“As long as we stick together everything is going to be OK”: An Examination of Aotearoa's Far-Right Subculture on 4chan.

My thesis investigates the digital far-right subculture, concentrating on the most popular board on the image-board website 4chan, /pol/ ('politically incorrect'), using posts by New Zealand-based users. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork over three months, accessing /pol/ multiple times per week and collecting posts from New Zealand-based users. Using thematic analysis, I sought to answer the three research questions guiding this thesis, (1) How do the communications of 4chan /pol/ users give the extreme far-right movement new layers of meaning and renewed relevance by combining old ideas of white supremacy with the modern aesthetics of ironic internet culture? (2) What function do disinformation and conspiracy theories play in the far-right /pol/ subculture? And (3) How can examining the themes discussed by New Zealand-based 4chan /pol/ users contribute to our understanding of the implementation of their extremist ideologies in the offline world? This thesis provides an insight into the ideological themes discussed by New Zealand based /pol/ users, and the overall communication style of this subculture. I illustrate how Aotearoa’s far-right subculture revolves around memeified violence, disinformation and conspiracies and a strong sense of white victimhood, fueled by racism, white supremacy, male supremacy, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, and misogyny. This thesis contributes to wider academic knowledge regarding what is driving the acceleration of far-right extremism online, with a specific focus on Aotearoa’s extremism landscape.