Fake Photos in the European Refugee Crisis

Abstract

The escalation of fake news and images during times of crisis and uncertainty is not a new phenomenon, but something quantitatively and qualitatively different is happening now. This chapter adopts an aesthetic approach to locate fake images in the gap between a form of representation and the representation itself. Anxiety with fake images deployed by the radical right during the refugee crisis is about a politics of manipulation within that gap, which enables an image to be re-appropriated or altered fundamentally in ways that reorder the range of possible interpretations to fit a pre-determined narrative. While fake images are not their exclusive preserve, the radical right is widely associated with them, and this chapter explores an aesthetic conceptualisation of fake images through an analysis of the La Vlora fake image, which was used to buttress their invasion narrative. The chapter argues that the affective power of re-imaging was derived from a nativist ideology and a storyline that echoed a dystopic, anti-immigration novel that has assumed cult status in extremist circles.