This paper investigates how cultural institutions are symbolically and rhetorically mobilized within far-right culture war discourse. Focusing on YouTube, the study examines how public libraries and museums are incorporated into far-right conspiracy narratives. The empirical material consists of 3,549 videos from 11 Swedish far-right YouTube channels, collected via the YouTube API. A subset of eight highly viewed videos, all addressing libraries and museums, was selected for qualitative multimodal analysis. This is complemented by a quantitative topic modelling analysis of the broader video corpus.

Preliminary findings indicate that librarians and museum professionals are portrayed as tools, victims, or occasional as agents within far-right conspiracy myths, such as “the deep state” and “the great replacement.” The contested concept of institutional neutrality is strategically employed to legitimize these narratives. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how cultural institutions are appropriated in far-right media ecosystems to support broader conspiratorial and political agendas.