When you think of far-right propaganda, what comes to mind are usually state-sponsored films, posters, TV ads, or papers. Since the 2010s, however, a new medium for the spread and rise of these populist ideals has gained ground and established itself as a threat to democracy, social media.

Over the past few years, social media has been used to great effect to put far-right parties in power all over Europe. Due to the difficulty of spreading their messages through more traditional media, whether due to censorship or lack of funds, the internet has become the far-right’s de facto tool for spreading their views across a large, impressionable, young base. Many credit 2010’s Arab Spring with being the first effective use of social media for a political movement. Throughout the decade, particularly around and after 2015, the far-right used social media’s strength in connectivity and effectively gamed its algorithms to create propaganda that can both reach a wide audience and keep them in the far-right bubble. This allows them to reach a young, mainstream audience while bypassing more traditional blockages, such as the Sweden Democrats using the rising public distrust in mainstream media to establish their seemingly attractive alternative online. The most effective form of propaganda used so far? Memes.

Most memes are harmless, funny images or videos that grab people’s attention, and are very easy to share. This makes it a prime tool for populist parties to utilize, as they use this to spread theories and propaganda that most will not even realize is propaganda, therefore pulling them into a rabbit-hole. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s 2016 campaign was also known as “The Great Meme War” by the younger, online population of the far-right. According to The Washington Post, far-right recruiters used tactics that were very similar to those of terrorist groups, such as ISIS. This includes targeting gamers, music fans, and other young, potentially lonely people to start socializing with them, often through crude humor. These memes include making fun of minority groups of any kind, whether based in religion, race, orientation, gender, or nationality/ethnicity. A lot of the people that get into far-right groups through this form stay because of the camaraderie they form with other members based around their shared cultural enjoyment, usually centered around movies, videos, games, and memes. This leads to another aspect of the internet and social media that makes this recruitment process so effective, the online echo chamber.

Sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Reddit have an algorithm designed to keep you engaged with content on their respective sites. Forbes explains this pretty simply, when people like something they read or see on a platform, they like and share it. If people don’t like something they see, they block it. Using this information, sites can tailor content for your consumption, meaning that if someone views and likes a couple of populist memes, for example, their front page will gradually fill with more and more far-right content, keeping them on the site, and pushing them deeper in the rabbit hole. This means that content that contradicts their views, and potentially upset them which may cause them to leave, become practically non-existent. YouTube alone has faced multiple controversies surrounding their algorithm, which can lead unsuspecting viewers to extreme far-right content with just a few video clicks. This poses a huge problem because it also leads to the use of these sites to spread false news.

Fake news is not a term that’s new to anyone. Heavily used by Trump and other far-right leaders to discredit those that write articles against them, populist social media members are the largest culprits of spreading false news stories, ironically enough. According to Vox, those on the right share misleading news 4x more than those on the left. They also state how of the 10 most popular articles shared about Chancellor Angela Merkel by German populists, 7 were false. These false articles are flooding social media sites and a rampant pace. POLITICO writes that less than .1% of online far-right users create 10% of political content in a month, with single users posting hundreds of posts each day, flooding the echo chambers with more and more propaganda pieces. There have also been reports of bots, fake accounts coded to pose as an actual human user, being used to spread disinformation on a mass scale as well.

The spread of this content has been shown to be incredibly effective, gaining more support than ever before. Memes and conspiracy theories alike being shared at a rapid pace, such as the “Great Replacement” theory, which in 2018 has gained triple the amount of tweets and mentions as it did back in 2014, 330K from 120K. These online populist talking points also make their ways to the speeches and rallies of far-right leaders across Europe, like Marine Le Pen and Alexander Gauland, giving them further reach. It can be said that these far-right memes and theories are starting to influence these populist leaders, and not the other way around. The spread of these memes, conspiracies and ideals have also correlated with the global spread of right-wing terror attacks, such as the Christchurch mass shootings, in which a manifesto was published right before the act, titled “The Great Replacement”.

The use of social media didn’t just change how propaganda was received, it also changed who received them. Throughout the past decade, both leaders and followers of European right populist parties have gotten younger. With the far-right’s extensive use of social media, it’s no surprise that younger voters have started to support them, with multiple countries showcasing a rise in the youth vote for these parties compared to just a few years earlier.

The rise in the number of young far-right members applies to its leaders as well. Many high-ranking members and future leaders of populist parties in Europe, such as Dries Van Lagenhove of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, are under the age of 30. This shift to younger faces has worked together with social media’s influence in order to garner the support of Europe’s young voters, and it’s working.

The absolute impact of social media on Europe’s far-right populist parties cannot and should not be underestimated. Their use of these sites’ algorithm has been proven to increase their popularity and easily spread extreme views, especially among the young people that use social media the most. Many have called for these companies to act upon this information, to no avail. Major players such as YouTube and Facebook have yet to make any major updates or changes to curtail this trend, despite pressure from the public and United States Government. If this continues, who knows how much more power the far-right will gain in the coming years.

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