Right-wing populism as a worldview and online practice: Social media communication by ordinary citizens between ideology and lifestyles Open Access

Right-wing populism has become increasingly relevant in everyday and political life in the Global North. While some celebrate the electoral successes of nationalist parties, others are concerned with the polarisation, hostile climate and social divisions brought about by this latest revival of right-wing ideologies. Previous empirical research on right-wing populism has focused on two related aspects (a number of publications have reviewed the literature on populism and populist communication, for example Aalberg, Esser, Reinemann, Stromback, & De Vreese, 2016; Heinisch, Holtz-Bacha, & Mazzoleni, 2017; Rovira Kaltwasser, Taggart, Espejo, & Ostiguy, 2017): When analysing, the supply side, organisations, politicians and parties, their ideology, public communication, and representation in the media were studied. Research on the demand side concentrated on the social-structural and other preconditions of right-wing populist attitudes and analyses that seek to explain the electoral success of the corresponding politicians and parties. Our study complements this body of research by opening the discussion to an understudied phenomenon: right-wing populist communication by non-organised individuals (focusing on German-speaking users), in particular through social media. We are interested in how ordinary users express a right-wing populist ideology online and how this corresponds to the presentation of the users’ lifestyles and personal identities online.

This form of communication is relevant for several reasons. The ideology is spread not only by organised actors but also by interpersonal offline communication and online communication that is partly private and partly public, and mixes political and – at least at first sight – unpolitical messages. If we ignored these actors and channels, we would miss an important part of overall right-wing populist and political communication. In a number of studies, online communication by ordinary users has already been conceptualised and analysed in quantitative studies with regard to core elements of populism and from a media effects perspective (Blassnig, Engesser, Ernst, & Esser, 2019; Hameleers, 2018). Our study is interpretive and contextualises those elements with regard to overall ideologies and lifestyles. In particular, we assume that the connection between political posts and the seemingly nonpolitical presentation of the self on social networks adds plausibility to the ideology in the view of some recipients, expands its ideational and discursive links and associations, and shows its growing broadness and elaboration. Right-wing populist communication by ordinary citizens is not simply ‘more of the same’ if compared to communication by leaders and parties. It is less restricted by party lines, strategy and organisational structures. Furthermore, political communication by ordinary citizens is a mode of communication of its own, with its own style and audiences. It has its own reach, appeal and persuasiveness due to the underlying interpersonal relationships and connection with a specific life-world.

Finally, the analysis of right-wing populist communication by ordinary citizens allows for insights into a milieu that has adopted the ideology and a corresponding political identity (even though our view of this milieu may be biased if we only focus on self-selective online communication). Therefore, we are particularly interested in the relationship between right-wing populist social media messages and other posts that reveal the lifestyles and identities of the same users. Based on our findings, right-wing populism and ideologies in general can be situated and understood in their social and communicative context that is ignored if research on political communication focuses on the reception and effects of isolated messages.

We hope our contribution will help elaborate and update a scholarly conception of political milieus and political practice, in particular with regard to right-wing populism, in this era of online communication (while we would not deny the role of geographical connection and other media). The concept of the (social or political) milieu has been used in German-speaking sociology (for example, Hradil, 1987; Lepsius, 1966; Vester, von Oertzen, Geiling, Hermann, & Müller, 2001) to establish typologies and explanations based on the relationship between multiple dimensions of social inequality, basic worldviews, evaluative orientations and lifestyles, and, in some cases political attitudes and practices, including media use (Weiß, 2009). While it has been applied to repertoires of political information (Kösters & Jandura, 2019), we analyse active communication on social media as a part of the political practice of a milieu. While attitudes on a single issue relevant to right-wing populism have been analysed in the light of the concept of political milieus (Kösters, Obert, Begenat, & Jandura, 2019), our study encompasses active communication on a wide range of topics and elements of ideologies.

Populism has been conceptualised as a political strategy, a political style or discourse, or a thin ideology (Laclau, 2005; Mudde, 2007; Müller, 2016; Priester, 2011; Weyland, 2001). We adopt the latter perspective, but remain open to aspects of practice and style. Lifestyles, communicative styles, worldviews and ideas about political practice intersect in the online communication of politically involved users. We cannot review the vast literature on what constitutes an ideology but rather adopt an understanding often referred to in recent populism research, which defines an ideology as a

In this section, we focus on the ideational structure of ideologies emphasised in Freeden (2003) and similar approaches. Full-fledged ideologies confer a specific meaning for a large spectrum of political concepts (for example, liberty, equality) by linking them to other ideas. Thin-centred ideologies consist of core concepts and a number of peripheral ideas but do not ‘de-contest’ all relevant political concepts, and it is not possible to deduct positions on any issue from such ideologies (Freeden, 1998). In the case of populism in general and right-wing populism in particular, this structural principle results in a heterogeneous patchwork of ideologies with the same right-wing and/or populist core that then have to be complemented by elements from other ideologies (Mudde, 2007; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2013).

