activism, namely, the divide in the U.S. between white feminists who advocated for women’s rights in labor conditions in the public sphere versus black feminists who fought for recognition of domestic labor mainly performed by women as equally important to the cause. Today, the former has become a more popular representation of feminism (see Empowered by Sarah Banet-Weiser). But when far-right women influencers critique feminism, they do so without acknowledging the complexity of the movement, including its racial and class privileging throughout history and in the present.
Far-right women influencers critique feminism, but they do so without acknowledging the complexity of the movement, including its racial and class privileging throughout history and in the present.
You mention that many of the women express not feeling at home in their social groups and so they find communities online. We are aware of the radicalization pipeline, but what makes someone—like the women you describe—feel uncomfortable in their existing social groups, leading them to seek radical groups of like minded individuals online?
Certainly offline factors such as social and geographical isolation, loneliness, and alienation can contribute to an individual’s radicalization. Online spaces thus hold the potential to offer community building, often shaped by a common vocabulary, humor, satire, and discourse. In telling their radicalization journeys, several far-right women influencers mentioned that once they began adopting more extreme political views, they had lost friends and family members, which deeply hurt them. Losing social support networks is an important stage for intervention, as research suggests that it can be a crucial step towards an individual’s trajectory into extremist movements.
But pull factors can be just as significant as push factors. For many far-right women influencers, they simply enjoy the celebrity of online fame. They quickly learn that in a male-dominated milieu, they can solicit attention and admiration among a large, dedicated fan base. This perhaps explains why a few far-right women influencers left the far-right scene and came back to it—there was a willing audience hungry for more online content.
In reading the book, it is clear how much emphasis is placed on the traditional role of women, fertility, the nuclear family, and the link between these concepts and ensuring the survival of the white race. Can you talk about those connections and the position the women themselves hold in that dynamic?
Most of their content on Instagram is ostensibly apolitical, e.g. it fits within the genre of food or mommy blogging. Yet, for these influencers the motivation behind these Instagram posts is to showcase aspirational content to their followers in which they serve as role models for heteronormative, conservative families and for society.
Fundamentally, far-right women see their primary role as the wives and mothers of the movement. They attribute the value of women (here equating gender and sex) with biological reproductive ability. It is important to understand this within the context in which these influencers operate, in which motherhood and domestic rearing is politically-driven and serves a greater purpose for the far-right movement. For instance, most of their content on Instagram is ostensibly apolitical, e.g. it fits within the genre of food or mommy blogging. Yet, for these influencers the motivation behind these Instagram posts is to showcase aspirational content to their followers in which they serve as role models for heteronormative, conservative families and for society. The political messaging is deliberately subtle when presented through these frames.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was an uptick in the content produced and circulated by these influencers to promote conspiratorial narratives surrounding masks, lockdowns, and vaccines. In alignment with their ideological worldview, the conspiracies centered on fertility and reproduction rates, e.g. the vaccines’ harmful effects on menstruation cycles and pregnancies, as a means of Jewish-backed global governance institutions orchestrating biological control over populations. Thus, far-right women influencers were not only spreading scientific disinformation about the vaccines, but doing so in combination with anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and anti-leftist hate speech.
You devote a chapter in the book to talking about how to counter the far right. What are the digital tools or resources available out there, how are they used, and what could we as a society be doing to more effectively address the proliferation of extremism online?
Indeed, a chapter in the book focuses on online and offline approaches to countering the far right. Among the online approaches, I detail what I call “hard” and “soft” approaches. Hard approaches mainly constitute content moderation, or a set of practices that rely on technical tools used by tech platforms. I call this the “four D’s” of content moderation: Deplatforming (i.e., permanently banning an account or user); Demonetization (i.e., restricting monetization opportunities or financial access); Deranking (i.e., reducing the visibility of search results for an account or piece of content); and Detection (i.e., using human review or automated machine learning tools to detect content that violates a platform’s community guidelines).
These tools can be used in combination or individually, dependent on the needs and resources of the tech platform. One of the biggest challenges in employing content moderation tools is that far-right actors are often one step ahead—they will find creative ways to circumvent the moderation of their content by engaging in practices such as visual and textual manipulation of posts, or encourage collective ways as a community to promote each other’s accounts. In addition, cross-platform posting, in which an influencer might be banned on one platform but not on another, poses dilemmas for tech companies’ cooperation.
Soft approaches, on the other hand, frequently include so-called counter-narratives, which involve government, private sector, and civil society organizations that oversee programs which promote positive narratives through campaigns in order to counter and challenge extremist propaganda. The effectiveness of counter-narratives is thin given that measurements of success and/or user engagement depends on metrics such as click-through rates, view times, etc.
However, an under-utilized soft approach is directly involving counter-influencers, or accounts that seek to debunk far-right propaganda by explaining codes, symbols, etc. Although counter-influencers have been included in a few government-sponsored counter-extremism programs, research notes that assessing the motivation or ideology of counter-influencers in such programs is necessary, as is their strategies of engagement and risks of exposure. Ultimately, counter-influencers should maintain their credibility with audiences by having control over the creative process to remain authentic.
