Violence as method: the “white replacement”, “white genocide”, and “Eurabia” conspiracy theories and the biopolitics of networked violence

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I consider the “white replacement”, “white genocide”, and “Eurabia” conspiracy theories and the cycles of violence they have inspired, including mass murders in Norway, New Zealand, and the United States. Working from Foucault’s theories of biopolitics and “race struggle”, I investigate how these events enact a form of “networked violence” that combines offline and online actions to enact a distributed strategy of biopolitical control in an effort to discipline and control the bodies of people of colour, migrants, and in particular Muslims. Based in historical and ideological analysis of the three theories and their network logics, the paper aims to extend Foucault’s theories of “race struggle” and governmentality by demonstrating how right-wing extremist strategies of biopolitical control are now digitally networked and use online platforms to predicate and enact alternative systems of governmentality based in race.