The core aspects of right-wing populism are a specific kind of anti-elitism (hostility towards the elite that are assumed to be self-interested or out of touch and fail to represent the people), the emphasis on a particular understanding of popular sovereignty (the unconditional implementation of a supposedly homogeneous popular will) and the exclusion of outgroups (based on an ethnic definition of the people and varieties of nationalism or nativism, while often also excluding other groups that are not considered ‘real’ and legitimate members of the people) (Betz, 2017; Decker & Lewandowsky, 2011; Mudde, 2007). Possible peripheral ideational and stylistic aspects and specifications of the core aspects include: a legitimation by common sense; appeals to the freedom of speech and a fight against ‘taboos’ and ‘political correctness’; hostility toward not only political elites but also journalism, science and other cultural elites as well as supranational institutions such as the EU; an authoritarian, plebiscitary or Bonapartist, illiberal understanding of democracy, sometimes in combination with demands for direct democracy; Islamophobia and antisemitism; traditionalism and social conservatism; homophobia and transphobia.; anti-genderism¹ and the defense of traditional gender roles (but also the opportunistic use of liberal values and the claim to protect minorities against other outgroups); different types of economic policy ranging from economic liberalism to expansive (but mostly chauvinist) welfare policy; and the construction of a perpetual general crisis (for some of these elements, see Betz & Johnson, 2004; Canovan, 1999; De Cleen, 2016; Decker & Lewandowsky, 2011; Hentges & Nottbohm, 2017; Moffitt, 2015, 2017; Mudde, 2004; Priester, 2011; Rensmann, 2006).

Based on our conceptualisation of right-wing populism, we now review existing research on (right-wing) populist communication and contextualise our own research in this field. Previous research has mainly studied or theorised communicative strategies by right-wing populist politicians and the worldview expressed in their discourse (Wodak, 2015), the presence of populist politicians in the media (Akkerman, 2011; Bos & Brants, 2014; Bos, van der Brug, & de Vreese, 2010; Herkman, 2017; Rooduijn, 2014), or populist online communication by political actors (Engesser, Ernst, Esser, & Büchel, 2017; Ernst, Engesser, Büchel, Blassnig, & Esser, 2017; Groshek & Engelbert, 2013). This research points to the importance of online communication in right-wing populism as a means to partly circumvent the traditional media and connect with adherents to the ideology that tend to be more active online than other political camps.

Content analysis of mass media and online sources mostly focuses on a number of the above core elements of the ideology and we would define right-wing populist communication as communication that refers to at least one of these elements (in particular, online communication conveys the ideology in a rather fragmented way – see Engesser et al., 2017). Nevertheless, the specifically populist meaning of each element implies others for example anti-elitism implies a certain conception of representation or the popular will, which implies a certain ethnic conception of the people. Research on populist online communication is still somewhat limited, and parts of the literature do not focus on right-wing populism but on other types such as techno-proceduralist cyber-populism (Gerbaudo, 2014; Natale & Ballatore, 2014). Larger parts of the range of the Internet's functions in right-wing populism have only been described theoretically (Krämer, 2017). Therefore, the present study addresses a gap in the literature by focusing on right-wing populist online communication by non-organised private citizens, including a wider range of aspects of their worldview and political identity.

On social media as a stage in the presentation of self (Goffman, 1959), users can reveal their personal way of life and connect with others but also express their political opinions. As an effect, people build, develop, and test their own identity online in interaction with other social media users (Papacharissi, 2010; van Dijck, 2013). Political and private communication can sometimes hardly be separated. Instead, politically involved ordinary citizen-authors interweave different aspects of their personality and lifestyle with political concerns and worldviews.

One can link this intersection of political and private aspects of online communication to the question of whether a new political milieu (or political-communicative milieu – see Weiß, 2009) of right-wing populists is on the rise. A number of social-structural factors have been assumed to contribute to the rise of right-wing populism. Its supporters have been described as losers of (or subjectively threatened by) economic modernisation, and the ideology and corresponding movement as a backlash against cultural change (Ignazi, 1992; Inglehart & Norris, 2017; Ivarsflaten, 2008; Oesch, 2008; Rensmann, 2017). Its supporters oppose the trend toward more postmaterialist, liberal, cosmopolitan norms, and values and the trend toward the acceptance of more diverse ways of living and identities.

