The far right has long used popular culture as a means of promoting their own ideals. It is a common misconception that extremists live and act within their own, fringe cultural sphere. Whilst much of far right literary and musical culture is produced from within – think: 1978 novel The Turner Diaries which is seen as a Bible for neo-Nazi terrorists or the skinhead music scene - we can see a growing trend towards infiltrating mainstream culture and bending it to shape their own worldview.
It is not a new phenomenon and can be witnessed as far back as the ‘fascist epoch’ between the two World Wars. The 1935 Hollywood imperial adventure film set during the heyday of the British Raj, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, was lionised by British fascists as a homage to the racial pride which built the British Empire. The film took on a particular meaning for the far right in the 1930s whilst they were campaigning against increased self-government for India, a ‘jewel’ Britain’s imperial crown which was purportedly being destroyed by a decadent liberal class. More recently, Ridley Scott’s Roman epic Gladiator (2000) was seen by a British National Party activist, writing in party magazine Identity, as a welcome antidote to an era increasingly defined by “Coca-Cola materialism, gay rights, political corruption and cowardice - ‘long live’ films like Gladiator which inspire people to look towards a better world where decency and honour triumph over greed and selfishness”.
Concepts and ideas from popular culture have also seeped in to far right language and discourse, particularly online amongst the so-called ‘alt-right’. One film, which has particular resonance, is science-fiction movie The Matrix (1999), notably the scene where protagonist Thomas Anderson (or ‘Neo’) is offered a choice between taking a red pill or a blue pill. The former, if swallowed, will provide him with the truth about ‘the Matrix’ and knowledge that the world he knew was an illusion. Should he take the blue pill, he will return to his former life of ignorance. ‘Redpilling’ is a phrase often used by alt-right activists. Those who take the ‘red pill’ are those whose eyes are opened to the ‘reality’ of the world and how it operates (usually referring to belief in a global conspiracy such as ‘white genocide’ or the ‘great replacement’). Those who take the blue pill are content living with the false and degenerate promises of liberal democracy in a comfortable, conformist stupor - represented by liberals and others who believe the ‘mainstream media’.
