RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST YOUTH: PRESENCE AND IMPLICATIONS ACROSS ALTERNATIVE PLATFORMS

Alternative social media platforms exist across various channels and are used by Right-Wing community members to endorse extremist views and promote radical ideologies.  The presence of Right-Wing Extremist groups and the proliferation of their hateful ideologies on social media alternative platforms has become a pressing concern in both Canada and the United States, reflecting a more global reality that resonates in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.  Concepts related to nationalism are fueling Right-Wing Extremist groups and contributing to a continuing emergence of hate speech on these social media platforms.  These racist and intolerant ideologies espoused on alternative platforms have particular appeal to youth.   The rhetoric used in the alternative Right-Wing Extremist media platforms is rooted in a sense of identity and exploits hateful and racist sentiments to heighten the fear that a viewer’s core identity is threatened by anti-nationalist social and political agendas.  This critical reflection uses poetic inquiry, as a research tool ideally suited to this study, to share the researcher’s encounter with the literature related to the appeal of Right-Wing Extremist alternative platforms for youth.  The intent of this critical reflection is to facilitate the reader’s experience and understanding of the topic in these poetic frames of reference. Poetry is used to interpret the encounter between researcher and data, and in the process, provide readers with a contemplative space to consider the immediacy of the descriptions in their own encounter with the experience.