Earlier work on music in research on the far right

Several scholars have focused on skinhead white power music and have argued that its stylistic expressions are connected to the value system of skinheads. Initially, subcultural theorists from the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) used skinhead subculture as an example to illustrate how the style of a subculture reflects its central values (see Clarke Reference Clarke, Hall and Jefferson2006 [1975]; Hebdige Reference Hebdige1979). Later, Cotter (Reference Cotter1999) applied arguments from the CCCS in his analysis of neo-Nazi skinhead subculture and the role of white power rock music as a carrier of ideology. Brown (Reference Brown2004) emphasised the importance of analysing the relationship between subcultures and music through his study of how increasingly radical politics can overlap with ideas of subcultural ‘cool’. From a social semiotic approach, Machin and Richardson (Reference Machin and Richardson2012) analysed how the music of pre-1945 European fascist movements communicated discourses of unity and conformity and saw this as a way to reveal the ideas and values of the movements.

Other scholars have investigated music in far-right milieus, often with a focus on how music can be used instrumentally to build community among activists and attract new adherents and supporters. Futrell et al. (Reference Futrell, Simi and Gottschalk2006), for example, found that activists in the white power movement in the US experienced strong feelings of kinship and fellowship when participating in the movement's music scene. Corte and Edwards (Reference Corte and Edwards2008) similarly found that the role of white power music was to cultivate a collective white power identity and to recruit new adherents to the movement. Shaffer (Reference Shaffer2013) examined youth involvement in the National Front and found that by adopting skinhead aesthetics and music, the organisation could spread its ideas and attract new supporters. Dyck (Reference Dyck2017), in her exploration of contemporary white power bands, investigated the use of the internet to spread their message globally and how musicians adapt their music to different locations.

Newer developments on the far right have also attempted to reform the music scene. At times, far-right milieus in the Western world have embraced lite pop, folk music, and rap music as attempts to escape old neo-Nazi stereotypes and create new images for themselves (see, e.g. Love Reference Love2017; Teitelbaum Reference Teitelbaum2017). The genre of neofolk has also gathered attention from scholars focusing on its often veiled far-right ideological messages that fit contemporary ‘metapolitical fascism’ (Shekhovtsov Reference Shekhovtsov2009, p. 439; see also Webb Reference Webb2007).

The present study resembles other research investigating newer developments on the far right and the resulting reforms to its music scene; however, this article argues that focusing on music as a way to understand a group's collective identity, worldview, and emotions offers a different understanding from parts of earlier research on far-right music, not least analyses of fashwave music, where the focus has often been on how music can be used to recruit new members (see, e.g. Hann Reference Hann2016; Bullock and Kerry Reference Bullock and Kerry2017; Gogarty Reference Gogarty2017; Kelly Reference Kelly2017; Love Reference Love2017; Smith Reference Smith2018; Reid and Valasik Reference Reid and Valasik2020; Hermansson et al. Reference Hermansson, Lawrence, Mulhall and Murdoch2020). While this is undoubtedly the case sometimes, as far-right strategies of ‘entryism’ can be very professional, it is also a somewhat instrumental reading of the role of music. Eyerman and Jamison (Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998, pp. 161–2) argued that understanding music in social movements as merely ‘strategic weapons’ of recruitment results in a ‘trivialisation’ of these movements. Instead, according to them, music has the potential to give us access to feelings and thoughts that are shared by the collectivities. Following this potential, the present article argues that insights from the sociology of emotions combined with multimodal analysis as an analytical tool allow us to move beyond an instrumental understanding of far-right music towards an analysis of music as reflecting the central values and emotions of the milieu.

Problem analysis of society and connected emotions

Existing empirical studies have argued that the ultimate aim of the Identitarian movement is to return to an imagined past of ethnically and culturally homogenous societies (Nissen Reference Nissen2019; Zúquete Reference Zúquete2018; Dalland Reference Dalland2019). The Identitarian movement's understanding of what is wrong in society, or in other words, their problem analysis of society, is tied to the idea that Islam and Muslims pose a cultural threat. Identitarians fear an ‘Islamisation’ of society and a demographic threat, which revolves around the idea that Europe is currently undergoing a ‘Great Replacement’ that Identitarians fear will result in white Christian Europeans becoming minorities in their own countries within a few decades (Nissen Reference Nissen2019; Dalland Reference Dalland2019; Miller-Idriss Reference Miller-Idriss2020). The Danish GI recently published an opinion piece in the Danish mainstream newspaper Information that argues against the paper's earlier identification of the Great Replacement as a conspiracy theory. GI refers to demographic statistics that it believes indicate that replacement of the people in Denmark is already underway.Footnote ¹ GI argues that the solution to this problem is ‘remigration’: to send illegal and criminal migrants ‘home’, to limit access for new migrants and, through different incitements such as religious restrictions for Muslims and Islam, to make migrants voluntarily leave Denmark.Footnote ²

