This episode focuses on the mainstreaming of radical politics and how extremist ideologies gain a foothold. How can democratic practice respond to a trend toward polarization and destabilization of liberal democracies? And what defenses can be mounted to protect liberal values and institutions? Listen to hear about Julia Ebner’s latest research and potential ways to counter the trend of mainstreaming extremism.
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Glossary
QAnon
(17:19 or p.5 in the transcript)
QAnon is a decentralized, far-right political movement rooted in a baseless conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by the “Deep State,” a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that former President Donald Trump is the only person who can defeat it. QAnon emerged on 4chan in 2017, when an anonymous poster known as “Q,” believed by Qanon followers to be a team of U.S. government and military insiders, began posting cryptic messages online about Trump’s alleged efforts to takedown the Deep State online. QAnon followers believe that the Deep State will be brought to justice during a violent day of reckoning known as “the Storm,” when the Deep State and its collaborators will be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals and execution for their various crimes. Since the 2020 presidential election, QAnon has continued to migrate into the mainstream, becoming a powerful force within U.S. politics. Across the United States, QAnon adherents—animated by false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen”—are running for political office, signing up to become poll workers, filing frivolous election-related lawsuits and harassing election officials. While not all QAnon adherents are extremists, QAnon-linked beliefs have inspired violent acts and have eroded trust in democratic institutions and the electoral process. Many QAnon influencers also spout antisemitic beliefs and the core tenets of “Pizzagate” and “Save the Children,” both of which are QAnon-adjacent beliefs, play into antisemitic conspiracy theories like Blood Libel. source
Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world today. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna, and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute Geneva.
This is the sixth episode of season nine of Democracy in Question. I'm very pleased to welcome back Julia Ebner, with whom I began a fascinating conversation two weeks ago. As a reminder for those who missed the previous episode, Julia is a social anthropologist and a leading expert on radicalization and on extremism of all kinds, which pose a threat to democracy and to minority rights today. She's the author of international bestsellers such as “Going Dark” in 2019 and “Going Mainstream” in 2023, the book which will concern us today. She's a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London and the leader of the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. Julia advises governments and intelligence agencies, tech firms and transnational organizations. And she acted as special advisor on counterterrorism for the United Nations. She's the recipient of the Open Society Prize, which was awarded to her in June by the Central European University. A fortnight ago, in our conversation, we focused on her groundbreaking ethnographic research about extremist groups, both online and on site.
Taking our cue from her insights, we devote today's conversation to an extended discussion of the mainstreaming of radical politics, the subject matter of her latest book. As extremist narratives and ideologies spread virally from the fringes through digital media, they become accessible and gain an acceptance. They thus rapidly colonize mainstream political discourse and enable the far right to secure cultural hegemony. How can democratic practice respond to this alarming trend that polarizes and destabilizes liberal democracies? As Julia has shown, extreme right political forces responsible for the radicalization of the mainstream tactically use the language of liberalism to claim the right to freedom of expression for themselves. Is liberal democracy resilient enough to withstand the cunning mixture of extremism and false claims of victimhood? What defenses can it mount to protect liberal values and institutions? What mechanisms enable radically anti-democratic and extremist themes to permeate and to reshape mainstream political discourse so effectively? Why does polarizing divisive content resonate with younger generations and with their cultural preferences? What are the prospects of countering far-right global networks and transnational alliances?
I'll also ask Julia to assess in retrospect some of the predictions she made five years ago in her earlier book, “Going Dark”, where she considered the accelerating pace of socio technological transformations. Even more importantly, I'm also looking forward to hearing her forecast about further changes we could expect by the end of this decade based on her most recent research. And I'll ask her to share a few policy recommendations for resisting and hopefully also reversing the trend of mainstreaming extremism in our democracies today.
Julia, welcome back to the podcast. It's great to have you with me once again today.
Julia Ebner (JE): Thank you so much for having me.
