Book Talk | Far-Right Activism and Terrorism in the Attention Economy: Metapolitics, Violence and Algorithms
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The Global New Right Working Group at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge invites you to join a book talk for Far-Right Activism and Terrorism in the Attention Economy: Metapolitics, Violence and Algorithms featuring the author Dr. Ico Maly.
In his forthcoming book, Dr. Ico Maly argues that we need a more fine-grained approach to understanding contemporary far-right violence. An approach that takes language and cultural production in a digital economy seriously. More concretely, he argues, based on a digital ethnographic approach, that we should understand this violence and the contemporary rise of new far-right practices and actors in relation to (1) the theoretical renewal of ‘La Nouvelle Droite’ in the 20th century, (2) the ‘democratization’ of New Right metapolitics in the 21st century as a result of the rise of digital media, and (3) the development of a layered, transnational and polycentric New Right cultural niche in which far-right activists and terrorists produce identity, discourse, (digital) cultures and practices.
Maly shows that if we want to analyze ‘political ideologies’ and understand contemporary far-right metapolitics and violence, we must not only focus on the content or the large ‘isms’, but also on the form, the communication economy, and the uptake of metapolitical content. We need to understand how politicians and activists adapt to the new communicative economy and understand how they use it in their meta-political struggle. Through a case study approach, Maly provides thick descriptions of local actions, shows how the global is present in the local, and how local action is not only connected to the global New Right niche, but helps to construct it.
Dr. Ico Maly is an associate professor in Digital Media & Politics at Tilburg University (The Netherlands), editor-in-chief of Diggit Magazine, and a senior fellow at CARR (Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right). His recent research focuses on contemporary new right activism, new right ideology, algorithms, (meta)politics and digital media. He has written several books (in Dutch), including: Vooruit! Politieke vernieuwing, digitale cultuur en socialisme (Ahead! Political renewal, digital culture and socialism, Epo, 2021), Nieuw Rechts (New Right, Epo, 2018), De Hedendaagse Antiverlichting (Contemporary anti-Enlightenment, Epo, 2018). He also edited the award-winning work Cultu(u)rENpolitiek. Over media, globalisering en culturele identiteiten. (Culture and Politics. About media, globalization and cultural identities,Garant, 2007). Maly is a member of InCoLaS and the editorial board of Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, and is connected to the city of Rotterdam as an expert in Far Right radicalization.