European union as a road to serfdom: The Alt-Right’s inversion of narratives on European integration

Abstract

The Alt-Right, a loose coalition of far-right groups which are particularly active online, claims that European integration is a part of a master plan by cosmopolitan elites to encourage globalisation and ‘corporate capitalism’ in order to partly replace and ‘blend’ the predominantly white population with migrants from outside Europe. Many Alt-Right followers argue that this conspiracy for a ‘white genocide’ can be traced back to Coudenhove-Kalergi’s plan for a Paneuropean Union. Although this Alt-Right counternarrative to European integration is only believed in its entirety by a small group of people, who do not care that their historical claims are evidently false, bits and pieces of the narrative filter down to mainstream political actors. By employing narrative analysis and drawing on new research on online news websites and social media forums, this article will examine the Alt-Right’s narrative entrepreneurs and their narratives.