Between Mainstreaming and Radicalization: How Social Media Platforms Shape Far-Right Politics

Abstract

In recent years, the far right has consolidated political power in Europe and beyond through simultaneous participation in institutional politics and the cultivation of a digital metapolitical project aimed at reshaping the political and cultural order. As such, “pathological normalcy” extends beyond the electoral arena, with far-right actors mainstreaming their ideology via memes and lifestyle influencers (e.g. tradwives), while simultaneously carving out insulated digital spaces for radicalization (e.g. incels). This panel examines how platforms enable this dual dynamic: amplifying illiberal ideas to mass audiences while also facilitating the creation of insulated spaces for radicalization. While far-right communication online has received scholarly attention, less attention has been paid to the paradoxical role of social media platforms in sustaining both processes at once. The panel examines far-right politics across three national contexts and five platforms: Sweden (an established parliamentary party navigating Facebook, X, and TikTok), Ireland (an emerging nationalist movement exploiting Telegram’s affordances), and the United States (incel communities organized through X’s algorithmic features and female reactionary influencers on YouTube). Concretely, the panel shows how platform affordances can foster the mainstreaming of far-right ideas (TikTok’s virality, YouTube’s intimacy), as well as curate spaces for radicalization (Telegram’s encryption, X’s Communities). By foregrounding gender as an organizing logic, we reveal how masculine militarism and self-victimization, as well as feminine care politics, serve complementary functions across platform ecologies. - How do social media platforms position far-right politics between mainstreaming and radicalization as interconnected rather than oppositional processes? - In what ways do platform affordances, algorithmic systems, and moderation policies enable or constrain different forms of far-right mobilization? - How does gender function as a strategic organizing logic across diverse platform ecologies, from hyper-masculine militant networks to "feminine" care-based reactionary politics? - What role do visual and multimodal strategies play in adapting far-right content to platform-specific audiences and constraints? The panel is unified by an analytical focus on platforms as active shapers of far-right politics, examining how technical features, algorithmic curation, and moderation regimes structure the conditions of political visibility and mobilization. It is committed to methodological pluralism, with contributions drawing on multimodal critical discourse analysis, digital ethnography, netnography, and unsupervised machine learning. By centering how social media platforms shape far-right politics, the panel argues that understanding the contemporary far right requires analyzing not only actors and content, but also the infrastructures through which they are strategically configured. These insights have crucial implications for challenging far-right politics, highlighting the need for platform-specific interventions addressing corporate governance, algorithmic design, and moderation regimes rather than treating “online extremism” as monolithic. The panel ultimately demonstrates that far-right politics is neither simply mainstreamed nor purely radicalizing, but dynamically shaped by the platform environments in which it operates.

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