SR: Let's resume our conversation, Julia, by discussing your latest book, “Going Mainstream”. It points to a dynamic that, in my view, is really important. You show that a lot of the extremist content that you uncovered a few years ago has already made its way from the dark corners of closed chat rooms and fringe groups to the political mainstream in Europe today. And that far-right ideologies and worldviews have managed to permeate into mainstream political parties. They've gradually become normalized. Let me quote you here at length when you write: “The wider effects on public discourse have been chilling. Many politicians, journalists, artists and activists have started to self-censor. Some have even withdrawn from their vocation in order to avoid hateful backlash. In theory, the enemies of progressive liberalism campaign in the name of free speech. In practice, they destroy open debate and suffocate those who hold different views. In theory, radically regressive movements quote their rights to justify provocative campaigns. In practice, they seek to undo the most fundamental human rights milestones, achieving legal, moral, political equality of opportunity for people independent of their race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. In theory, they say they want to protect their democratic rights, and in practice, they destroy all trust in democracy.” I'd like you to discuss this process of the mainstreaming of radicalism. Which is what's been so corrosive for liberal democracies. It's taken on the same tropes and the same narratives and the same framings of free speech, of tolerance for the plurality of views, and the insistence on the rights of these groups to be able to air their views in the public sphere. How resilient are our democracies in the face of this trend? Does liberalism have the tools to protect itself against the enemies of liberalism?
JE: The ways in which they have managed to campaign under the banner of freedom of speech, of human rights, of democracy even, while actually trying to achieve the opposite, that is something where I would say the conquering of language has been at the center of this, because they have twisted and conquered and hijacked terms like freedom, like democracy. At the same time, they've also managed to give a negative connotation towards multicultural or diversity or even feminism that used to be perceived perhaps neutral, but often as something even positive are now perceived as something hugely negative.
And that is, in large part because of the works of these extremist movements. For example, I've seen the far-right extremist Tommy Robinson, after the ISIS inspired jihadist attacks in London, go in front of a camera in front of his 200,000 followers on Twitter, repeat the word “diversity” in front of Westminster Bridge where the attack had happened and say this word over and over again: “This is because of diversity. This is because of diversity”. This is, of course, changing people's perceptions. This is manipulation in its purest sense. Extremist movements have been extremely good at conquering language and therefore also at hijacking these concepts that are still the pillars of our democratic open societies, but they are being attacked. And the biggest threat is that they are sometimes being attacked under the banner of protecting them. It's a hugely complex problem, and it's a hugely difficult thing to address, I would say, on a political and on a wider societal level. One of the things that I believe is necessary is for societies to push back against this hijacking and this manipulation.
No one likes to be manipulated. And you can even see that in some ways in the online forums that were initially started with a completely different purpose in mind of not being political at all. For example, the Chan boards, which were originally just for fun and entertainment, or even the incel forum, which is now deeply misogynist, which was originally just a self-help forum for people who feel lonely. And I find it necessary to take back to reconquer these places. I also think it's necessary to conquer the terms and the concept, the language. that used to mean something else but has been twisted and manipulated by extremists.
SR: Five years ago, when you published “Going Dark”, you were still focusing on fringe subcultures and extremist groups, but you were already acutely aware of these tendencies of mainstreaming and also of subversion of vocabulary that you just described. What I found fascinating in the book was that you predicted already five years ago, the accelerating mainstreaming of anti-liberal agendas. And this was merely one of your 10 predictions for the year 2025 at the end of “Going Dark”, which included other predictions like state-led terrorism, migration and misogyny as fuels, deepfakes, cyber warfare techniques, global far right resurgence and the exploitation of grievances. In retrospect, how do you assess the accuracy of these predictions, and what threats do you predict maybe for 2030?
JE: Wow, very good questions. Very important questions, especially when it comes to trends that are on the horizon. It's very difficult to predict, of course, what the next big trends are. But I would say, largely speaking, the trends that I predicted then five years ago would still be the ones that I would also still look at today.