Similar to earlier instances of political milieus (see Matuschek, Krähnke, Kleemann, & Ernst, 2011, on left-wing milieus, or Walter, 1999, on political Catholicism), right-wing populists would develop a specific lifestyle and political practice. Political attitudes that members have in common are connected to dispositions informing the everyday way of living, and a more abstract habitus shapes both political judgments and practices in the narrower sense as well as other aspects of people's lifestyles. In addition, a political milieu in the narrow sense would not simply consist of like-minded citizens but form an actual milieu, a more or less coherent, interconnected social group, partly organised in political and pre-political associations (on the development of the concept and research tradition see von Oertzen, 2006).

If right-wing populism becomes the basis of a political milieu and a lived identity, not only politicians and activists, but also other citizens, may express the ideology online and socialise themselves into a worldview that should become increasingly encompassing due to the work of elaboration that is being done online and in other contexts (Krämer, 2017).

The right-wing populist milieu may be less densely connected, and membership may be related to lifestyles to a lesser degree than in traditional political milieus with practices such as church attendance, musical, sports or other activities with like-minded people, politicised consumption, and political protests (or even violent actions). Perhaps the right-wing populist milieu has not yet evolved to a degree that defining offline activities other than demonstrations have emerged. As such, perhaps we cannot expect a thoroughgoing ideologisation of the many everyday activities in today's social environment. Finally, a certain conventionalism and consumerism of the underlying classes could prevent the right-wing populist milieu from politicising its overall way of living. However, we can assume that its members connect online and develop typical forms of political expression and protest on the Internet that alternate with corresponding expressions of typical elements of lifestyles.

In conclusion, social media have become an important platform of political communication, especially for right-wing populist worldviews, and are also the locus for the presentation of one's own personal identity and lifestyle, including one's political identity. This study analyses the connection between some specific lifestyles that are being revealed online with right-wing populism. This ideology and certain lifestyles may become increasingly intertwined, not only because of some external correlation between right-wing populism and some lifestyles, but because a new political milieu and political identity centred around right-wing populism may be evolving. Such a milieu could develop a particular social media practice as an equivalent to the typical offline practices of other political milieus. We therefore investigate the following research questions:

1. How do ordinary users of social media express central and peripheral elements of a right-wing populist ideology on these platforms?;

2. How are these elements of right-wing populism connected to corresponding elements of lifestyles and identities as expressed by these same persons on social media?

This study aims to complement previous research on populism and the media with a new approach: analysing right-wing populism as an ideology that is elaborated and expressed in social media practice and as an attribute of a milieu with its lifestyle.

Analysing an evolving ideology with possibly many personal varieties poses important challenges. It is difficult to conclusively define sampling criteria and categories for analysis. We therefore opted for an open-ended approach, selecting and analysing material in an iterative process until theoretical saturation was reached, (until no relevant new elements of ideologies and lifestyles were found, and we were sufficiently certain about general interpretations of the elements and their relationships). To establish these meaningful connections between elements of ideologies and lifestyles, a qualitative, interpretive approach was chosen.

Our methodology is based on a qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2004; Schreier, 2012) of online communication with aspects of digital ethnography. Although our approach is not participatory and not strictly non-mediacentric, and does not analyse a field as a networked community in the narrow sense (on such stricter criteria of online ethnography, see Burrell, 2009; Pink et al., 2015), we analyse online communication as part of a practice, way of living and an interconnected milieu that goes beyond social media, and use features of a networked public sphere such as user comments for our sampling.

As indicated above, we focused on non-organised, German-speaking right-wing populist actors’ communication on social media. We firstly considered publicly accessible accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and comments on established news websites, for analysis but then focused on Facebook as the most fruitful platform. There, we were able to include original posts, likes of posts and institutional pages, shares, profile pictures and information, which makes profiles more informative on this platform than on others – although we were only able to include public posts on publicly accessible profiles. Users seem to mostly use Facebook in line with the platform's perceived affordances (Bucher & Helmond, 2018) and function to present their selves, providing us with more material to analyse than the accounts on other platforms.

