Medieval chivalry, social media and the emotional drivers of radicalisation into extreme right online cultures

In this paper, I will propose that the extreme right’s preoccupation with medieval tropes provides a vital touchstone for understanding radicalisation that particularly targets white boys and men with emotional appeals to their gendered identity as well as to their ethnonationalist and socio-economic grievances. The extreme right employment of the medieval past generates radicalised ‘emotionology’ (the way a society or group thinks about emotions and their expression) in ways that attract and convert target audiences with the promise of emotional liberty and the embrace of extremism. This paper draws upon my current research project, ‘Medievalism, masculinity, and online radicalisation in extreme right spaces’, and in this paper I will both explain the ways in which medieval tropes are used by extremists for in- group identity formation and consolidation of social bonds, but also propose some potential ways in which we can resist these narratives in combating the growth of white supremacy.