| Abstract [eng] |
The Alt-Right had appeared out of nowhere in modern political discourse. The Alt-Right had managed to be called out as a threat by politicians and media outlets, despite the fact that the term is obscure and could mean different both political and nonpolitical ideas and movements. Existing somewhere between real life and The Internet, both as a neo-nazi threat and harmless youths on The Internet platforms posting black humor memes, this political unit manages to be recognized as a threat without being united, having no central political program and, according to some authors, purely based on The Internet. Issue is being complicated that the term „Alt-Right“ has several different meanings and those meanings have changed over time as a reaction to political events. This creates an interesting problem, that a both existing and not existing political unit is powerful enough able to be recognized as a threat. This paper delves into the content created by publicly announced content creators of the less radical side of Alt-Right, the Alt-Light. By choosing the ones with the highest reach and quality content, Paul Joseph Watson, Lauren Southern and Milo Yiannopoulos and applying Network Society and Subculture theories, this paper works as a qualitative research to find central conflict tenets and opponents of The International Alternative Right, in the content created on YouTube between 2015-06-15 to 2018-11-06, Donald Trump's presidential bid announcement and USA Midterm Elections. This research might inject some clarity into the ideas of this elusive political unit. After that, Framing theory was applied, to find one central frame that binds different conflict ideas into one political story, thus allowing to see the main point on what The International Alternative Right are basing their content. The research has been split into several research goals – to find out what conflict ideas are shown in the content, what frames are used to describe said conflict ideas, what counter-power and subculture are being created by the said ideas, and what is a possible time shift of said found conflict ideas. After analysing the videos using a qualitative content analysis, several conflict ideas were found: Islam, Ideology, Media, Establishment, H. Clinton and her team, Feminism, Protests, Political Correctness, Social Justice Activism, Culture and Academia. Found conflict tenets were sorted out by time and compared in the timeframe, to see if any of them are a reaction to political events, or created randomly according to the content creators' wishes. The results show that the biggest shift was the disappearance of H. Clinton topic after 2016 USA Presidential Election, and that most of the other topics correlated to the content creators' wishes, such as Lauren Southern's highest channel activity in 2017, or M. Yiannopoulos new talk show at the beginning of 2018. Both counter-power and subculture found were based on “resistance” topic, as if it was required to resist encroaching political opponents and ideas. They both display this trait by giving criticism to political opponents much more than suggesting their own political ideas. Main media frame that was revealed after the analysis is that the Western Civilization is being besieged by various political opponents from all sides. This is the central idea that binds all other political opponent ideas together. End recommendations for researchers is to find out and codify the actual meaning of the term “The International Alternative Right” because the vagueness of the title still might cause a challenge to policy makers and academics. It is easier to find out the opponents of this political unit than the meaning itself, which might force a conclusion that The International Alternative Right is a title to be stuck on non-mainstream hardly-understood right-wing ideas, not a codified political ideology. Research conclusions might be skewed by the author's prior knowledge of the topic. |