There would perhaps be a few additional ones. But I do think that hybrids, the interaction between state actors and non-state actors is still something hugely relevant. Likewise, the role of new technologies, especially deepfakes, but also perhaps even more so large language models and text-based AI tools, which we've seen being exploited the most likely because they lend themselves to exploitation for political purposes and for the spread of disinformation or conspiracy myths or radical ideologies. Perhaps something that I didn't really anticipate back then was the counter reaction, for example, the AI act being introduced on the European level and policymakers also trying to push back against the exploitation of new technologies. It's very unpredictable because you need to analyze both sides, the trends, but also the counter trends.
SR: Are there phenomena today that you can identify which you didn't foresee five years ago when you published “Going Dark”, trends that have taken you by surprise?
JE: Something I didn't anticipate five years ago was the extent to which we would see anti-democracy attacks that are fundamentally targeting democratic institutions, but also political actors and local politicians. And of course, the Capitol riots of January 6 were a turning point for that. We saw a few months before that, that there was an attempted storming of the German Reichstag and a few months after the January 6 attacks, there were escalations in front of the New Zealand parliament. There was also the invasion of the Brazilian Congress. So, this is a wider pattern that has emerged. And I think these attacks on democracy are something that are probably a trend. And I would say one of the most concerning trends.
SR: Julia, what would be your predictions for 2030 if I were to ask you to look ahead for the next years? Which trends will continue and what do you foresee as new developments that will be of importance in the near future?
JE: Predictions for 2030: I think that the metaverse is going to become both a bigger opportunity but also a bigger challenge and potential risk for being exploited by extremist groups as we enter an era where virtual reality and augmented reality are becoming more easily available and accessible. I do think that we'll see potentially even terrorist attacks using those but also radicalization and disinformation having a more powerful way of spreading and of actually creating a false credibility or being able to twist reality and then also blockchain-based technologies like cryptocurrencies are already being used by extremist movements.
But there is also an emergence of so-called decentralized autonomous organizations, which are completely new forms of self-governance. So, they're not even recognized as legal entities yet. They operate on blockchain. And right now, there are entrepreneurs who use it - libertarians, hobbyists, and pranksters - people who are just using it for fun, but they might also become more important because they're not considered legal entities yet. They leave huge room for being exploited and there are some gray zones there that can be used, for example, for coordinating radicalization campaigns, but also election manipulation campaigns and even perhaps terrorist plots because people can simply become part of these online decentralized organizations with dark wallets, and they can organize and communicate in completely new ways.
And what we already saw five years ago is also the emergence of an alternative tech space with the removal of a lot of the extremist influences and extremist groups from the mainstream social media platforms. We've also seen that a lot of these groups found a new home on these alternative platforms and there is a whole alternative universe almost out there on the internet that operates sometimes under the banner of freedom of speech. Sometimes it's very explicit in that it is a white nationalist forum or a white nationalist alternative to YouTube. For example, there's BitChute and Odyssey, which are alternatives to YouTube. There are platforms like Parler, Minds or Gap that operate as alternatives to Facebook. Something I didn't anticipate is that even on the mainstream platforms, you can, of course, have changes. For example, with Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, now X, that also meant that we've seen a reversal of a lot of the policies that were already introduced to remove extreme forms of hatred and outgroup uttering or harassment and disinformation, which now has returned to X. And it's the same now that we see on a political level, if far-right populist parties are on track to entering governments in many countries, that would also lead to the reversal of much of the progress we've seen on the policy level when it comes to human rights but also climate change policies. I frankly think that could actually be a huge turning point where we might actually go back in time and see the reversal of some of the rights we take for granted right now.
SR: One example of the reversal of rights would be in the area of women's rights. Let me turn to my question on gender. We've seen a lot more trolling and attacks on women politicians, women writers, women artists on social media, partly because, as you point out, men have a greater tendency to engage with anti-social Facebook activities. But you've also situated some of these reversals in the history of women's rights in the broader context of a resurgent culture war being waged primarily by the far-right under the ages of the so-called Breitbart Doctrine. So, could you talk a bit about this doctrine, the Breitbart Doctrine, and the centrality of gender in this context?