The following sections argue that perspectives from the sociology of emotions allow us to understand the Identitarian movement as sharing an analysis of societal problems and the emotions connected to this analysis. However, adding an emotional perspective to the present analysis of the Identitarian movement, here exemplified by the Danish GI, is not an attempt to ‘emotionalise’ this group or to generalise its members as simply ‘irrational’. On the contrary, their defence of the Great Replacement theory and their ideas on how a ‘remigration’ could take place in Danish society display an intellectual and informational basis for their arguments and worldview. Notably, the emotions of nostalgia and anger that could be attached to this problem analysis are not irrational from the perspective of the participants; therefore, it is Identitarians’ self-perception that is important to understanding their motivation for participation and action.

Empirical material and analytical tools

Below, I analyse online videos produced by GI and their use of fashwave music. The empirical material analysed in this article is part of a larger online investigation of the far right in Denmark. From a non-participatory field position, I have studied different groups and organisations on the far right through their online content, their live streaming of demonstrations, and not least, their use of music.

As analytical tools to investigate the online videos of the Danish GI, I have relied on multimodal analysis (see, e.g. Kress and Van Leeuwen Reference Kress and Van Leeuwen2001; Machin Reference Machin2007; Jewitt Reference Jewitt and Jewitt2014a, Reference Jewitt and Jewitt2014b). Multimodal research provides a way to analyse the full repertoire of meaning-making resources that people use to communicate, including text, sound, video, and music (Jewitt Reference Jewitt and Jewitt2014a, p. 16), and has previously been used to study the music of far-right movements (see Machin and Richardson Reference Machin and Richardson2012). As such, it is a valuable tool to understand the meanings of the different semiotic resources that GI uses in its videos, i.e. how music, sounds, videos, settings, etc. interact to create specific meanings. The focus in multimodal analysis is thus on how different systems of meaning interact and contribute to the multimodal ensemble (Jewitt Reference Jewitt and Jewitt2014a, p. 27). The analysis will rely on a social semiotic approach to multimodality, which focuses on how sign-makers in this case shape signs and meanings. Through such an analysis, we are also able to understand the sign-maker's interest (Machin Reference Machin2007, p. 23; Jewitt Reference Jewitt and Jewitt2014b, pp. 32–3). This approach is interested in the ‘connotations’ or ‘hidden’ meaning of an image or sign. Importantly, this does not mean that signs have fixed meanings. Instead, they have meaning potentials (see Machin Reference Machin2007, p. 22), which invites us to investigate the ideas and values we associate with an image.

The empirical material gathered for this analysis consists of the videos that GI has uploaded to its YouTube channel. I watched all 70 videos available on their channel when writing this paper. The first video was uploaded in 2017, and within the last year, GI has posted approximately 20 videos. The channel is an important venue to understand the worldview, values and emotions of the group. The criteria for choosing which videos to include in the analysis were that they were illustrative of GI's use of fashwave music style and that they provided insight into the group's value system, worldview and emotions. Several other videos also fulfil these criteria but were left out of the analysis to fit the scope of the article. Other videos were left out because they did not use fashwave-style music.

Multimodal analysis of different aspects of communication and different systems of meaning in combination with perspectives from the sociology of emotions function as a valuable way of investigating GI's use of the emotion-permeated genre of fashwave in its multimodal ensemble, i.e. its videos. I have focused on how the music is integrated with the content shown in the videos and particularly on the videos’ style and aesthetics, symbols, and manifest words and text. I have also analysed the music that GI uses and the symbols, style, and aesthetics in the videos accompanying the music to understand the connection between the music used and GI's values, worldview, and emotions. Importantly, however, I cannot within the scope of this article say how the videos and music are actually interpreted by viewers/listeners.

From vaporwave to fashwave

To understand fashwave as a music style that fits GI's worldview and connected emotions, we first need to turn to the genre of which fashwave is an offshoot, namely, vaporwave.

