Andrej Kotljarchuk & Francesco Zavatti (eds.) On the Digital Front-line: Far-right Memory Work in Baltic, Central, and East European Online Spaces (Volume 62 of Opuscula historica Upsaliensia) (Historiska institutionen, Uppsala universitet, 2023). 197 pp. ISBN 9198450972.
This anthology explores the memory work performed by Baltic and Central and East European far-right actors in the online space. Situated at the crossroads between memory studies, far-right studies, and media studies, the volume’s seven chapters show how a wide range of far-right actors, from small movements to major parties, have exploited digital communication technologies in order to establish their plays with the past in the mainstream discourses of their respective national contexts. With a focus on the online memory work of the far right in Austria, Belarus, Czechia, Lithuania, Romania, Sweden, and Ukraine, the anthology dissects the nexus between politics, media, and memory to show how digital communication has empowered the memory work of marginal but dangerous societal actors. As the different contributions show, the online space has raised the visibility and success of organised intolerant groups and, consequently, it has magnified the societal impact of their memory work. Thanks to digital media, the memory work of the far right can compete on an equal footing with state-endorsed memory politics. Through manipulation of the historical narrative and thereby the perception and understanding of the past in civil societies, on websites, blogs, and social media, the far right has succeeded in overcoming its marginality and in normalising its messages of intolerance on a continental scale.
Table of contents:
List of Illustrations ………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Foreword ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Introduction: The Problem of the Online Memory Work of the Far Right …. 9
Andrej Kotljarchuk & Francesco Zavatti
To Weaponise the Future: Digital Posters and the Counter-narrative
of the Second World War in the Belarusian Far Right ………………………… 29
Andrej Kotljarchuk
The Digital Lives of Dead Legionaries: The Infinite Archive and the
Online Memory Work on Romanian Interwar Fascism ………………………. 61
Francesco Zavatti
Memory, Ritual, Violence: The Online Sphere of the Nordic
Resistance Movement ……………………………………………………………………. 87
Madeleine Hurd & Steffen Werther
Antisemitism, Post-Fascism and Selective Remembering of the Past:
A Case Study of Far-right Memory Discourses in post-1990 Lithuania ….. 109
Justina Smalkyté
Wait, Who Were the Collaborators? Rhetorical Moves and Online
Memory Practices of the Czech Far Right ……………………………………….. 127
Ilana Hartikainen
A “Shitstorm” of Emotion: Discomposure, Commemoration, and the
Austrian Populist Right on Facebook …………………………………………….. 147
Vanessa Tautter
Comparing Far-right and Mainstream Visual Narratives of the
Second World War in Ukraine under Petro Poroshenko …………………….. 167
Michael Cole
Author Biographies ………………………………………………………………………. 195
