Belief Beyond Belief: On Fashwave’s Esoteric Future Past

This essay looks at the use of vernacular web culture by new right. Specifically it focuses on how, in recent years, right appropriated a genre aesthetics known as ‘vapourwave’ to create sub-genre ‘fashwave’. Like vapourwave before it, fashwave taps into cultural imaginary that is nostalgic for an imagined ‘cyberpunk’ past future — but while former has been subject monograph (Tanner 2016), very little yet written latter. Largely ignored within mainstream popular culture, these ‘—wave’ flourish ‘deep web’ (de Zeeuw & Tuters 2019) imageboards and fora. As trivial many memes may appear, this paper argues they can be understood aesthetic manifestations contemporary renaissance esoteric “traditionalism” discourse posits alternative theory western which was influential 20th century ideologues. The transposes traditionalism’s fantasy glories one informed vapourwave’s distinctly nostalgia masculine cyberpunk aesthetics.