Vaporwave emerged and became popular through digital platforms such as Bandcamp and Soundcloud in approximately 2013 (Harper Reference Harper2017; Glitsos Reference Glitsos2018). According to Glitsos (Reference Glitsos2018), the main artists lauded in the genre are Chuck Person, James Ferraro, Skylar Pence, and Macintosh Plus. Vaporwave tracks are typically 2–3 minutes long and consist of keyboard synth and a basis of digitally looped fragments of pre-existing songs, where the pitch is altered and the tempo of the music is slowed so that the vocals and instruments of the original songs are almost unrecognisable. Accordingly, vaporwave music is highly inspired by the sound of the 1980s and early 1990s (Tanner Reference Tanner2016; Glitsos Reference Glitsos2018; McLeod Reference McLeod2018; Whelan and Nowak Reference Whelan and Nowak2018).

In addition to the music itself, an important element of vaporwave is its visual components. The visual components of vaporwave have been described as ‘retrofuturist’ (McLeod Reference McLeod2018) and ‘collage’ (Glitsos Reference Glitsos2018) aesthetics. These descriptions refer to a specific vaporwave style that mixes the technoculture of the 1980s and 1990s with historic art such as Greek or Roman statues or commercial images from the 1980s and 1990s. This mix of references to different periods of time in both the music itself and its visual components has been identified as a satire, or critique, of late capitalism's lifestyle, iconography, and ideology (Ward Reference Ward2014; Jukić Reference Jukić2019). Others have, however, emphasised that vaporwave is not a politically critical genre; in fact, it should be understood as politically neutral and devoted to the recollection and nostalgic memories of an idealised (predominantly suburban American) lifestyle of the 1980s and 1990s (Glitsos Reference Glitsos2018). Killeen (Reference Killeen2018) argued that vaporwave attempts to capture the affective elements of lived life in the 1980s. Therefore, emotions of nostalgia play a primary role in this music style. Vaporwave is a way to explore the affective and emotional attachments to the sounds and images of (for many listeners) a past childhood or youth – in other words, the myths about happiness and ‘the good life’ of an imagined or real past. In this way, it resembles Boym's (Reference Boym2001) notion of a reflective nostalgia that through humour and irony values the shattered fragments of memory. Importantly, however, the feelings of nostalgia derived from vaporwave are not directed at something or someone; instead, vaporwave conveys a feeling of affective openness (Killeen Reference Killeen2018) – we are not told what to do with our nostalgic emotions.

This is where the offshoot genre of fashwave departs from vaporwave. Fashwave music is essentially the same music style as vaporwave but, whereas vaporwave is a value-neutral genre, fashwave adds an ideological position (fash = fascism). In 2016, a leading person of Stormfront, a popular far-right website, declared synthwave, a similar genre to vaporwave, the official soundtrack of the Alt-Right.Footnote ³ Since then, various groups and milieus on the far right have adopted this music style (see, e.g. Bullock and Kerry Reference Bullock and Kerry2017). Fashwave music and aesthetics revolve around a critique of immigration: through visual components and symbolism, and music with soundscapes that creates a sense of ‘alarm’ and that action is required (see below), fashwave express ideas of foreign peoples and cultures as ‘intruders’ and that soon a Great Replacement will exchange white Europeans with minorities in European nations. Fashwave music thus often portrays a restorative nostalgic (Boym Reference Boym2001) desire to return to a perceived ‘greater’ and more homogenous past. These ideas and worldviews are presented in a way that ranges from directly violent, with Nazi-inspired messages and symbols, to a more abstract focus on heritage and identity. Some of the most well-known fashwave artists that represent this range are C Y B E R N Δ Z I, Xurious, and dotL0ki x RetroRebel.

C Y B E R N Δ Z I, an anonymous electronic music producer, represents a part of fashwave music that is overtly Nazi-inspired and violent in its messaging, style, and symbols. In 2016, he released the albums Galactic Lebensraum and Angry Goy, with song titles such as ‘Right Wing Death Squads’ and ‘Guardians of Europe’. These titles clearly carry an ideological message or meaning by referring to Nazi ideas of ‘Lebensraum’, the expansion of Germany into Central and Eastern Europe, and through a plea for Europeans to fight for their nations. These ideological standpoints are also evident in other semiotic resources, namely the aesthetics of the artist's videos, which include traditional Nazi symbols and heroisations of computer games’ Hitler villains. C Y B E R N Δ Z I uses the references to popular culture common in vaporwave aesthetics but mixes them with far-right ideologies and aesthetics and messages of violence, which are not normally found in the vaporwave style. Accordingly, C Y B E R N Δ Z I embodies the more violent and angry branch of fashwave music.

