Murder fantasies in memes: fascist aesthetics of death threats and the banalization of white supremacist violence

This paper traces the recent turn to humour, irony and ambiguity embodied in adaptation of memes into repertoire online propaganda militant neo-Nazi group Nordic Resistance Movement; a process, we dub ‘memefication’ white supremacism. Drawing on combination quantitative visual content analysis (VCA) in-depth focused iconography symbolism, explore all (N = 634) created circulated by around 2018 general elections country. The proceeds two steps: First, present results VCA which identified five thematic categories crafting supremacy, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny anti-Semitic ideas onto esoteric popular culture then map these across matrix form. We proceed cluster coded as violent symbolism used promote violence death threats render them banal. draw range scholarship entanglement rise far-right engage critical perspectives necropower fascism interplay between ambiguous, playful jokey imagery one hand murder fantasies serious threat supremacist at heart ideology, other.