ABSTRACT
The white nationalist alt-right is a “metapolitical” movement, defined by Arktos Media CEO Daniel Friberg as “a war of social transformation, at the level of worldview, thought and culture". This chapter provides an overview of the alt-right’s engagement in the mediums of visual aesthetics, music, film, television, animated web series, gaming, and fashion, and explores the multitude of competing styles and tropes adopted by the loose, decentralised movement. The visual aesthetic perhaps most closely associated with the alt-right is a deliberately crude, low-resolution cartoon style displayed in many of the movement’s most recognisable memes. Classical motifs are also commonly incorporated into “fashwave,” a visual and musical aesthetic heavily used by the alt-right, which essentially updates existing fascist tropes with heavy layers of 1980s kitsch and a digital, synthetic gloss, apt for a largely millennial movement operating primarily online.