The music and aesthetics of other fashwave artists, such as UK-based Xurious and Germany-based dotL0ki x RetroRebel, are less overtly violent and angry. dotL0ki x RetroRebel's tracks are in the classic vaporwave style, sometimes resembling chillwave that connotes a more relaxed state through use of slower tempo compared with the mentioned songs by C Y B E R N Δ Z I. The only semiotic resources that reveal dotL0ki x RetroRebel's far-right ideological standpoint and message are the titles of their songs and, to a lesser extent, some of the visuals accompanying these songs. Some song titles are, for example, ‘#FREERIGHTWINGISM’Footnote ⁴ and ‘DEFENDERS OF VIENNA’.Footnote ⁵ The first refers directly to their ideological standpoint, and the second connotes a more hidden meaning as it refers to the siege of Vienna in 1529, when the Ottoman Empire attempted to capture the city of Vienna in Austria.Footnote ⁶ Some of their songs include symbols carrying specific meanings such as the lambda,Footnote ⁷ the symbol of the Identitarian movement, which is a reference to the battle of Thermopylae in which soldiers from the Greek city-state of Sparta fought the invading Persian Empire (Pinto Reference Pinto2019). Xurious’ music and aesthetics are similar to those of dotL0ki x RetroRebel. Xurious has released songs with titles such as ‘Revolt Against the Modern World’Footnote ⁸ and ‘Ode to Son’,Footnote ⁹ where he depicts European heritage as superior and promotes a restorative nostalgic desire to return to a past of perceived greatness, for example, through the use of classical paintings to show a cultural and philosophical heritage and through poems to demonstrate how European heritage and history are passed down to Europe's sons, who must continue to defend it. These are accompanied by vaporwave music.

Fashwave music ranges from overtly Nazi-inspired, violent and sonically perceivable as aggressive or angry, to ‘softer’ electronic music, which is more focused on heritage and identity without being ‘angry’ music per se. However, what all fashwave music often shares is a problem analysis and connected emotions. The emotion of restorative nostalgia is central; shown, for example, through references to an imagined past of a more homogenous, more renowned European population or, in vaporwave style, through the ‘good life’ of an imagined past. Underlying and connected to the emotion of nostalgia is, I argue, a form of righteous anger (Collins Reference Collins2004), sometimes expressed directly, other times more subtly, in the music. This anger is directed towards those who are to blame for the ‘intrusion’ of Europe, which will end in a ‘Great Replacement’, i.e. immigrants, mainly Muslims, and the liberal elites who promote a globalised societal structure that endangers sacred symbols of European heritage and culture.

Generation Identitær and fashwave

Several subgroups of the Identitarian movement have adopted fashwave music style as part of their cultural repertoire, especially as part of their online video material.Footnote ¹⁰ Here, I focus on one of these subgroups, the Danish GI.

Unusual even for far-right groups that often use fashwave music, GI produced and published its own fashwave song, ‘Søren Hviid Wave’, in 2017.Footnote ¹¹ Søren Hviid Pedersen is a Danish national conservative opinion-maker and former associate professor of political science at the University of Southern Denmark. GI's song consists of different meaning-making resources as it is a mix of excerpts from one of Pedersen's speeches and vaporwave style music and aesthetics. The song opens with vaporwave music, and then Pedersen says, ‘The country and the Europe we know and identify with is changing […] especially in connection with multiculturalism, migration, and especially around Islam’.Footnote ¹² The electronic music then continues at a higher tempo before slowing for the next excerpt from the speech: ‘A feeling of loss of identity and a fear of losing traditions and becoming a minority in one's own country […] that is what you react against’. The upbeat, energetic electronic music then continues before the final excerpt from the speech:

