Going Extreme: How Extremist Narratives Are Destroying Democracies

On 12 November the UAB Faculty of Arts & Humanities will inaugurate an exhibition entitled “Going Extreme: How Extremist Narratives Are Destroying Democracies”. The exhibition will be on display until 18 December and forms part of the ARENAS research project, in charge of analysing the effects of extremist narratives on the internet and in today's society. Visitors will be able to discover the main extremist narratives circulating currently around Europe, as well as historical patterns, formats and evolution, and mechanisms existing to help detect them. The exhibition puts emphasis on the issues of nation, gender and science, and alerts about their growing influence on political and social life. The inauguration will include the participation of Margarita Freixas, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities; Nicola di Nino, vice-dean of Employability, International Mobility and Culture; and Steven Forti, exhibition curator and lecturer in Modern History at the UAB.

Extremist narratives and hate speech are being spread increasingly on the internet and social networks, reaching the computers and mobile phones of millions of people. In many cases, these narratives and speeches have become normalised and mainstream. The dynamics that occur in the digital world are intertwined with what happens in real life, causing a continuous feedback loop that is difficult to regulate. In the past decade, the rise of far-right parties and anti-democratic leaders around the world has accelerated the spread of these speeches and has favoured their legitimation.

An infinite number of websites and profiles on social networks, as well as traditional media and far-right politicians, are dedicated to spreading not only lies and conspiracy theories, but also racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist and/or aporophobic discourses, calling into question the foundations of democratic coexistence and, in the long term, the very survival of our democracies. In addition, there are increasingly more influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers, who present themselves as transgressors, provocateurs and cool and who make these ideas go viral. But there are not only the so-called "fascist tubers": these discourses also sneak up in unexpected contexts, such as in the videos of fashion and cooking influencers, reaching an even wider audience who may end up accepting them without even realising it. 

This exhibition presents a journey through the extremist narratives currently circulating in Europe and warns of their influence, impact and consequences. What is an extremist narrative? What are its patterns and formats? How have they evolved and adapted throughout the history of the past century? How can we detect them? These are some of the questions to which an answer has been sought, focusing on the thematic axes of nation, gender and science.

The exhibition presents the first results of the Horizon Europe research project "Analysis of and Response to Extremist Narratives" (ARENAS), of which Steven Forti, lecturer of Modern History at the UAB, ​​is the local coordinator. Curated by Forti himself, "Going Extreme" was coordinated by researchers Sergi Soler and Nathalie Paris, and carried out in collaboration with a group of students from the bachelor's degree in Contemporary History, Politics and Economics at the UAB.