The personal accounts of commenters, if they were public, were examined in more detail and considered for further analysis if they were sufficiently close to the core of right-wing populism, that is to say, expressing at least one of its core elements: populist anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and the exclusion of outgroups (see above and the examples in the results section). We excluded users that presented themselves as members of right-wing populist organisations (officials of the AfD, for instance) and users that expressed even more radical right-wing extremist ideologies (for example, people referring positively to National Socialism, demanding organised violent action against minorities, or radically opposing representative democracy) and traditionally conservative ideologies (without strong anti-establishment views and without generally de-legitimising other political camps) as well as accounts that might be fake, bots, or might post provocative but not necessarily serious posts (‘trolls’ in the narrow sense). Our decisions were based on a preliminary interpretation of a number of posts on each profile and were discussed in the research team with regard to definitions of the different ideologies in the literature.

As our analysis seems to be the first to cover the relationship between right-wing populist ideology and the presentation of lifestyles on social media, our aim is to identify the most important and typical connections. We therefore focus on profiles that, after an initial analysis, seemed to express certain aspects of ideologies, lifestyles, and their relationships rather ideal-typically.

In total, 17 Facebook profiles were analysed in depth, while more than 100 profiles on Facebook, Twitter and news websites were examined, in order to select the most fruitful profiles and gain an overall impression of how typical our findings are. Profiles in the final sample were selected because they contained a sufficient number of posts that revealed both the users’ worldview and lifestyle. Based on the user names and profile pictures, 12 users may be identified as male users and five as female.

Selected profiles were analysed with regard to ideological elements and elements of lifestyles. For each profile, five to 18 posts were selected because they were relevant to our research interest (Table A1 in the appendix gives an overview of the material included in our analysis). Data from these profiles were retrieved in late 2016 to early 2017, and our analysis is mostly based on posts published in 2015 and 2016, with some going back to 2013.

All relevant posts per account were collected, paraphrased, and first interpretations were recorded. The analysis of the posts was based on preliminary categories that were successively differentiated into subcategories: core and peripheral elements of political ideologies and more general worldviews, and the presentation of lifestyles and identities.

Quotes, paraphrases, memos, and further interpretations were then compared across categories and user profiles in order to differentiate, modify, and complement the categories in a step of axial coding. The resulting categories and various individual elements of ideologies and lifestyles reveal typical patterns and more general underlying views and attitudes. All interpretations were validated by discussions in the research team. Our analysis follows procedures of coding in the tradition of grounded theory and category-based qualitative analysis (Boeije, 2010; Charmaz, 2014; Grbich, 2012).

For ethical reasons, we only provide verbatim quotes from posts or other information that doesnot identify the users. To illustrate the results, we will reproduce a number of anonymised screenshots and quotations that cannot be traced back to the profiles. Although we did not ask the users for consent, we concluded that there will be no harm to the individuals who became part of our unobtrusive analysis of material they had made publicly available: although the idea of ‘publicly available information’ clearly needs to be problematised (see Ravn, Barnwell, & Barbosa Neves, 2020) we conclude that we can analyse such posts and present the results as described above, and that notifying the users of our study may have led to more inconvenience to them and us.

As indicated above, the first step of our analysis was to investigate how elements of a right-wing populist worldview are expressed in social media posts. This step was followed by an in-depth analysis of the respective profiles with regard to further political and lifestyle aspects.

The elements of ideologies that were of interest to us were often expressed in shared texts or pictures rather than in users’ own words. They seemed to feel more comfortable with forwarding others’ posts instead of creating original political messages. The users often only added short phrases to express their reactions, such as ‘That's how it is!’ or ‘This must be a joke!’. Thus, we mostly cite posts that users shared and thus appropriated, reflecting the more frequent practice and making the users unlikely to be identified.

The selected profiles of right-wing populists were identified according to a list of core elements of right-wing populism we extracted from the literature. Anti-elitism emerges as the most prominent of these elements. Postings express disapproval of German politics and often refer to alleged personal misconduct of politicians (most frequently Chancellor Angela Merkel). These messages mostly do not justify this disapproval but, for example, simply label the respective politicians or established political parties as ‘traitors’ who disregard the will of the German people and implement outrageous policies. This anti-elitism refers to the field of politics more frequently than to other fields. However, mainstream media, particularly public broadcasters, are often accused of lying and indoctrinating the population. The profiles often link to alternative media sources but also to established media outlets if their coverage seems to support right-wing populist positions – a case of Haller and Holt’s (2019) ‘paradoxical populism’ that combines attacks against the media with affirmative references.

The EU and its institutions are mainly criticised for their migration policy, and the restoration of national sovereignty is demanded. Popular sovereignty mostly remains implicit in criticism of non-representative elites, but the emphasis on the will of the people sometimes leads to demands for a redemptive charismatic leader. One user commented a post by a right-wing author:

A number of posts also paint a rather critical picture of present circumstances in general and offer a particularly dark outlook. Given the present flow of migration, the future of the country and the German people is described in dramatic terms: Germany and Europe are ‘going to be annihilated’ as the ‘refugee industry’, which is kept alive by politicians, continues to attract ‘rapists and criminals’.