The song is accompanied by a vaporwave style collage. The title of the song, ‘Søren Hviid Wave’, is written in pastel colours in a retrofuturistic 1980s style. The background consists of a picture of Marmorkirken, a famous church in Copenhagen, with bright lights beaming from the church's roof. The church probably represents a valued Christian cultural heritage, and through this use of the church, it becomes a response to Islam and Muslims, which Søren Hviid Pedersen names as cultural and demographic threats to Denmark and Europe. A picture of Pedersen is in the foreground, almost as if he is protecting the church. The interaction of the different semiotic resources of the vaporwave music, the speech by a national conservative opinion-maker and the vaporwave aesthetics accompanying the song make up a multimodal ensemble that provides an understanding of GI's problem analysis, and it embodies some of the emotions connected to this analysis. Even though the music in this case is not easily categorised as ‘angry’, as white power rock is, the song still conveys anger through the use of Pedersen's speech. It shows a form of righteous anger (Collins Reference Collins2004): GI is angry at Muslims who they perceive as threatening sacred values and symbols such as the church, identity and tradition, and it is angry at politicians who do not recognise that this is a civilizational and cultural problem and not a social problem. It also displays a restorative nostalgic (Boym Reference Boym2001) desire to return to a past with a more homogenous Danish society, where a perceived ‘true’ identity can be fulfilled again. We can understand GI's production of its own fashwave song as part of a ‘hidden’ meaning of GI. Outsiders may not comprehend the meaning behind producing exactly this kind of music and calling the song ‘Søren Hviid Wave’. It requires inside knowledge about the group and its use of signs and symbols and about the genre of fashwave to decipher the meaning and attached emotions behind the song; arguably, this ‘exclusiveness’ could be part of the enjoyment of producing such a song. Hence, the video is accompanied by a short text written by GI: ‘When we need energy and motivation Monday morning, we of course listen to Søren Hviid Wave’. Accordingly, we can understand fashwave music as something that is joyful for GI members and as part of the hidden meaning, or language, of this group – in other words, a part of the connotative meanings that constitute the community and exclusivity of the group. We can also understand the upbeat style of the music as instilling a motivation to do something about what it perceives as wrong with the current state of society and to act upon the emotions of anger and nostalgia. As such, it can be understood as an example of how nostalgia can also be a productive emotion (Smith and Campbell Reference Smith and Campbell2017; Blunt Reference Blunt2003; Boym Reference Boym2001). This motivation is evident in GI's other online videos where the group also uses fashwave music.

One of the most common types of videos that GI publishes on its YouTube channel is what it calls ‘action videos’. These are often videos of GI members hanging large banners with an ideological message in public spaces. Two examples of these videos from 2019, which include fashwave music, are ‘Stop the Great Replacement! – Action in Nørrebro’Footnote ¹³ and ‘Action in Aalborg: Stop the Great Replacement!’Footnote ¹⁴ The ideological statement in these videos is evident in their titles and in the messages on the banners that they present. In addition to the communication through the visual content of the videos, both videos are accompanied by fashwave tracks from RetroRebel x dotL0ki. The video filmed in Nørrebro, a section of Copenhagen that is one of the most multicultural areas in Denmark, starts with the introduction from a track called ‘Glitched Utopia’Footnote ¹⁵ while offering footage from the streets of Nørrebro. The video shows immigrant families on the streets, women wearing veils, immigrant men selling different products under a bridge and buildings covered in graffiti. The ominous and dissonant synth brass soundscape used in the introduction is ‘alarmist’, meaning that the viewer feels a sense that something is wrong. The setting itself here becomes part of the connotative meaning of the video. Nørrebro is portrayed as ‘anti-Danish’ or a part of Denmark that has been ‘invaded’ by Muslims and Islam. Nørrebro and its connotative meaning becomes what GI demonstrates against in the video. The video then cuts to GI members running up the stairs to a train station in Nørrebro – the music here becomes upbeat and energetic as the GI members hang the banner reading ‘Stop the Great Replacement’ from a bridge that crosses a main street in Nørrebro.

The video from Aalborg follows the same structure. Here, the track ‘Neon Reconquista’Footnote ¹⁶ accompanies the action in the video. The GI members hang their banner on the main bridge in Aalborg. They ignite flares, and they all chant with their fists in the air. The title of the fashwave track in the video is a reference to the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula, where Christian states sought to recapture territory that the Muslims had captured in the early 8th century.Footnote ¹⁷