JE: The Breitbart Doctrine is the belief that politics can only be influenced by first influencing or shaping society and social dynamics. So, it's via culture you can shape politics. And the Breitbart Doctrine has helped a lot of the extremist movements to mainstream their ideologies and their norms and belief systems.
When it comes to misogynist beliefs, that is definitely true. TikTok influencers like Andrew Tate have made use of a lot of the very extreme language that comes from the very fringe corners of the internet with the manosphere, the very misogynist subcultures, and even some of the incel vocabulary, although he himself is not an incel, but he has been deeply misogynist in his speech and in his content. But because he connected on a different level with his audiences, he had millions of followers on TikTok, for example, and he connected on a social level, on a cultural level. So, he could actually shift what's acceptable to say and what's acceptable in terms of gender beliefs and in terms of misogynistic beliefs. And it's very interesting because that's a dynamic that we see more generally also when it comes to other ideologies.
For example, QAnon and conspiracy myths have very strong social bonds and group experiences. Some of these online groups of conspiracy myths work in the way that they create a really strong group belonging and a very strong sense of we're part of this exclusive community that pushes back against the establishment, against the status quo. And this became hugely successful during the pandemic. The same is true for the misogynist channels, by the way. We saw during the pandemic and during COVID, there was a huge pickup in those communities, partly because they gave an antidote to loneliness, to boredom, but also spoke about grievances that were real, that were rooted in uncertainty, in identity crisis, in emerging fears, also during the pandemic, new fears. And that's also partly why I think we saw this massive resurgence and expansion of both the misogynist space and also the QAnon conspiracy myth space.
SR: Let me pick up the point that you just made on the social psychological dynamics which are rooted in uncertainties, anxieties. The pandemic was, of course, not only an anxious time, but it was also one in which, because of the lockdowns, people were isolated and were seeking online connections and communities. But I think the wars, the inflation, the economic uncertainties that people are facing have also triggered much more internet-based mobilization. through transnational networks, also some very opportunistic coalitions. And what you note in your work is that climate skepticism has been growing, for example, four times faster than pro-climate content on Twitter in recent years. So, the skeptics growing power to dominate this online discourse makes it much harder for campaigners who are mobilizing around climate change to be heard at all. What cross issue alliances and spillover effects have you been observing? Do you have any suggestions for what kinds of measures may work against these?
JE: A lot of these movements that I've been observing have big overlaps. In all of these different movements that coalesce around similar core topics and where the lowest common denominator is often this big frustration with the establishment, with the so-called global elites or with the status quo. And the departure from that means that they often then agree at least on some of their ideologies or some of their beliefs, especially beliefs that the media is rigged or the mainstream media is corrupt, beliefs that the democratic system doesn't work or that the political elites are in some way orchestrating big plans to impose their totalitarian views onto the population.
And it's the same for climate change denial narratives as for anti-migration narratives and even misogynist narratives often have the same grievance about the status quo. They believe that all of these progressive liberal policies have taken away some of the privileges that they were enjoying, and they feel that they might be losing out in the end because of these policies.
Also, when I went to this climate change denial or climate change skepticist conference in Germany a couple of years ago, I came across some far-right white nationalists who were there at the conference who were reading exactly the same types of alternative news outlets. They believed in the same narratives as the climate change denial community, and there were lots of overlaps there, but you can see the same types of overlaps between the misogynist spaces and the white nationalist spaces where, for example, the great replacement idea, this idea, this conspiracy myth that there is a gradual replacement and orchestrated replacement of white Europeans by non-whites, this is very strongly also linked to the idea that actually, pro-LGBTQ rights and women's rights have led to lower birth rates among the white European women and the white European population. And so, this is very much rooted in similar grievances and similar fears. And there is an interaction between the two.
