Reactionary Digital Politics

Episode 6. How Does It Look?

2021-10-20

When politics takes place mostly on our screens, how it looks - and how we look, when we look at people looking at us - matters a lot. This episode explores the relationship between politics and aesthetics, from haircuts and Hawaiian shirts to frog memes and ‘fashwave’. We think about how reactionary subcultures have embraced the DIY logic of digital technologies to develop symbols, genres, styles and vocabularies that express their values, distinguishing initiates from outsiders. This dark academic dispatch sheds light on corners you did...