Abstract
Cynthia Miller-Idriss’s The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany is a timely and interesting look at the links between youth culture and right-wing extremism in today’s Germany. Specifically, Miller-Idriss examines the ways that right-wing affiliated clothing brands use, manipulate, and profit from evocative symbolic codes on clothing items like jackets and t-shirts. European clothing companies like Thor Steinar skirt German censorship laws by subtly altering well-known Nazi imagery along with creatively reappropriating Norse mythology or including cloaked references to extremists like Timothy McVeigh.
Miller-Idriss focuses both on the strategies of the clothing companies themselves, in reaching their intended audiences, and in the reception of the evocative symbols by the German youth who wear them. The author pairs in-depth interviews of German youth with an exploration of the ways that symbolic codes and iconography are manipulated to appeal to a sense of rebellion and masculinity. The aims of the study are insightful and crucial, examining how culture, economic objects, and emotions play key roles in extremist engagement, especially among youth. Her main argument is that culture and social structure “work most powerfully in tandem” (p. 184). Economic objects like t-shirts and the symbolism embedded in them can play a significant role in the mainstreaming of extremist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic ideologies and rhetoric. Miller-Idriss argues that symbols should not just be understood as tools to social action but may be constitutive, in and of themselves, of social action. In other words, clothing with coded racist messages can act both as a “background tool to everyday resistance” and a form of resistance in its own right.
The book is at its most powerful when it engages directly with the interview subjects and their interpretations of extremist iconography. The sections that examine the ways in which the German youth interpret these symbols within the context of their own lives will be fascinating both to scholars of the far right and to scholars of culture. From the interviews it is clear that the clothing in question can serve multiple purposes for the youth who wear it. For some, the clothing acts as a gateway to right-wing extremism, a way to dance around the edges of provocation while still maintaining a form of plausible deniability. For others, the clothing is a tool for broadcasting masculinity and physical strength and projecting power with symbols that connote violence and death. But Miller-Idriss is insightful in her examination of the ways that these symbols can also strengthen group bonds and serve as “powerful mechanisms of belonging” for the people who display them.
The chapter on masculinity and the embodiment of nationalism will be of particular interest to scholars of the current iterations of U.S. right-wing extremism, particularly the alt-right. Miller-Idriss traces out the ways in which “bodies are sites through which nations and national identities are constructed and reinforced” (p. 166). In this way, idealized forms of masculinity are tied directly to notions of the nation and group identity, especially among far-right groups. Interestingly, though, the display of hyper-masculinity that we have so often associated with extremists like neo-Nazis (the shaved heads, bomber jackets, and red laced work boots) has been challenged in many ways in the current U.S. alt-right movement.
The rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017 was for many their first introduction to the increasingly radicalized right-wing culture that has been simmering in the United States for decades. The “Unite the Right” rally brought out an entirely different and frightening aspect of the radical right, one that is seemingly designed to slip unnoticed into the mainstream of culture. One of the prominent symbols of the new alt-right is a cartoon frog with bulging eyes. Other groups outfit themselves in Fred Perry polo shirts and khakis. In other words, the new right-wing extremists in both the United States and Germany have been increasingly pursuing tactics to help them blend in with larger society, while developing systems of coded messages that signal their membership in various right-wing groups. But unlike in Germany, while groups like the “Traditionalist Workers Party” in the United States still carry the signifiers of blue-collar masculinity, others like the “Proud Boys” flaunt a preppy look that reads more like an Ivy League wannabe than a manual laborer. Alt-right luminary Richard Spencer has been written up numerous times, as much for his tailored suits as for his racist philosophies.
What this points to is the fact that the radical right is becoming increasingly aware of the variations within its target markets. In Germany, as Miller-Idriss notes, the clothing lines often target young men in their teens and early twenties, reflecting the popularity of extremist ideologies of youth in the manual labor and construction trades. These styles evoke physical strength, traditional masculinity, and violence, both through their symbolism and through the clothing styles themselves. One youth interviewee notes that a popular line of jackets are cut to make the shoulders and upper body appear broader.
In the United States, the target audience for the alt-right has been college-age young men in their twenties and early thirties. While the themes of hyper masculinity are still present, so are displays of upward mobility and social respectability (the U.S. white supremacist group Identity Evropa makes a show of their upper-middle-class styling and refuses membership to potential members with visible tattoos). All of this ties back to Miller-Idriss’s central thesis, that symbols matter in ways that are often overlooked, and they can constitute forms of social action. But this also points to a potential weakness of the study, or at the very least a path for new scholarship: the role of the market in shaping and reshaping the coded meanings that are conveyed in these “economic objects.” Given the desire of clothing manufacturers like Thor Steinar to grow beyond the European market, there will be inherent challenges to growing their customer base while maintaining a more or less subtle relationship with extremists. Miller-Idriss touches on this issue when it becomes obvious that not all of the youth who wear clothing with extremist messages know the coded meaning of those messages (for instance, a particular shirt is emblazoned with “186:1,” which makes reference to Timothy McVeigh killing 186 people in the Oklahoma City bombing versus the government only killing one person, McVeigh himself). For many of those youth, the clothing is appealing because it presents a sense of danger, rebellion, and power; but what goes unexplored is whether mass appeal lessens the power of the symbols for those who actually know what the messages mean.
The Extreme Gone Mainstream is both a deeply interesting exploration of the linkages between social structure and culture among German right-wing extremists and a field guide for spotting and understanding the coded messages that their clothing sends. The interviews are fascinating, and the writing is sharp. It will prove thought-provoking for anyone studying the rise of extremism in the current period and for scholars of culture more broadly.