Research on digital violence must account for its metapolitical dimension. Silvia Díaz Fernández reveals how proponents of the far-right metapolitical project are shaping public discourse to fit their anti-democratic interests. Digital violence against women, racialised people and queer communities is all part of their strategy
Metapolitics is key to understanding how today’s far right seeks to transform society. Rooted in Antonio Gramsci’s 'war of positions', it describes a long-term struggle to reshape cultural meanings, moral values, and 'common sense'. Rather than seeking immediate institutional power, metapolitics operates in the realm of ideas. It shapes how people talk, feel, and imagine the world, and orients these processes towards particular socio-political interests.
After the Second World War, the so-called New Right rediscovered Gramsci, building on his theory of cultural hegemony. Recognising that power is sustained not only through governments, but through education, media, and public debate, instead of focusing on political confrontation, it invested in transforming culture. This meant committing to a long-term project: patiently influencing intellectual life, public discourse, and cultural production to widen the boundaries of 'acceptable opinion'. Metapolitics is a marathon, not a sprint.
Metapolitics shapes how people talk, feel, and imagine the world, and orients these processes towards particular socio-political interests. The digital sphere emerged as a crucial forum in the metapolitical battle
Today, misogynistic, racist sentiment in parliaments, media debates and classrooms is the new normal. The digital sphere was hailed as a crucial forum in the metapolitical battle. But far-right influencers and politicians merely collaborate in media ecosystems that amplify one another’s narratives. Popular far-right agitator Vito Quiles has organised multiple events across Spanish universities against 'woke feminist' ideologies. Yet he also enjoyed a friendly meeting with Argentina’s president Javier Milei. These spaces are where ideas move, emotions circulate, and ideological worlds take shape.
Gender and race politics are central. Anti-feminist, racist and anti-LGBTQIA+ discourse are powerful in resisting preconceived ideas about traditions, national identity, and social change. By presenting 'traditional values' as common sense and equality as 'woke' corruption, far-right metapolitics reframes reactionary politics as a form of resistance. Metapolitics isn’t just about culture, but about redefining reality. It shapes the emotional and ideological conditions that make authoritarianism appear natural and desirable.
This metapolitical battle is unfolding online. Digital media has become the central arena in which far-right metapolitics is produced, circulated, and normalised. Platforms like YouTube, X, Telegram, and TikTok mean actors can bypass traditional media gatekeepers. This allows them to shape meaning through memes, reels and short videos, algorithmic amplification, coordinated trolling, digital harassment campaigns and influencer commentary – all of which blurs the line between entertainment and ideology. Online, ideology spreads as means of creating community: through support, humour, and relatability. Politics becomes a question of belonging, of sharing a tone or sensibility, rather than a particular programme.
Online, politics becomes a question of belonging, of sharing a tone or sensibility, rather than a particular programme
The manosphere is paradigmatic of this shift. It operates as a networked conglomerate of forums, podcasts, social media channels and actors that reproduce anti-feminist, racist, anti-queer ideas and conspiracy theories. These digital cultures function through metapolitics: they portray progressive ideas as a threat, feminism as excess, and masculinity as endangered. Through humour and claims to masculine victimhood, the manosphere transforms resentment into identity and outrage into community with clear ideological and political orientations.
Digital media thus does more than just amplify far-right messages; it shapes how people feel, react, and connect. It makes metapolitics participatory and affective, translating ideological struggle into everyday discourse, and scaling it across transnational networks of influence.
The metapolitical normalisation of far-right ideas has devastating effects on those most marginalised by its narratives. Women, racialised people and queer communities are central targets of digital violence. Harassment and disinformation are tools of political silencing. Online, this manifests through mob attacks, doxxing, and trolling campaigns targeting feminist politicians, activists, and journalists. These are often amplified by algorithms that privilege outrage; anger generates more engagement with the content, translating into more economic gain for the platforms.
In Spain, far-right actors frame feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements as threats to the 'natural order' or 'traditional family'. Racialised people and migrants they portray as symbols of moral and cultural decay. Digital violence has also triggered physical violence. During summer 2025, Torre Pacheco in Murcia witnessed racist riots fuelled by online hate campaigns. Misinformation and calls to action circulated through social media and encrypted groups, leading to assaults on migrants and migrant-led businesses.
Physical attacks on women are also orchestrated and celebrated online. Italian Facebook group La Mia Mogle (My Wife) shared non-consensual sexualised images of women, often accompanied by degrading comments and calls for violence. The group, whose members number in the tens of thousands, exemplified how digital communities can turn sexual violence into entertainment, reinforcing misogynistic norms under the guise of humour and male bonding.
Manosphere influencers repackaging misogyny and racism as aspirational content have turned digital spaces into laboratories of moral panic
Meanwhile, manosphere influencers, from YouTube 'self-improvement' coaches to TikTok 'alpha male' gurus, repackage misogyny and racism as aspirational content, embedding hate in humour and lifestyle advice. This convergence of propaganda and entertainment has turned digital spaces into laboratories of moral panic. Anti-feminist, nativist, and anti-queer imaginaries circulate as 'common sense'.
Digital violence, then, is not an unfortunate by-product of online communication but a metapolitical strategy that sustains and legitimises exclusionary worldviews. It is redrawing the boundaries of who deserves safety, dignity, and voice in public life.
The metapolitical advance of far-right ideas can seem unstoppable; a gradual but relentless reconfiguration of common sense. Yet this perception is itself part of the strategy: to naturalise reactionary ideas by presenting them as the spontaneous expression of 'what people really think'. As Aurélien Mondon argues, this logic rests on hegemonic defeatism: the belief that progressive and egalitarian projects have already lost the cultural battle, and that all resistance is futile.
Recognising this narrative as a political construction is crucial. Far-right metapolitics does not represent a genuine cultural consensus but the outcome of deliberate efforts to reshape discourse and meaning. Understanding it as such opens the possibility for counter-hegemonic work: reclaiming the terrain of culture, humour, and emotion as spaces for feminist, queer and anti-racist democratic imagination.