SR: Let me turn to something which comes across in the conclusion of both your books, “Going Dark” and “Going Mainstream”. You provide an extensive list of normative recommendations and also practical proposals for resistance, including strategies and tactics that can be used in the digital realm. You caution against the fact that legal and regulatory reactions, technological fixes, though necessary, are not sufficient to address the current challenges. You argue that we can't address these challenges through technological fixes alone because the kinds of social causes of uncertainty, anxiety, the feeling of being disadvantaged, of having lost privileges, are the ones which fuel some of the popularity of extremist ideologies.
I'd like you to share with us some of the practical proposals that you make, which are focused on new technologies and are of larger societal relevance. Because what you're describing is an alarming mix of technological means with ideologies of hatred, exclusion, and violence, plus some genuine societal grievances, while some other grievances are totally illusionary ones. But it's a potent mixture, which spells from both sides of the extremist fringes, the most significant danger for open societies and democracies today.
JE: On a technological level, we're unfortunately still not there that the big tech platforms and also the small ones are held accountable, especially for the algorithmic infrastructure, which is of course geared towards maximizing human attention towards directing people towards more and more radical content. And I think that is one of the fundamental issues that still need to be addressed because in the end technologies can be seen as an extension of the human psyche. And in a way, these technologies also exploit the ways in which our own psychology works because we've always been fascinated by gladiator fights, by witch burnings and unfortunately, that is very innate to human nature that we are fascinated by blood and by even incredible apocalyptic visions of the world. So, there is a sense that perhaps the social media companies should do more in terms of being more transparent and potentially reversing these effects that their algorithms further accelerate and further amplify these human characteristics. But we also have to tackle the human side of it. And I think especially now in times of crisis, and we're facing a global polycrisis, as Adam Tooze called it, where we have several overlapping crises with the health pandemic, but then also the economic and living cost crisis, conflict in the Middle East, the Russian aggression war in Ukraine and so on, where we have to also address some of the social dynamics that are at work right now. And one of the social psychological phenomena that I've been studying in recent years is identity fusion. When the personal identity becomes one with the group identity, and that has been linked to very strong forms of pro-group violence and pro-group extreme action on behalf of a group that one is fused with. So, I think there is also room for new intervention, new prevention models that focus specifically on this phenomenon that we can observe even more in times of crisis because the way that identity fusion is created is often by shared transformative negative experiences or traumatic experiences. When it comes to conflict, for example, in war zones and on the front lines, you very strongly see this effect of identity fusion. If we're fused with a group, it can be very powerful. But when there's, in addition to that, a perception of an outgroup threat to the in group and the demonization and dehumanization of an outgroup and violence is being condoned, then that can become a very powerful and very dangerous socio-psychological phenomenon that can motivate violence on a bigger scale. So I think that is something that we have to bear in mind when tackling some of these more human-centered issues, especially now in these times of crisis, and especially with polarization becoming rather worse than better and the societal rifts becoming bigger in countries like the United States, but also in many of the European countries, I think it's necessary to look at these very strong forms of group bonding that are happening in addition to outgroup uttering and outgroup demonization and dehumanization.
SR: Julia, is there something that education can contribute to addressing the issues that you've identified as posing threats to liberal democracies? We are in a university setting at the Central European University, an institution with an explicit mission to further the values and principles of open society. And it's in recognition of your scholarship in this important field that our university awarded you this year its highest award, the Open Society Prize.
JE: Another dimension that I think is important for prevention and for countering the trends that we're seeing is in the education space. And we often talk about digital literacy in that context, but I think it's not wide enough. It's very much focused on curricula distinguishing between credible sources of information and disinformation or sources that are not credible, which is important, of course, but I think it misses a fundamental issue in the ways in which we have almost entered an era in which our self-perception, our group dynamics have changed when we enter online channels.
