The Chosen Readings of Far-Right Extremist
A pandemic can have some harsh side effects on our society. One of them has been a surge in extremist ideology, as reported by the New York Federal Reserve last year. The report written by Kristian Blickle examined how the cities in Germany that suffered most deaths from influenza in 1920 later voted in an unusually large number for right-wing extremists, such as Nazis. Several studies recommend that there has been a trend in online search for extreme content in past years.
So what books people might be consuming? To find out, researchers examine the literary habits of the far-right by studying/analysing reading lists traded on social media, text or surveys promoted on a podcast or audiobooks recited on YouTube and output from right-fringe publishing houses on their websites.
Since its founding more than a decade ago, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Amazon’s self-publishing arm, has democratised the publishing industry and earned massive respect for giving individual authors a chance to reach out to an audience which they wouldn’t have before. The platform has now awarded the same opportunity to white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, as mentioned in The Atlantic and ProPublica’s investigation.
Apocalyptic writing is especially famous among right-wing readers, meaning those who believe civilisation will soon collapse. One such book by William Luther Pierce, “The Turner Diaries”, where a group of white supremacists attacks the Capital to overthrow the Government. Many are killed, including those in Congress and its staff. The event portrayed in the novel is similar to what happened on February 6 in Washington, DC. Another manifesto, “The White Rabbit Handbook”, was published on Amazon (later removed), was linked to an Illinois based militia group facing federal hate crime for an attack on a mosque.
The work of a French philosopher, Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus, in his book “The Great Replacement”, describes an ongoing “invasion” of France by immigrants and how they are “colonising” France by giving birth to more children and making its cities, towns — and even villages. His book has been cited in two mass shootings- at a Walmart in El Paso and Christchurch in New Zealand.
The Extremist turns to such writings because it justifies them to use violence to clear the new global age path. Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism, says we still do not take online extremism seriously enough. Such writings/books are still influential and are passed on to the young ones by their veterans. Therefore, such readings by bilious writers are appealing. Finding out how and why is the first step towards countering it.
