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In the 1990s tech evangelists told us that the internet would bring the world together; that it would help us share knowledge and learn from each other. Spoiler Alert: that didn’t happen. The world of digital politics is filled with hucksters, ideological entrepreneurs performing invective for a few likes and subscriptions. It’s a recruiting ground for far-right extremists, cultists and conspiracy fantasists. And it’s changing how all of us think, feel and do our politics. This eight-part podcast series reports on the findings of a three-year academic research project into the political ideologies, rhetorics and aesthetics shaping the age of digital politics. Featuring interviews with leading scholars and researchers in this field – including Whitney Phillips, Matthew Feldman, Becca Lewis and Wu Ming 1 – it asks why right-wing & reactionary groups have been so successful in using digital technologies to push their ideologies, exploring the history and theory to assess the prospects for politics in an age of digital communication.
Episodes
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
In an era of high political melodrama there has to be a ‘big bad’ weaving a tangled web. In this episode we theorise conspiracy theories - from racist myths about ‘globalists’ plotting white genocide to fevered dreams of Hollywood Satanists harvesting ‘adrenochrome’ from stolen children. What makes these absurdities so compelling for so many? What is it about the digital portal that invites us to fall into them? What have they inherited from older conspiracy narratives? And how have movements like QAnon used digital technologies to make believers feel like heroic sleuths fighting the good fight together? In this episode secrets are revealed, an anonymous informant spills the beans and we do our own research.
Presented by: Alan Finlayson, Rob Gallagher, Sophie Ludkin & Rob Topinka
With: Clare Birchall, Florian Cramer, Matthew Feldman, Annie Kelly, Hugo Leal & Wu Ming 1
Produced by: Sophie Ludkin
Special thanks to: Cassian Osborne-Carey
Music composed by Harriet Riley and produced by Tom Jacob
Find us:
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNdYeOghWVoIb4vZF0B9jwQ/featured
On Email: reactionarydigitalpolitics@gmail.com
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