Other possible elements of right-wing populism, such as demands for direct democracy, are rarely found in the sample. However, some posts show that users participate in online petitions.

Both political posts in the narrower sense, and rather unpolitical posts (as well as those ranging in between) revealed similar conceptions of society, social identities, and social order. These similarities are particularly apparent when it comes to gender roles, the family, and the nation.

The most common perspective taken in the posts under analysis is that of a hegemonically masculine right-wing populist who: affirms his gender identity and status; protects his culture and the native population (with which he strongly identifies); protects women and children against any attempts to dissolve this order; and protects against foreigners attacking his ethnic community and those he ought to protect. However, independent of the user's gender, clear patterns emerge as to who is to occupy which places in society, to whom one owes solidarity, and to whom one does not. In the following, we illustrate these interpretations in more detail.

Beyond this type of identity and the more abstract distinction between ingroups and outgroups, gender is an important dimension that determines one's role in society according to the right-wing populist users. Femininity is expressed in photos and messages emphasising traits such as being loving and helping others, being empathic, or caring for children. Such characterisations are also often posted as results of entertaining ‘personality tests’. Women also reject what they consider to be superficial ideals of beauty in favour of ‘inner values’ and the role of the caregiver, whether at home or within employment. One post thanked nurses and professional caregivers for their work and thus demanded recognition for this type of labour, but only depicted women.

Men often pose with artifacts stereotypically associated with masculinity, such as weapons, cars, motorcycles, or tools. Sometimes, such objects are combined with sexualised depictions of women. Other posts contain penis jokes and rather misogynistic humour, but also similar statements without clear signs of irony. For example, one user simply described his former female partners as ‘the biggest mistake of my life’. To male users, women can thus be objects of desire and admiration but also contempt. However, masculinity was associated not only with displays of strength and virility but also joviality and cosiness. For example, the latter feelings are symbolised by teddy bears, which appear several times in birthday and seasonal greetings from and to male users. Perhaps one user expressed this ambiguity of masculinity when he identified with the friendly but drug-dependent and sexually promiscuous bear Ted from the eponymous film.

The mere enactment of the conventionally male and female habitus, and traditional roles, is sometimes complemented by explicit anti-feminism and anti-genderism. Attempts to break up and deconstruct the gender binary are met with hostility or mockery. One post featured a picture of a white woman corresponding to a dominant ideal of beauty and explicitly stated that the posting glorifies a certain idea of womanhood in order to provoke feminists.

People are not only classified and self-classified into gender and ethnic categories, but the right-wing populists included in our sample also seem to share a relatively similar conception of the social order to be upheld among the members of different groups and occupants of different social roles. This order is mainly characterised by a hierarchical, genealogical, and concentric structure of solidarity and protection.

In this view, the most important bonds are those with one's immediate family. A person owes solidarity to his or her relatives. However, relationships in the family are not solely based on reciprocal support. As suggested above, the assumedly weaker members are to be protected by the stronger ones: women by men, children by their parents, family pets by humans.

Users post pictures of their children and other younger family members that they are proud of, advise other parents how to protect their children from dangers in the social media and the offline world, nostalgically remember their own childhood, and are upset if free leisure activities are organised for refugees but not for native children.

Solidarity within the family is then extended in a graduated way according to social or cultural and spatial proximity, and finally to all those with whom one assumes to share a common origin: the nation. For example, ‘our women and children’ are to be protected against ‘criminal foreigners’, and support for foreigners and migrants is offset against help and social benefits for natives. For example, one user shared a black-and-white image of Angela Merkel with the superimposed text that translates as follows: ‘Hello Mrs. Merkel, I hope you will provide as many emergency shelters and as much money for the victims of the storms in Germany as for all the asylum seekers [using the rather pejorative term Asylanten]’. In particular, the native-born elderly deserve respect and support because ‘they built this country’, as one can read in several of the posts.

Solidarity and approval are also conditioned on honesty and effort. This is directed against members of outgroups who are accused of exploiting the welfare system (social security should benefit natives, in particular those who have worked hard) but also against elites who do not earn their money by honest work. For example, one person shared a close-up image of two dirty fingers with a caption reading, ‘Dirty hands are a sign of clean money’.

Other topics seem even further away from the ideological core of right-wing populism than those in the previous section (which may be partly subsumed under the traditionalist and exclusive aspect of this type of populism). However, they are not unconnected, as we show. Instead, they reflect the conceptions of belonging and solidarity described above, and often even sharpen distinctions to the extent that people are either seen as unconditionally caring or absolutely cruel.

