A part of German youth is attracted by fashion brands that make more or less explicit references to far-right ideology. Sociologist Cynthia Miller-Idriss questions the role that these products play in the adhesion of young people to an extremist subculture.
As European societies continue to question the dynamics of radicalization processes, C. Miller-Idriss is interested in the mechanisms of adherence to the far-right subculture through clothing consumption. C. Miller-Idriss is a sociologist of education and also studies right-wing extremist culture in Germany. These two combined specialties allow her to conduct a broad analysis among an audience of young adults and to examine the way in which radical iconography plays a role as a marker of identity adherence to a marginalized social group.
To do this, she opens her analysis to an innovative method in the subfield of literature on the radical right, that of the analysis of symbols linked to far-right ideology on fashion clothing. This allows her, first, to highlight the strategies deployed by these groups in the face of bans on representing signs that explicitly refer to National Socialism. With the support of an impressive iconographic corpus, the author then seeks to understand the reception of clothing products using far-right codes among young people exposed in their daily lives to right-wing radicalism. A way of grasping the role of consumption in the processes of identification with an extremist subculture, but traditional in Germany. The author therefore distances herself from an approach to political extremism through militant engagement. She opts for an explanation through consumer behaviors — recalling Roger Griffin’s approach to explaining the appeal of the National Socialist Party.
Seizing politics through fashion
Contrary to a tradition established by critical sociology, which has tended to study consumption as an instrument of production and reproduction of inequalities (p. 184), C. Miller-Idriss sought from the beginning of her archival research in 2009 to reflect on the role of consumption and fashion objects in the processes of identity and political construction of its consumers. In this, she is in the vein of sociologists such as Viviana Zelizer, who describes consumer behavior as cultural and creating interpersonal links. She also opposes the thesis of Robert Putnam, for whom consumption participates in a process of isolation of individuals (p. 186).
In doing so, she shows that the popularization by fashion brands of an extremist cultural style (“mainstreaming of extremist subcultural style”, p. 10) referring to National Socialism, German colonialism, racism, the valorization of violence, is an entry point into the radical scene. It is by seeking to understand the interpretations that are made of symbols on clothing that the author highlights the attraction to a subculture and the receptions of extremist symbols.
Understanding symbols “at the center and periphery of the radical scene”
C. Miller-Idriss has collected a corpus of 2,924 images dating from the Nazi period, the 1980s and 1990s, when radical subculture was booming in Germany, and finally a contemporary iconography. The result is an in-depth study highlighting in particular the importance of Nordic symbols (“Nordic symbols”, p. 200) in the extremist imagination. This iconographic study is interesting in that it traces a certain number of strategies adopted by the creators of radical right-wing brands such as Thor Steinar, Alpha Industries, Erik and Sons; we think of the T-shirts bearing the letters ” HTLR » (Hitler), in order to circumvent the legal ban in Germany on wearing badges referring to the Nazi regime; more subtly, the mention “Sweet Home Madagascar” refers to the primary intention of the National Socialist regime to deport the Jewish population to this island (pp. 56-57). The analysis developed by C. Miller-Idriss shows to what extent the iconography of far-right brands requiring consumers to make an effort to decipher manages to reverse an apparently restrictive legal context into a commercial asset.
The strength of the survey protocol is to study the perception of potential customers by presenting images of fashion items containing extremist symbols or codes to a sample of 51 young people engaged in professional courses directing them towards the construction trades in two schools on the outskirts of Berlin. C. Miller-Idriss effectively targets training centers where she will have a high probability of meeting young people close to the extreme right. The author thus identifies her respondents as being part of or on the periphery of the right-wing extremist scene (p. 183). Only two of them are or have been members of extremist groups, but 17 have friends or acquaintances who are members. If we look at clothing practices, 25 respondents say they own clothes whose brand is associated with the extreme right while 30 respondents say they know young people who wear them (see the enlightening table, p. 45). The author finally mentions that 48 of the 51 respondents have an intimate knowledge of the radical scene. The approach therefore aims to probe the perceptions of a diversity of young people whose common point is not so much commitment, as works focusing on radicalization processes sometimes do, but rather exposure to an ideology made visible by the consumption of fashion products.
Through these interviews, the author gives us a glimpse of the multi-vocality of the codes conveyed by products marketed by far-right brands. It seems that the blurring of symbols is attractive because it constitutes a game (p. 61) and allows one to avoid the strong “stigma” of being associated with the German far-right, while maintaining communication with members of the far-right scene (p. 62). It is striking to note, through the interview extracts, the fine understanding that the respondents have of the symbols and coded messages.
Far-right fashion among young people, the expression of an identity under construction
In a Barthesian analysis, the author shows how Nordic myths and symbols have been taken up and adapted by the German far right, which make whiteness a normative ideal and a national characteristic and allow a socialization to racism by identifying those who naturally belong to the nation and those who must be excluded. These myths, once “nationalized”, bridge the gap between an “imagined past” and an “idealized future” (p. 84).
The use of mythical fictions in the development of clothing lines appeals to young people searching for identity, particularly those who have racist prejudices and are attracted to violence (p. 105). These myths help them navigate the “uncertainty and unpredictability” that characterize the modern world (p. 85). They also allow socially marginalized young men to temporarily express their frustration and protest against the established order, in this case the school.
In this context, consuming products with symbols and messages that more or less subtly refer to an extremist ideology requires young people to have little political commitment: they can experience the right-wing extremist scene and leave it if they wish. The commercial strategy of these brands, according to the author, thus provides a path towards a less total militant commitment than for the previous generation.
In light of her results, C. Miller-Idriss rightly recalls the work undertaken nearly two decades ago by German public actors with young people radicalized on the right and speaks out in favor of developing public action that would address radicalism by recognizing the complex nature of the construction of identity and therefore taking into account the fact that young people engage in varied, sometimes contradictory, scenes and that they can go back and forth between extremist engagement and disengagement (p. 191).
It is regrettable that it does not undertake a more systematic analysis of the continuities and discontinuities existing between the perceptions that the respondents have of the clothes that were presented to them – in particular between the respondents who consume these clothes and their comrades on the periphery of this fashion. Similarly, a more differentiated analysis of the perceptions of the different types of symbols would have been appreciated, the references to right-wing radicalism being more or less subtle depending on the products. This would undoubtedly have allowed for a deeper analysis of the modalities of adhesion or rejection of the radical scene. However, there is no doubt that this work, by focusing on the adhesion of young people to a subculture through fashion products, sheds an original and welcome light on the contrasting relationships with right-wing extremism.