Ambient Extremism in Reactionary Digital Politics

This article develops a theory of ‘ambient extremism’. Where extremist digital forms and styles once circulated on fringe subcultures before entering the mainstream, the distinction between the extreme and the mainstream has collapsed, suffusing political and affective atmospheres with extremism. I show how reactionary performances of pre-emption, or the anticipatory naming of emergent but pervasive threats, settle into ideological formations, nurturing an affect of indignation and precipitating a rhetoric of defiance. Drawing on a case study of an anonymous X account that adopted anti-Islamic racism as a successful engagement strategy during the 2024 UK far-right riots, often by relying on AI-generated imagery, I argue that ideological performances accumulate in a ‘reactionary reservoir’ that absorbs viral trends alongside timeworn tropes, offering both the novel and the historical up as timely interventions against ostensible liberal overreach. Ambient extremism displaces deliberation over meaning with affective attunements to resonant performances structured by platform architectures.