How the far right uses humour and meme culture to its advantage

In January 2025, during US-President Donald Trump’s inauguration celebrations, his ally and consultant, Elon Musk, made a gesture that many perceived as a Nazi salute. This act sparked widespread controversy and debate online, with some interpreting it as an endorsement of far-right ideologies, while others dismissed it as a misinterpretation. Musk responded to the backlash with a series of puns referencing prominent Nazis, further fuelling the discussion. 

Around the same time in Germany, supporters of the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) introduced the slogan “Alice für Deutschland” (“Alice for Germany”) to promote their leading politician, Alice Weidel. This slogan bears a disturbing similarity to “Alles für Deutschland” (“All for Germany”), a Nazi motto of Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary “Sturmabteilung”, suggesting a deliberate attempt to evoke nationalist sentiments.

Meanwhile, in France, an AI-generated song titled “Je partirai pas” (“I won’t leave”), which echoed far-right talking points about immigration, went viral on TikTok. The video paired footage of a person protesting forced deportation with an upbeat tune set to harshly xenophobic lyrics. It was used as an unofficial campaign theme for Jordan Bardella, president of the French far-right political party “Rassemblement National”. Bardella has more than 2 million followers on TikTok. 

Each of these incidents was met with a predictable cycle of public reaction: outrage, denial and deflection. Musk dismissed criticism as humourless overreaction. AfD supporters claimed the Nazi reference was a mere coincidence. The “Je partirai pas” song was framed as an organic cultural response, not propaganda. But looking at these cases together, a clear pattern emerges: Humour and irony are being used strategically by the far right to push boundaries and normalise extremist ideas.

Breaking taboos through laughter

Far-right movements have long understood that breaking taboos can be an effective way to gain attention and shift societal norms. In digital culture, humour has become a key tool in this process. Jokes function as a shield: If a statement is met with backlash, its defenders can simply claim that it was “just a joke.” This tactic, often referred to as edgelording, involves making provocative, transgressive or offensive statements under the guise of humour to amplify and legitimise extreme narratives. The example of Elon Musk shows that even mainstream figures use this approach.

The return of explicit hate slogans, now disguised as “jokes”, demonstrates how humour is weaponised in far-right spaces. A prime example of this phenomenon occurred in 2023 on the German island of Sylt, where a group of young, privileged partygoers were caught on video chanting the slogan “Ausländer raus, Deutschland den Deutschen” (“Foreigners out, Germany to the Germans”) to the melody of Gigi D’Agostino’s Eurodance song “L’amour toujours”. The video quickly went viral, triggering widespread condemnation. However, far from deterring such behaviour, the incident sparked a memetic chain reaction and became an online trend. The chant, originally an explicit racist slogan associated with neo-Nazi violence in the 1990s in Germany, was stripped of its historical gravity and transformed into a participatory joke. The song was played at private parties and public festivals. This shift – turning overt racism into an entertaining social-media trend – demonstrates how people become increasingly desensitised to hate speech when humour is used as a conduit.

Similar tactics have been observed in other parts of the world. In India, Hindu nationalist groups use humorous WhatsApp memes to mainstream anti-Muslim sentiment, often disguising exclusionary politics as light-hearted ­satire. Political parody songs, such as those mocking opposition leaders while glorifying Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have played a key role in normalising nationalist rhetoric in digital spaces. Meanwhile, in Brazil, former president Jair Bolsonaro himself frequently used humour as a shield, such as his infamous “golden shower” tweet mocking ­LGBTQ+ rights and leftist cultural movements. As in the German Eurodance remix scandal, Bolsonaro’s supporters also turned popular songs into far-right anthems, reinforcing extremist narratives under the guise of entertainment. By packaging racist imagery within humour, extremist groups make it difficult for critics to effectively call out their bigotry without appearing overly sensitive or humourless.

Metapolitics: shaping culture before politics

The ability of the far right to mainstream radical ideas through humour is not accidental; it is part of a broader ideological strategy known as metapolitics. The concept, developed by far-right thinkers in post-World War II Europe and borrowing from the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, asserts that before achieving political power, movements must first win the “cultural battle” – shaping public discourse, influencing language and redefining what is socially acceptable. After 1945, new right thinkers like Alain de Benoist from France and Armin Mohler and Götz ­Kubitschek from Germany sought to create a far-right ideology that could distance itself from brutal and violent neo-Nazism while still mainstreaming nationalist and xenophobic ideas. Through metapolitics, they aimed at winning control over hearts and minds.

