Rights influencer – advertising for fascism

“Hass and agitation” are not a model of success in the digital age. As early as the 1940s, the sociologist Leo Löwenthal, immigrated to the USA, analyzed the fascist hate preachers in his study “False Prophet”. Through the specific processing of what he called uncomfortable, he also explained their attraction for liberal democrats: a “basic state of modern life”, which, for example, showed himself to be cheated or became a loser. To relieve this suffering, the agitator offers the idea that the profiteers have come together for a conspiracy, which they cover up behind liberal ideas and institutions. Where there was previously fainting, aggression is fueled: against overpowering enemies, against the corrupt state and its “elite”, which is then lived out on the helpless enemies such as refugees or “parasites”.

Because the agitator has a successful mood with the discomfort, he does not intend to do something about the social crisis. “On the contrary,” writes Löwenthal, he “looks” to deepen her to a point where she condenses with a paranoid relationship with the outside world. And when his audience has reached this point, it is ripe for his manipulation. ”The core of the business of fascist advertising drum is therefore the activation of the individual, namely to follow the fainting of fainting through submission. The conditions for success for this recipe could hardly be better in the digital age: the present seems more crisis -shaken than ever and people are networked and occasionally at the same time.

Influence in the pre -political space

It is therefore hardly surprising that right -wing forces want to benefit from this constellation – and have success. The AfD’s survey and its success in the last Bundestag election campaign were often associated with their presence on social media. Democratic parties openly take on rights such as “migration control”. The limits of what can be said have long been moved to the right, so and especially on the net.

This forms the discursive basis that right criminal and violent acts have increased by 48 percent last year. At schools, teachers and counseling centers sound alarm that she will no longer be master of the “storm that brewed”, as the “NDR” recently reported on Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. At the center of this findings on the right attitude among young people are always social media. Right groups are targeted by the digital infrastructure of YouTube, Instagram and Tikok to the Telegram messenger service in order to actively wear topics and terms such as »remigration« in the online public, but also to recruit new members.

The youth organization of the NPD successor party The home, young nationalist (JN), relies in addition to numerous new foundations of so-called revolt groups also on decentralized »TikTok divisions«, as a digital report by the Else-Frenkel-Brunswik Institute (EFBI) recorded in Leipzig. These groups would “pursue a sophisticated social media strategy by using youth affine aesthetics such as bomber jackets, sneakers, jumping boots or fashion optics and combining topics such as migration with identity and self-evaluation offers,” writes Alexander Ritzmann from the Counter Extremism Project (CEP).

Success moves less of the seduction by digital pied piper. It lies in the logic of influencer marketing.

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In particular, the short video platform TikTok offers rights a digital range, according to the EFBI report. The specific algorithm plays videos according to thematic preferences to the users and also enables successful videos to be copied and spread through light variations. The enormous presence of the AfD on the platform, for example in the course of the state elections in 2024 and the last Bundestag election, was therefore also possible through the use of a “tikok guerrilla” that had made a massive videos with reference to the AfD.

However, such are “right -wing influencers” who accompany demonstrations or cut propaganda videos into national pride and racist agitation, only the tip of the iceberg. The “metapolitical” strategy of the new right is to occupy the pre -political space and thus also social media. But the real success of the right content is less of the memorized speeches of young neo-Nazis in online videos or from the seduction by digital rats. The connectivity lies in the logic of the influencer marketing.

Entry drug »Liespresse«

The link between explicitly right content and social media is the conspiracy narrative. Their popularity in turn follows the classic recipe for processing the discomfort: Something outside is not true, the politicians are corrupt and dark machinations lurk. One of the preferred motifs is the “lying press”, so to speak, the entry drug in conspiracy thinking. This makes the banal determination that every report on reality contains a trace of interests, reinterpreted to accept a controlled and controlled lie. Anyone who accuses this lie can be supposedly honest: after all, you say what it is and show attitude, according to the message. The liberal elites, on the other hand, would claim their own interests as universal values.

For example, the AfD Tikok star at that time applied and now member of the Bundestag, Maximilian Krah, in one of his videos: »You want to find out more about politics? Just not at ARD and ZDF. Be smart yourself. Take a look at good YouTube channels and my TikToks. ”The politician recommended that young men not watch porn or” love, soft, weak and left “. Instead of all too open agitation, Krah only served the mechanisms of influencer marketing: Intellectable and supposedly authentic personalities provide their tips on beauty or fitness routines, investment strategies or products in direct address. Even when murmuring about “the up there” and their controlled “system media”, it does not matter that you yourself say the truth, but only on the fact that nobody can say the truth in the competition of the ideas.

Hate between crypto and fitness

In the digital marketplace of ideas, there are increasingly overlap between popular lifestyle topics such as fitness, nutrition or “financial independence” and right-wing ideology. To do this, rights do not even have to capers these topics, such as by martial arts or soldier attitudes to sport and body. Because basically the fascist propaganda works according to the rules of advertising messages – and advertising has become universal in digital space.

This connection was shown, for example, with so-called finfluencers, i.e. influencers with financial and investment strategies. Most of them present an extravagant lifestyle, for example in Dubai, which they allegedly achieved through clever investments. So that you can do the same to them, they advertise the next crash with secret knowledge of market movements or prophesies.

Last year, the Podcaster Kiarash Hossainpour and Philip Hopf ensured a medium scandal because they dealt with “Hoss & Hopf”, the most successful podcast in Germany at the time, such as “we are checked by a hidden system?” Or “the mighty Rothschild family and their values”. Excerpts from the finfluencers were divided into Tikok, as well as their transition from libertarian finance gurus to the right conspiracy. Her message is: Anyone who pursues the right investment strategies that the winner must set, keeps your body fit and keeps your soul in and cannot be made a loser by brainwashing can achieve the financial independence and a jet set life.

The promise of independence repeatedly on the individual level, what right -wing as sovereignty for “your country”: a self -determination that should be achieved by the fact that one submits to the higher or natural order: Germany should be men again and women so -called traditional. The financial market, which the libertarians pay homage to, is an ideal projection surface. He directs the fortunes of global capitalism, and in a highly irrational and barely visible way. With the secret knowledge that can be achieved through the parasocial bond with the success models, you can take your fate into your own hands.

The same structure is based on the messages of the new Maha movement (Make America Healthy Again) in the United States: Against the supposed power of the large corporations that would poison people with food additives, various influencers-under the patronage of the Minister of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-advertise new diets, raw milk, against vaccinations and of course for their respective product series. Instead of being controlled by the ominous corporate mafia, the nutritional tips promise to regain control of themselves and the whole life.

This lies the central advertising message against the discomfort and fainting in the current crisis situation. And this suffering can be relieved with beauty tips or the right fitness routine as well as with the imagination, the dark machinations of overturning to forced vaccinations to be able to counter the strength of the “true people” again. Because it hardly plays a role that tells and with which people are donated to their perceived loss of sovereignty. Only success counts – and this is what fascism and the algorithm have in common.