Joie Meier

HOW FAR-RIGHT LANGUAGE TRAVELS: A Comparison Between the U.S.'s American Identity Movement and Hungary's Our Homeland Movement

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This comparative study seeks to understand how and in what contexts American ethnonationalists and White ethnic Hungarian far-right radicals use the language of the so-called European New Right or Nouvelle Droite. My project examines how this French far-right language has travelled and influenced international far-right movements in the U.S. and Europe, and how American and Hungarian far-right radicals take up and circulate the theories of this French movement

Authors from Nouvelle Droite have gained popularity in Western European and American far-right groups¹
Renaud Camus’ “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory is one of the most popular theory amongst far-right radicals
The theory of identitarianism is also extremely popular, which links white identity to citizenship and ethnic identity.
“The Great Replacement” argues that “global elites” are conspiring to replace White ethnic populations in Europe with migrants of color²

Tweets from the Our Homeland Movement (OHM) Twitter page, the President of the OHM and replies over a three week period
Handbooks from the American Identity Movement (AIM) along with tweets from Nicholas J. Fuentes and responses to those tweets were collected over a 3 week period
OHM and AIM tweets were then coded and compared to the rhetoric of Nouvelle Droite

Both AIM and the Our Homeland Movement discussed ethnonationalism at the same frequency
The Our Homeland Movement did not discuss identitarianism, however
The Our Homeland Movement was also more interested in issues related to local policy, like childcare, education and public transport

How Americans and Hungarians conceive of citizenship likely has a huge influence in the appeal of ethnonationalism versus identitarianism
Identitarianism promotes vague “Western”, “White”, “European-descended” racism, which appeals to American White identity, which is rooted in a variety of European backgrounds
“The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory has found equal purchase in both far-right movements, indicating that the spread of this conspiracy goes beyond Western Europe and the U.S.
More research must be done to understand how jus sanguinis citizenship versus jus soli citizenship impacts how these racist conspiracies are taken up and spread transnationally

1.J Feder and Pierre Buet, “They Wanted To Be A Better Class Of White Nationalists. They Claimed This Man As Their Father.,” Buzzfeed, 2017, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/the-man-who-gave-white-nationalism-a-new-life.

2.Norimitsu Onishi, “The Man Behind a Toxic Slogan Promoting White Supremacy,” The New York Times, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/world/europe/renaud-camus-great-replacement.html.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The language of Nouvelle Droite is present in both far-right Hungarian and far-right American group members’ tweets and documents. Topics related to the conspiracy theory “The Great Replacement” like migration, globalization, and “elites” appeared often in both AIM and OHM language. At the same time, American far-right radicals used language of both ethnonationalism and identitarism, while Hungarian far-right radicals focused just on ethnonationalism.

VISUALIZING LANGUAGE FROM OUR HOMELAND MOVEMENT TWEETS AND AIM MEMBER NICHOLAS J. FUENTES

A table displaying key terminology frequencies (such as "anti-globalism," "anti-migration," "anti-modernity")for Our Homeland Movement Tweets and Nicholas J. Fuentes.

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory often encompassed such a large number of topics they were coded under topics like "anti-migration," "anti-globalism," or "Evil Big Tech" to break down the scope of the conspiracy.

A map shows several pins, meant to display retweet interactions from the Our Homeland Movement Twitter page. There is one on the eastern seaboard of the united states, several in mainland Europe, one in Norway, and one in the UK.

The Our Homeland Movement’s Twitter page’s iretweet interactions depicted on a world map. Each numbered pin indicates the location of the person retweeted and the number of times The Our Homeland Movement interacted with that Twitter user.

A map displaying retweet interactions from Nicholas J. Fuentes' Twitter page. There are several pins scattered across the United States, several pins in South America, and one pin in mainland Europe.

Nicholas J. Fuentes Twitter page’s retweet interactions depicted on a world map. Each numbered pin indicates the location of the person retweeted and the number of times Nicholas J. Fuentes interacted with that Twitter user. Note the pin labelled “2” in the Northeastern United States in Nicholas J. Fuentes map and the pin labelled “1” in the Our Homeland Movement’s map in the U.S. This is the same Twitter user being interacted with by both Fuentes and the Our Homeland Movement accounts.

Joie Meier

HOW FAR-RIGHT LANGUAGE TRAVELS: A Comparison Between the U.S.'s American Identity Movement and Hungary's Our Homeland Movement

QUESTION

BACKGROUND

METHOD

RESULTS

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

KEY TAKEAWAYS

VISUALIZING LANGUAGE FROM OUR HOMELAND MOVEMENT TWEETS AND AIM MEMBER NICHOLAS J. FUENTES