In this way, through the different semiotic resources used and adopted by the group, the multimodal ensemble of the videos provides insight into GI's problem analysis. What from the outside appears to be mainstream electronic music has another meaning as part of GI's code or ‘hidden’ meaning. By using this form of fashwave music in its online videos to express what it perceives is wrong with society, GI draws on classic vaporwave emotionality and the associated emotions of nostalgia for an imagined better past while adding an ideological element that is not present in vaporwave music. The nostalgia here becomes a restorative nostalgia that idealises the past in light of a critique of the present. However, it can also be understood as productive nostalgic emotions, as GI through its activism fights for what it perceives will be a better future. The music also fits the way GI members understand themselves, as modern representatives of the Reconquista, defending the European heritage, identity, and future against perceived Muslim intruders. Drawing on ‘hidden’ connotations of fashwave music can be understood as a factor that adds to the exclusivity and community of the group – aspects that an outsider would not necessarily comprehend. Furthermore, the emotionality connected to GI members’ problem analysis of society and to their understanding of themselves and their role in this analysis is evident in the videos. They turn their righteous anger (Collins Reference Collins2004) towards the Muslim population in Denmark, and they show this by situating their banners and demonstrations in the areas with the largest Muslim populations in Denmark while expressing their anger by holding flares and chanting.

Another example of how the semiotic resource of fashwave music style provides insight into GI's problem analysis and emotions is the video ‘Europe is ours! – Action in Rådhuspladsen’.Footnote ¹⁸ The video is from 1 June 2019, when there was an Islamic event at Rådhuspladsen during Ramadan. Rådhuspladsen, the main city square in Copenhagen, often used for large national celebrations such as the national teams’ football and handball victories, was filled with Muslims celebrating Ramadan. As the sun was about to set, an Islamic prayer was given. As the prayer began, GI members who had rented a hotel room overlooking Rådhuspladsen displayed a large banner with the text ‘Europe is ours’. The video starts with footage on the ground at Rådhuspladsen showing the Muslims who had gathered, some carrying food, some preparing to pray. We hear an Islamic prayer as the video starts, with underlying fashwave style music. We then see a clip of the GI activists preparing to display the banner. Islamic prayer continues to be played, as well as the underlying fashwave style music. We then see a GI member preparing to give a speech through a megaphone. He steps out on the balcony of the hotel room and begins his speech:

While he delivers the speech, the Islamic prayer that we heard in the beginning disappears. We see the banner from Rådhuspladsen while the speech is given, and we see some of the gathered Muslims filming the speech and banner with their phones. As the speech ends and the GI members collectively yell ‘EUROPE IS OURS!’, the fashwave style music is amplified. The show of emotion here is evident. The GI members clearly express a form of righteous anger (Collins Reference Collins2004) towards the Muslims at Rådhuspladsen, who are seen as symbolising the process of replacing white Europeans as majorities in their own countries and as defiling a sacred national symbol such as Rådhuspladsen. The Muslims are thus the target of the emotion of anger expressed in the video. By drawing on the tradition of vaporwave style and emotions, the emotion of anger is, however, closely linked to emotions of restorative nostalgia for an imagined time before the ‘foreign and hostile’ Muslims came to Denmark and Europe, which is also stated in the speech.

This form of nostalgia can also be found in other GI videos. An example is ‘Memorial procession for the battle at Kahlenberg’ from 2019.Footnote ¹⁹ This is a multimodal ensemble drawing on different systems of meaning and associations. The title refers to the 1683 Battle of Vienna that took place at Kahlenberg, near Vienna in Austria, when a Christian coalition defeated a force from the Ottoman Empire. The video shows Danish GI members attending a demonstration in Vienna. We see the demonstrators walking through the streets with torches and a large banner that says ‘Liberation of Vienna 1683 – Defend Europe!’ and banners showing a caricature of Marco d'Aviano, an Italian Capuchin friar who played a crucial role in uniting the Christian coalition against the Ottoman Turks. Accompanying the video is a fashwave track from Xurious called ‘Apotheosis’.Footnote ²⁰ The track starts out very calm, similar to a hymn. This section is used in the video, as we see the demonstrators walking with banners and torches. The term apotheosis means elevating someone or something to a godlike stature. The song itself does not indicate that it has anything to do with the far right. It is not ‘angry’ or ‘hate’ music in its style. To grasp the ‘hidden’ connotative meaning of the song in GI's use, we need to understand the underlying messages of fashwave music. Using this song in a video about a historic battle between a Christian coalition and a Muslim empire emphasises the status that GI accords to the Christians who actively fought against Muslims to defend their own territory. The video becomes an example of the strong emotion of nostalgia – a nostalgic remembrance of those who fought for white Christian identity and heritage. These are the values that GI wants to resurrect in contemporary society, where it identifies problems similar to those experienced by those who fought in the Battle of Vienna. There is thus a restorative nostalgic longing for an (imagined) monocultural and more ethnically homogenous past. As discussed above, nostalgia is fundamental to vaporwave music, but as shown here, fashwave nostalgia does not reminisce about ‘the good life’ of a carefree childhood but rather about an imagined past of ethnic and cultural homogeneity. By combining vaporwave style and far-right ideology, the use of fashwave as a semiotic resource enables us to understand how emotions of anger and nostalgia are connected. Anger is expressed towards Muslims, whom the GI blames for the Great Replacement that will, in essence, make Denmark a Muslim majority country in the future. The anger resembles Collins’ (Reference Collins2004) notion of righteous anger, as it is directed at those believed to be threatening sacred national symbols, values and traditions. Nostalgic emotions are directed at an imagined past before Denmark and Europe became ‘infected’ with Muslims and Islam, resembling Boym's (Reference Boym2001) notion of restorative nostalgia. Fashwave thus adds an element of political analysis that was not previously part of vaporwave, and it adds connected emotions of anger and new emotions of nostalgia. In this way, fashwave music style and aesthetics embody and enable us to understand the shared values and emotions of ethnic nationalist groups such as GI.

