Characteristic of many contemporary far right movements is a deeply rooted skepticism and suspiciousness towards mainstream media. During the PEGIDA marches in Dresden, Germany, “Lügenpresse” is a common slogan. The message is that hegemonic mainstream media conceal or distort information that does not fit the “politically correct” agenda. In Sweden far right movements, ranging from right wing populist parties such as the Sweden Democrats (SD) to more extreme identitarian think-tanks such as Motpol.nu exhibit the same attitude. (Holt, 2015) Radical right media channels therefore need to be analysed in the light of its position as a perceived corrective of traditional media and constrained public discourse. But is this a new phenomenon? In this paper we compare findings from two separate studies of radical right wing media criticism from different periods: the online contemporary identitarian wictionary Metapedia.org (Holt & Rinaldo, 2014) and media criticsm in the journal Sweden-Germany (1938-58) published by the pro-German National Society Sweden-Germany (RST). (Lundell, 2015) Our aim is to study historical antecedents to today’s far right media criticism and discuss contemporary far right media criticism in the light of what can be learned from history.
Ej belagd 20160427