We don't really do much to address this issue, to raise awareness for what is actually happening at this intersection of the digital sphere and our psychologies. And that is something that should be addressed - be addressed more in educational settings, both for the digital natives, for the younger generations, but also for the digital migrants who haven't grown up with these new forms of communication and social media channels. And because there is a sense that a lot of us are being manipulated and very prone to these toxic group dynamics in online settings. Also, we see our own identities changing as soon as we enter an online sphere. And even this very strong, very powerful form of group bonding can very easily also happen in closed online chat rooms, so identity fusion, for example. And I think it's really necessary to raise awareness on a wider scale and to integrate it into our education approaches.
SR: Thanks, Julia, for being with me here today.
JE: Thank you so much for having me.
SR: While the previous episode focused on the many paradoxes inherent in extremist mobilization, today we've addressed the quest of the far-right for not just political power, but for cultural hegemony.
Julia Ebner sought to crack the puzzle of how radical right rhetoric has so quickly made its way into mainstream political discourse across Europe. Ultraconservative and alt right forces have increased their political clout by influencing and reshaping culture. They have shifted the parameters of what is acceptable to articulate in public discourse, whether in terms of gender and women's rights, denial of climate change, attacks against human rights, and international law.
Colonizing liberal language has played a key role in this, as Julia has explained, in two important ways. Extremist movements have successfully hijacked key concepts of the public culture of liberal democracy, such as freedom of speech and the right to express dissent, while using these terms to undermine the very values they express. Moreover, using various online channels that enable them to reach millions, they've managed to give a negative connotation to progressive ideas such as diversity or women's rights. Any attempt to defend liberal democracy must begin, therefore, by pushing back against such linguistic and conceptual appropriation and manipulation. There's a lot of work to be done to reappropriate these fundamental value laden terms to wrest them back, so to speak, from those who cynically use and abuse them. Since Julia had uncannily predicted the mainstreaming of extremism in her earlier work five years ago, I was eager to hear her thoughts about other related future trends. Today, the potential of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, for spreading fake information she told us is greater than ever. But she's cautiously optimistic about regulatory countertrends championed by policymakers in the European Union, for example. Nevertheless, she calls for greater vigilance in the face of new formidable threats represented by virtual reality technologies, by blockchain and cryptocurrency, which could all be exploited by extremist movements if they are left poorly regulated. Many radical groups are now operating from legally gray zones of the dark web and from alternative platforms that are safe havens for those banned from mainstream social media channels. However, mainstream platforms can also be captured by powerful billionaires who reverse policies that check extremist content, and the algorithms of online media continue unchecked to prioritize divisive messages.
Julia insists that while new technologies may have been responsible partly for the rapid proliferation of such content, the true sources of extremism are ultimately socio-cultural and socio-psychological. Many forms of contemporary extremism have their roots in the fusion of personal and group identity, triggered often by genuine grievances in a time of multiple crises. The hardening of protective group identity can easily slide from in-group loyalty towards a dynamic of othering, of hostility and violence. Some of the targets of such amplified hostility are not only the mainstream media and political elites, but also more generally, ideas of progressive liberalism. Shared animosity towards these common enemies also helps to bring together misogynists and white supremacists, climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers, as one discovers through Julia's careful research among all of these groups. The violent rhetoric employed by many of them now threatens to translate into an onslaught of attacks on politicians and on democratic institutions, which may be the most alarming trend that Julia has identified.
To finish, however, on a less pessimistic note, let me conclude by reiterating Julia's call for rethinking our educational models in the face of these formidable techno-social challenges. Going beyond digital literacy, we must understand how the digital sphere impacts our psychological makeup and also our group behavior. We may thus hopefully raise awareness about the toxic effects of online radicalization on our democracies, which must be protected from extremism of all kinds.
This was the sixth episode of season nine. Thank you very much for listening. My guest next fortnight will be Raimund Löw, the well-known Austrian journalist with whom I'll discuss the results of the parliamentary elections in Austria. Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast if you've enjoyed it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www. graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.