‘Not in My Europe’: Extreme Right Online Networks and Their Contestation of EU Legitimacy

Abstract

With the help of social network analysis and digital methods, we examine the virtual communities of the extreme right in six Western Democracies and we relate them to their frames of opposition to Europe. All extreme right organizations with an online presence are mapped and the structural characteristics of their relations are illustrated. Thus, we analyse the anti- and pro-European discourses transmitted online by these organizations, focusing on key recurring European topics: What is the Europe ‘desired’ and the Europe ‘criticized’ online by right-wing extremist organizations? Illustrating similarities and differences in the strategic framing of the EU by extreme right organizations in the different countries, we find that variations across countries in terms of the development of a common anti- and pro-European discourse are mainly related to differences in the ‘communicational infrastructures’ built in the online world by these groups.