In the digital age, humour has become a central tool in this battle. Far-right activists, from European Identitarians to alt-right trolls like British Milo Yiannopulous, former editor of the far-right “Breitbart News”, or Andrew Anglin, founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website “Daily Stormer”, have embraced internet culture as a means of spreading their ideology. “Racial slurs [...] should come across half-joking – like a racist joke everyone laughs about, because it’s true,” states Andrew Anglin in his article “A Normie’s Guide to the Alt Right.” Memes, slogans and ironic statements make extreme ideas more palatable. They encourage people to engage, share and join in the joke – even if they do not fully support the underlying message. Over time, this tactic shifts the “Overton Window”, the range of ideas that are considered mainstream or acceptable.

Digital pop culture and the politics of virality

Social-media platforms have supercharged this strategy. The viral nature of memes allows messages to spread far beyond their original audiences. The more something is repeated – whether in jest, outrage, or as a casual reference – the more it becomes ingrained in the cultural landscape. This has significant real-world effects: When the young people at their party in Sylt sang racist slogans, many of them may not have identified as extremists. Yet they were participating in a culture of “fun racism” that has been carefully cultivated through social media. The same applies to those who casually share far-right-coded humour, thinking it harmless. What starts as an edgy joke can evolve into ideological conviction.

Memes, slogans and other forms of digital pop culture often function as a “testing ground” for extremist ideas. The goal is to introduce radical content in a form that feels light-hearted and acceptable. Repeating, for example, racist stereotypes over and over again, even with some kind of ironic twist or “as joke”, will eventually result in the affirmation of these stereotypes. The rapid circulation of controversial memes on TikTok, Telegram and X shows how quickly extremist content can spread when wrapped in irony. 

The effects are not confined to the internet and have reached the international political stage. At the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, Argentina’s president Javier Milei presented Elon Musk with his “chainsaw against bureaucracy.” Musk, after mimicking Javier Milei’s iconic signature campaign move of waving the chainsaw, exclaimed: “I am become meme.”

Humour, politics and the right-wing comedy complex

Humour and politics have always been connected, but the lines between jokes and serious political messages are becoming increasingly blurred. Trickster-like behaviour – where irony, trolling and mischief replace traditional political debate – is changing how politics works.

Researchers Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx describe the emergence of a “right-wing comedy complex,” where reactionary stand-up comedians, satirical websites and podcasts form an ecosystem that pushes the boundaries of the socially acceptable. They change politics in at least two ways: first, by mobilising people through the “animating force” of irony, and second, by expanding the limits of what can be publicly expressed without causing general outrage. In “The souls of white jokes,” researcher Raúl Pérez exposes this malicious side of humour. When hatred is wrapped in satire, xenophobia in irony and fascism in jokes, it leaves mainstream society struggling to respond effectively.

What now?

Addressing the far right’s use of humour requires more than just outrage. If anything, moral outrage can play into their hands, fuelling their narrative of victimhood and rebellion. Instead, effective responses need to combine digital literacy, strategic counter-messaging and platform regulation: 

• Media and satirical literacy programmes should educate people – especially young audiences – about how humour and memes are used to push political agendas.
• Counter-memes and satire can be effective in exposing and mocking the absurdity of extremist narratives.
• Media companies need to recognise how their algorithms amplify harmful content and take steps to disrupt extremist networks. The steps recently announced by big social-media companies – such as Meta ending its fact-checking programme – point in exactly the opposite direction, however.

At its core, the battle over humour in politics is a battle over meaning: Who gets to decide what is acceptable discourse? In the end, jokes are never just jokes – they shape the way we see the world and, sometimes, change it. As far-right actors continue to exploit humour to push their agenda, it is essential that we remain vigilant, questioning the jokes we hear and the intent behind them. Only by doing so can we prevent humour from becoming a smokescreen for hatred and intolerance.

References

Göpfert, M., 2022: On dictators and clowns. Anthropology Today 38 (3): 22-24. 
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12729 

N’Guessan, K., 2024: Only playing? Ethnographic perspectives on ludic fascism in Germany 
https://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/files/2024/09/AP-209_NGuessan_Only-Playing.pdf 

Pérez, R., 2022: The souls of white jokes. How racist humor fuels White Supremacy.

Sienkiewicz, M. and Marx, N., 2022: That’s not funny: How the right makes comedy work for them.  

Mirco Göpfert is a professor for social and cultural anthropology at Goethe University Frankfurt.
goepfert@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Konstanze N’Guessan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and African Studies at Mainz University. 
nguessan@uni-mainz.de