ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the anti-cosmopolitan attitudes surging in Europe and its periphery following the so-called refugee crisis by capturing digital publics as a function of intuitive cognition. It studies the emergence of sarcastic anti-cosmopolitan attitudes on Twitter in this period. The chapter examines #FreeEUForRefugees hashtag – a sarcastic form of online engagement exemplifying a publicly expressed willingness of people in Turkey to “send” Syrian refugees to Europe. The chapter contributes to the literature on contemporary anti-cosmopolitan movements, fed by the global rise of far right and the electoral powers the radical right has gained, whilst presenting evidence to the wider areas of critical social media studies and cognitive psychology behind anti-immigrant attitudes. The chapter analyses how discontent towards and violence against ethnic and racial minorities are legitimised on social media platforms and provides situational conditions for such rhetoric, whilst highlighting the largely automatic cognitive mechanisms likely involved in perpetuating anti-Syrian attitudes.
