Fringe Discourse Networks 1932–2022: A Media Archaeological Approach to (Ex)communication and (De)platforming

Abstract

In 1932, the Dutch writer Ernest Michel was banned from publishing with a Catholic publisher for critiquing the Catholic church and Dutch democracy. After his ban, Michel joined Verdinaso, a political organization with strong ties to upcoming National Socialist movements in the Netherlands, where he continued to write, frequently advocating for free speech, and against censorship. In this paper, we will compare the case of Michel with the case of Laurens Buijs, as well as contemporary processes of deplatformization and replatforming. We will discuss the removal of right-wing political actors from mainstream platforms, and analyze their narratives of victimhood and cultural decline, as well as the ‘network of technologies and institutions’, i.e. the ‘discourse networks’ that make far-right and populist political communication possible. We follow a media archaeological approach allowing us to show the continuities in seemingly distant times and seemingly different material and institutional networks, as well as the discontinuities in the development of contemporary media. With this analysis, we aim to contribute to current debates concerning the governance of anti-democratic and right-wing media, and their material and institutional networks.