Emotions such as nostalgia and anger can, however, also have another effect. Anger is often directed at someone or something specific, and through this process, anger can also unite those who share the emotion and agree on the targets of the anger (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2001). Similarly, emotions of nostalgia can be important in building community and social connectedness (Wildschut et al. Reference Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt and Routledge2006, Reference Wildschut, Sedikides, Routledge, Arndt and Cordaro2010). At the end of the video from Vienna, we observe GI members having a good time drinking beers with other demonstrators as the music becomes more energetic and upbeat. In the video from Rådhuspladsen, the community shared by the GI members is emphasised, and we obtain a sense of their togetherness as they yell ‘Europe is ours’ at the Muslims in the square. Other videos more directly depict the community among GI members, and these videos are also accompanied by fashwave music. The video ‘Identitær weekend 2019’ shows GI members at a summer house taking part in activities such as boxing, training, running, playing guitar, swimming in the ocean, and discussing politics and philosophy. The video is accompanied by L0ki x RetroRebel's track ‘#FREERIGHTWINGISM’,Footnote ²¹ which is upbeat and energetic and reflects the sense of community and togetherness portrayed in the video. Accordingly, we can observe how a shared understanding of problems in society, a shared object of anger, a shared idea of a better version of society, and a shared understanding of precisely how it was better in the past can instil a sense of community. In this way, emotions of anger and nostalgia can be understood as productive. As Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2001) argued, emotions do things; they align individuals with communities. These feelings of togetherness and community can be understood as part of the attraction to groups such as GI.

The use of fashwave music itself can also be understood as creating a form of community or part of the community of groups such as GI. Eyerman and Jamison (Reference Eyerman and Jamison1998, pp. 161–3) argued that the construction of meaning through music is a central aspect of collective identity formation in social movements and that music binds the individual to a collective consciousness through the memories it invokes (see also Street Reference Street2012). Fashwave music is at its core oriented towards the perceived greater past. As such, this music, by invoking memories of the past, binds GI members to a collective consciousness that is rooted in an appraisal of the perceived glories of a shared past of the European people. Furthermore, most fashwave music can, as mentioned above, be understood as a form of coded language, resembling what Shekhovtsov (Reference Shekhovtsov2009) called apoliteic music. The music itself often does not reveal an ideological position or far-right worldview. Typically, it is only the title of the song that expresses its ideology, although sometimes this is not the case, as in, for example, some of the songs that GI uses in its online videos. Knowing the inherent ideological position of fashwave music and the symbolic meaning of its songs and aesthetics, therefore, could also be understood as part of collective identity formation. In other words, if one knows that GI calls its song ‘Søren Hviid Wave’ because this is a reference to the genre of fashwave, and if one knows that the songs in the ‘action videos’ are actually from fashwave artists, then one is in the know – he or she carries the knowledge, values and ideas of the group. This knowledge often pertains to the few; typically, only the insiders know the meaning of the music style, and this knowledge can be understood as adding to the feeling of community and togetherness among the participants in the group. From a researcher's standpoint, attempts to decipher the meaning of the music can provide valuable insights into the values, worldviews and emotions of these milieus.