Fan culture implies a sense of community and empathy with other members of the respective fan base, often combined with a basic disapproval of rival groups. Users in our sample most often describe themselves as music fans (mostly ranging from mainstream rock and pop music to German Schlager) and supporters of sports teams (mostly football). The links created by fandoms insert themselves in the system of graduated solidarity described above. For example, a member of a motorcycle club not only expressed hostility toward migrants but also shared a message from his club mentioning several charitable activities in the Christmas season such as donations for homeless people, an animal shelter, and a child with a heart condition. The post called upon its readers to ‘always remember the weakest among us’.

Ecological topics are not traditionally associated with right-wing populism but were mentioned quite frequently in our sample. Protection of animals is the most prominent and one of the issues where a Manichean view of humankind culminates. Many users emphasise how much they care about animals and share posts applauding those who dedicate themselves to animal care. These empathic postings mainly deal with animals that are traditionally considered part of a household in Germany, like cats or dogs. These animals are characterised as vulnerable, loving, and grateful beings. In contrast, there are almost no postings that focus on animal abuse within the food industry. An exception is halal and kosher slaughter. A user shared a post by the AfD demanding its ban and added, ‘[…] without parties such as yours, Europe would soon be destroyed and ruled by Sharia […]. The only party that puts the protection of animals over religion’.

Stories dealing with the catastrophic consequences of climate change cause empathic reactions among certain users who do not seem to deny global warming – as long as the victims do not seek refuge in Europe (we did not find any climate change denial in our sample, but see Forchtner, Kroneder, & Wetzel, 2018; Krämer & Klingler, 2020; Lockwood, 2018, on right-wing populist denial of global warming). Ecological scandals more closely related to politics and the industry – such as ‘Dieselgate’ (cars violating emission norms) – evoke outrage toward managers and politicians.

Both ecological topics give occasion to pessimistic and moralising reflections on how cruel, irresponsible, irrational, and selfish humans can be. In contrast, pets are always grateful and never dishonest, and they do not have a nationality; even pets from distant countries should receive help.

To prepare healthy dishes also means both to take care of others and to resist evil forces that seek to lure us into consuming unhealthy products.

Posts on animals, together with those on food culture (associated with photographs that display one's cooking skills), are often based on an implicit (and sometimes explicit) carnist ideology (Joy, 2011). It categorises species based on whether they are used for meat production and that unquestionably assumes that it is normal and natural for humans to eat meat. Pets are then inserted into the aforementioned conception of social order and solidarity; as weaker (potential) family members, they are entitled to protection and care.

Finally, we ask what ensures the coherence of the right-wing populist worldview as such, and what connects it with more fundamental attitudes and elements of ways of life. In addition to common underlying conceptions identified above, a specific style of thinking and argumentation seems to hold the overall worldview and practice together: ‘criticism’ as the emotionally self-evident distrust towards outsiders and conspirators who threaten one's immediate social sphere.

In a number of posts, the creators of the social media profiles style themselves as ‘critical’ in a particular way. ‘Being critical’ is certainly a cultural norm – nobody would describe themselves as uncritical. However, the ‘critical’ practice of the right-wing populist social media users follows a peculiar pattern. Many posts express a generalised distrust of elites and the ‘mainstream’, and the critical scrutiny almost never seems to lead to affirmative or ambivalent judgments. If one has to absolutely mistrust the elites, the most critical visions are most plausible, particularly if they conform to one's overall worldview. Most of the time, no further arguments or evidence are provided, but the messages are expressed in emotional terms, and their truth seems self-evident to those who also think ‘critically’.

This line of reasoning sometimes takes the form of a conspiracy theory. Not only politicians (or those who are really in power) conceal their plans to replace the European population by migrants from a culture that is incompatible with occidental values and traditions. Corporations also distribute poisonous products and keep powerful natural and harmless treatments of severe diseases as secrets. Finally, the media also conspire to conceal the truth and propagate a left-wing and ultimately destructive worldview and agenda.

However, most posts are phrased far less cautiously. Their emotional and plain-spoken tone and style seem to confirm their truth and, unlike the rest of credulous people, those who reveal these insights must be courageous and rebellious.

This version of the ‘paranoid style’ of thinking (Hofstadter, 1996) can also be related to the concentric vision of society and issues of trust and solidarity depending on social distance. Social problems are not addressed in abstract and structural terms most of the time but have to be assimilated or related to the immediate social sphere. For example, migration politics is described as a danger to women and children and compared to the question of whom one lets into one's own house (‘You cannot defend open borders […]. Dou you leave your door open in the morning when you leave your house?’, one user wrote, commenting on a quote by a social-democratic politician demanding to defend ‘our open borders’).

