Daniel Friberg and Metapolitics in Action

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and work of Daniel Friberg, who takes a leading part in running a range of online media. Friberg’s main impact has been his implementation of metapolitics. Distinguished by his strategy and method rather than ideological inventions, Friberg advanced his career through a series of outreach, rebranding, and socialization initiatives. The products of this metapolitical activism include multiple newspapers and magazines, a publishing house, and online social media. By the 2010s these projects were replacing skinheadism as the social center of a fractious and sectarian Nordic radical nationalism. This unifying function has since been at the forefront of collaboration between American and European white activists.

Digital Modernity

“…Consistent with the temporal narrative of disruption, the "red pill" has become a popular online meme for introducing new converts to the aggressive heterodoxy and rejection of social norms characteristic of the alt-right brand of Internet activism (Aiken, 2019;Tait, 2019, 194-195), such as the claim that men's rights and identity are being undermined by feminism and political correctness (Dignam and Rohlinger, 2019). "Red-pilling" seems to require the online environment to spread (Tait, 2019;Teitelbaum, 2019).…”

The Alt-Right’s continuation of the ‘cultural war’ in Euro-American societies

“…The phrase ‘cultural war’ is equivalent to metapolitics and is borrowed from the Swedish thinker Daniel Friberg, a leading Alt-Right collaborator, one of the creators of the New Right and Traditionalist (i.e. a philosophy that underscores the ills of the modern world and insists on an eternal wisdom uniting all the major world religions) publishing house Arktos, and an important figure in the foundation of the radical right alternative to Wikipedia called Metapedia (Teitelbaum, 2019: 258–76). Friberg notes that if the radical right wants to challenge the left, it is important ‘for the nationalist culture war to be able to present our own interpretations of concepts, phenomena, and historic events for a broader public’ (Teitelbaum, 2019: 267).…”

“…a philosophy that underscores the ills of the modern world and insists on an eternal wisdom uniting all the major world religions) publishing house Arktos, and an important figure in the foundation of the radical right alternative to Wikipedia called Metapedia (Teitelbaum, 2019: 258–76). Friberg notes that if the radical right wants to challenge the left, it is important ‘for the nationalist culture war to be able to present our own interpretations of concepts, phenomena, and historic events for a broader public’ (Teitelbaum, 2019: 267). In this paper, I argue that the Alt-Right needs to be taken seriously by the liberal establishment, the general public, and leftist cultural elites for five main reasons: 1) Its ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ borrows from the ND and the French and pan-European IM.…”