Music and Far-Right Extremism Online (MuREX)

Historically, the far-right has used music to finance activities, as a recruitment tool and a means to spread political messaging. The popularity and visibility of physical white-nationalist music gigs have declined since the early 2000s due to online streaming. However, digitalisation has provided new opportunities to spread and discuss music amongst the far-right. Streaming sites have continually struggled to identify and remove white power music and the music associated with the far-right has shifted, with more diverse styles gaining popularity. These developments call into question existing research that assumes a coherent relationship between how the music sounds, how it functions within far-right movements and how it supports messaging. MuREX’s aim is to understand how music works to support the contemporary far-right online, focusing on the distribution, reception and aesthetics of music within contemporary far-right movements.