At the same time, general problems arouse mistrust because they relate to spheres that go beyond the zone of trust. They have to be traced back to the actions of mostly elite persons and those issues often become relevant because they concern, for example, children or animals, or health as something that is related to children's, one's pets’ or to one's own body. Other problems endanger the imagined community of the nation at least abstractly. Those who are not really part of this immediate social sphere or the larger community cannot be trusted and their actions are explained in voluntary but often rather abstract terms: they engage in conspiracies and other actions to further their interests (they are described as greedy, power-hungry or simply as evil and destructive, mostly without referring to more concrete motives). For example, one user shared a post in which several German politicians were mentioned, citing a fact-checking initiative and stating that ‘the Facebook censorship by the BRD [German Federal Republic] regime’ of those politicians ‘officially begins’.

Thus, fear for those one cares for, mistrust, courage, solidarity, emotional appeals and conspiracy theories mutually support each other. This creates an asymmetric worldview in which criticism is equated with the most negative view of the other side of the social divide between the elite and the ordinary people and between the ingroup and the outgroup.

We have reconstructed a worldview that goes beyond the elements that usually define right-wing populism (but found many typical examples of these elements). In addition to simple dichotomies between ingroups and outgroups, we found a concentric view of society, with generalised mistrust increasing if one moves from the most intimate relationships via social groups such as fans and members of the same clubs and associations towards the elites and those who are seen as culturally alien. Furthermore, users typically distrust established knowledge (on this radical distrust inherent in conspiracy culture see Aupers, 2012) across different domains and reduce systemic (such as economic or political) processes to malevolence and conspiracies, but also refer to alternative types of authorities and evidence. This is in line with previous analyses of populist knowledge that situate it between commonsense criticism of expertise (or ‘epistemic populism’ in the sense of Saurette & Gunster, 2011) and the systematic construction of counter-knowledge (Ylä-Anttila, 2018).

The counterpart to this hostile world is not only found in nostalgic and actually traditionalist visions (although native traditions are being invoked), but in conventional ways of living and the people and animals that are close to the self, as well as in the (relative) intactness of everyday life with its social order and solidarity that is assumed to be threatened by outside forces.

Users articulated a number of topics that are not often addressed by populist political entrepreneurs and not usually linked to populist antagonisms in public discourse. Posts on these topics confirm our assumption that ordinary citizens’ political communication is partly independent of professional communication and should thus be studied for its own sake. Demands such as the protection of animals or the legalisation of marijuana do not correspond to offers on the supply side of political populism. We can only speculate on the reasons for this mismatch. It does not necessarily mean that the political beliefs expressed by ordinary citizens are less consistent than those communicated by political elites, as Converse’s (1964) classical comparison of belief systems would suggest. Although these issues are ambiguous, they can also be interpreted rather consistently with regard to specifically right-wing populist frames, as the posts in our sample show. Perhaps populist parties and politicians nevertheless avoid positioning themselves with regard to these topics for fear of appearing inconsistent or offending certain groups of voters. The issues are controversial among conservative and right-wing milieus and are more often associated with left-wing politics.

However, right-wing populism is not only a world of ideas, a network of concepts (as morphological approaches to ideology rightly suggest) but also a social world that is inhabited by individuals: a concentric and hierarchical, but also a networked world, in which symbols for identities are circulated and appropriated, and specific practices performed. We have been able to specify our initial assumption that a right-wing populist milieu has emerged, which shares not only certain social-structural foundations and a similar worldview, but also in which ideology and lifestyle partly correspond. For many topics, we found relationships between the right-wing populist ideology and elements of lifestyles. Food culture is related to tradition and the family; topics of health and the environment are framed in an anti-elitist way. The affection for one's family and for animals corresponds with a more general conception of society with its hierarchies, bonds, and boundaries toward outgroups. Similarly, fandom is related to norms about to whom one owes solidarity. We argue that within the present type of populist communication, the expression of solidarity substantiates one's worldview with a moral commitment and strengthens the symbolic and affective bond to other members of the ingroup, neglecting existing differences within (cf. Hondrich & Koch-Arzberger, 1992, p. 13) and excluding others in a similarly needy situation (for a critical discussion of the concept of right-wing populist ‘exclusive solidarity’, see Flecker, Altreiter, & Schindler, 2018).

