THE SWARM AND THE INFLUENCER
B
efore the internet, fascists were mostly organised into parties: hierarchical organisations with rigid command structures, a clearly delineated membership and a tendency towards a consistent ideological line, disseminated by the leadership to the rank and file. By 2010, the fascist party, long showing signs of wear, seemed to be conclusively over. Although we will discuss the possibility of its re-emergence in another form in chapter 7, New Organisational Forms, for now let us examine its wreckage, and specifically what has fallen out of it. On the one hand, those people who might have previously joined parties now instead become online audiences or self-identifying members of technically memberless street movements. We call the form these people now take, particularly online, ‘the swarm’. On the other hand, those who would have been organisers for parties instead became what we call ‘farright influencers’. As it has evolved, the swarm has acted as a recruitment tool, organisational space, and a means to attack enemies of the far right. In their turn, influencers 83
