CMJS lunch lecture Dr. Pieter van den Heede (EUR): Let’s Play - White Nationalism: A Content Analysis of Extremist Historical Game Livestreams on YouTube

Let’s Play - White Nationalism: A Content Analysis of Extremist Historical Game Livestreams on YouTube.

In recent years, right-wing extremists have increasingly targeted gaming communities and gaming-related social media platforms to engage in recruitment. Scholars have also noted that right-wing extremists target historically-themed games and their communities specifically (Kingdon, 2024), which raises questions about the vulnerabilities of these games and their communities. In this presentation, I discuss how far right influencers adopt historically-themed digital games to engage in propagandistic mobilization. I do so by presenting an in-depth case study on a YouTube-channel by a far right influencer (name to be shared during the presentation). In my analysis, I discuss how the discussed far right influencer expresses appreciation for historically-themed digital games, as part of his metapolitical positioning in on- and offline spaces.