In terms of offline approaches, some key points to consider include: a greater recognition of gender roles incorporated into government counter-extremism programs aimed for prevention or deradicalization efforts; expanding education about feminism and women’s rights; highlighting how political leaders talk about gender matters for citizens; and prioritizing early intervention through social support networks for individuals at risk of radicalization.
In your prior work, you have also focused on right-wing extremism in South Asia, specifically Hindu nationalism. Can you talk a little bit about right-wing extremism beyond the West, Hindutva, and the transnational connections? To tie this with your current work, can you also talk about the role of digital spaces in constructing identities and mainstreaming these extremist views?
In my research on the far-right in India and among the diaspora, I situate the movement of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, specifically within the scholarship on right-wing extremism. Although there is a rich body of literature, spanning decades, that has analyzed Hindutva, it is almost always framed within the esoteric lens of communal politics within India. While there is no doubt a degree of relativity that is unique to the subcontinent, my research aimed to expand the geographical parameters of the movement and highlight its similarities with other far-right manifestations around the world.
For example, the origins of Hindutva have very close, tangible connections to the rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. Thus, from the beginning, Hindutva was much more globally linked than is commonly known. In addition, the Indian Hindu diaspora has played a key role in both upholding the ideological tenets of the movement (i.e., “long distance nationalism”) as well as adapting it to local contexts abroad, including support for local far right movements.
Further, the webinar series, “Global Perspectives on the Far Right,” which I host at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, features leading experts from around the world on the far-right in various countries, especially in the Global South. A cross-cutting theme of these webinars is the postcolonial articulations manifested in far-right agendas through claims of ethnic supremacy of the majority group.
Finally, one way in which this past research ties to my current work has been analyzing the formation of online communities that reinforce in-group ethnic boundaries. Online networks are a significant medium for the construction of far-right identities in Hindutva, particularly among the diaspora. With the rise of Narendra Modi and the popularity of Hindutva among the Indian electorate, there has been a parallel narrative of Modi promoting the tech sector in India as a source of pride and promise of the country’s ascent as a techno-economic powerhouse; this earned Modi the nickname of “The social media politician” by the New York Times back in 2014. Modi’s popularity among a young, urban, and middle-class electorate, many employed in the tech sector, corresponded with the increasing prevalence of support for Hindutva in mainstream society.
Tying your other work in a little more, you’ve also written on women’s involvement in the far right in India and Brazil. Can you talk about some of the similarities and differences between far-right women in India and Brazil with those of the United States and Canada featured in your book?
In my comparative work on far-right women in India and Brazil, my co-author and I highlighted how influencers reproduce race, gender, and class hierarchies on social media posts to spread far-right ideology. Similar to the far-right women in North America who I feature in my book, these influencers share socioeconomic traits of privileged positionings, if not more so in India and Brazil. There is also an overlap in terms of shared anti-feminist discourse despite all of the women benefiting from the gains of feminism and phrasing their activism with terms like “empowered” and “agency”. Indian and Brazilian far-right women additionally view feminism as a foreign “import” from the West, although like North American women, it is considered a movement imposed by the political left.
Whereas Indian and Brazilian far-right women weaponize postcolonial narratives, and exploit a myth of “indigenous” knowledge prior to British colonialism in the Indian case, this contrasts with North American far-right women who take pride in the history of colonial settlement and Western civilization narratives.
However, a difference emerges with respect to nationalist imaginaries. Whereas Indian and Brazilian far-right women weaponize postcolonial narratives, and exploit a myth of “indigenous” knowledge prior to British colonialism in the Indian case, this contrasts with North American far-right women who take pride in the history of colonial settlement and Western civilization narratives. Despite this, the notion of ethnic supremacy, even eugenics, is displayed across these geographical far-right movements.
Finally, we like to close our discussion with a question on the term “illiberalism.” To what extent do you think the figures you study exhibit illiberal tendencies. You mention Lauren Chen’s tier list of the alt-right at the start of your book, what overlap is there between some of those tiers and illiberal attitudes?
Some scholars would position these far-right women influencers as part of the radical right, rather than the extreme right; “radical right” denotes anti-violence and pro-democracy characteristics (such as belief in the legitimacy of the democratic process like elections), whereas “extreme right” denotes pro-violence and anti-democracy characteristics. However, while the radical right promotes democracy, it does not necessarily promote liberal democracy. Radical right actors commonly ascribe to illiberal democracy, with no constraints on the powers exercised by elected representatives. Thus, draconian immigration policies or restrictions on reproductive rights legislated by (far-right) elected officials are seen as permissible actions. For far-right women, however, their beliefs do extend past illiberalism, such as their explicit support for voting rights to be taken away from women and instead in favor of the husband casting a vote on behalf of the entire household.
Eviane Leidig is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University. Her research specializes on the global far-right, gender, and online radicalization, recruitment, and propaganda, as well as content moderation. Her regional expertise includes transnational connections between India, US/Canada, and Europe. She is also affiliated with the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, the Global Network on Extremism & Technology (GNET), an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), and the Far Right Analysis Network (FRAN).
