Extremist messaging now woven into music and YouTube videos, with one expert saying: ‘You can be radicalised sitting on your couch’
The two men chop peppers, slice aubergines and giggle into the camera as they delve into the art of vegan cooking. Both are wearing ski masks and T-shirts bearing Nazi symbols.
The German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for violating its guidelines.
But it offered a glimpse of how far-right groups have seized on cultural production – from clothing brands to top 40 music – to normalise their ideas, in a process that researchers say has hit new heights in the age of social media.
I’m not sure the anti-chaos economic elite theory holds anymore. This has been the most chaotic year in recent history, spurred by far right racism, with pretty direct impacts on the shut up and shop economy of the United States, and the elite pushback has been tepid to non-existent. A few of them have been lighting money and their customer base on fire to support it.
It might be time to start entertaining the idea that the robber barons aren’t just bad people because they want to maximize profits through hyper-capitalism. At some point money alone isn’t the core pursuit and they’re more desirous of unfettered power. A weaker economy, but one where the government is powerless to regulate their activities and a normalized culture of corruption may yield less profit, but it gives them freedom and control to be untouchable lords.