This conception, together with the mostly negative and sometimes even misanthropic or Manichean view of human nature, the general distrust towards most people, and the desire to punish the deviant is reminiscent of the classical concept of authoritarianism which emphasises not only hierarchies and order but also suspicion and anxiety about a threatening environment (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950, pp. 411–413).

Gender not only plays a political role when it comes to anti-feminism and the defense of traditional gender roles and of an essentialised gender dichotomy, but it also pervades all aspects of lifestyle and the aesthetics underlying the posts.

However, we did not expect and find a thoroughgoing politicisation of lifestyles. Still, users communicated about their way of living reflexively. To celebrate Christmas, to eat pork or even to post erotic pictures is then not only a tradition, habit or personal predilection, but is explicitly described as a symbolic act – a sign of one's political or cultural identity (for example, one user with a profile picture based on the German flag posted a picture of sliced pork roast with the caption: ‘Share if you also say yes to pork roast’).

We also contribute to a broader picture of the digital practices of right-wing movements as we have analysed the practices of those in the milieu who seem at the margins of activism. These people reproduce and appropriate frames and narratives, but are not the main ideologists and propagandists; they are networked but are not the main organisers and mobilisers of political action. People in our sample engage in active identity work but their pessimistic or even apocalyptic attitude and narratives might make them rather passivist and defeatist, even if narratives of decline are being used in right-wing movements to mobilise people for ‘defensive’ battles (on the myth of decadence, see Griffin, 1991; on the ambivalence between resistance and retreat among right-wing radicals, see Bures, 2020).

In sum, our findings lead us to theorise these users’ right-wing populism as a concentric and hierarchical Manichean worldview based on (mis-)trust, conspiracies and yet rather unarticulated grievances, with a corresponding conventional and partly reflexive lifestyle, grounded in a networked milieu that – in its typical online practices – builds and presents its identities around symbols of the ideology and expressions of its lifestyles.

We have argued theoretically that the ideology of right-wing populism, together with social classes with similar lifestyles, could be the basis for a developing political milieu. In particular, we assumed that homologous political worldviews and lifestyles are presented online by ordinary users, increasing the coherence of the milieu among the underlying dispositions. The link between everyday life and political messages lends plausibility to the ideology and people are able to socialise themselves into the right-wing populist worldview online. Social media activities seem to be an important part of the political practice of the milieu which otherwise seems to lack the sometimes wide range of (pre-)political formal associations and common activities of political milieus described in earlier analyses.

Our study also demonstrates how an interpretive approach can complement the more formal conceptions of populism often used in political communication research, in order to classify political parties or identify core elements of populism in the media. The present approach can serve to reconstruct the more fully-fledged worldviews that are being held and expressed by ordinary citizens. It allows an understanding of how populist ideologies fit into their everyday world and overall way of living. Future studies may then investigate the right-wing populist milieu with its attitudes and lifestyles by means of in-depth and biographical interviews and surveys, making way to establish further links between ideologies, typical ways of living, and further political attitudes and practices.

However, in the present study, the authors were primarily interested in profiles, not persons, in performances of ideologies and lifestyles in front of an audience, rather than private beliefs. However, we may of course ask whether the public (and often shared instead of original) Facebook posts in our sample could differ from the users’ possible other (private and maybe original) posts or posts by other citizens. Private posts by the same or similar users, if they exist, may for example be more intimate and/or more radical. During our analysis, we noticed many more extreme posts on other profiles but excluded those users because we did not find the elements of right-wing populism proper. If profiles like the ones in our sample had frequently posted more radical messages privately, this would somewhat undermine the differentiation within a continuum of right-wing ideologies which we would still maintain.

We deliberately introduced a bias toward the ideal-typical in our analysis of ideologies and lifestyles. More intimate posts, and posts on other profiles that are not active on the pages we used for our sampling procedures, may present ideologies in an even more nuanced and idiosyncratic manner, thus potentially increasing our bias.

Still, our own experiences in other studies and anecdotal personal observations of private profiles seem to indicate that that posts in our sample are fairly typical for users in the presumed right-wing populist milieu and differ from posts by users from other milieus (including the frequent practice of sharing instead of writing new posts on political topics). Future studies based on other sampling procedures and including users from various milieus would of course be able to re-examine this impression.

They may then compare the right-wing populist milieu with other historical and contemporary milieus – such as ecological-alternative, Christian-conservative, and socialist working class milieus – with regard to the degree of politicisation of everyday practice, the prevalent modes of political communication and the ways ideologies are being applied, elaborated, and recombined. Such comparative research may then advance general theories of political milieus and their practices in today's mediated environments.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).