Heiling in Plain Sight: The Aesthetic Camouflage of Extreme Far-Right Multimodal Communication on TikTok and its Challenges for German Prevention Strategy

Sammanfattning

Contemporary processes of radicalization into far-right extremism are increasingly shaped by digital, online communication environments that convey ideology through multiple communication modes, as well as aesthetic and culturally embedded forms of expression. Short-form content platforms such as TikTok enable fast production and circulation of highly engaging content that creates communicative artifacts out of a combination of visual, auditory, and linguistic elements. This paper introduces the original concept of aesthetic camouflage, describing a multimodal communication strategy through which extreme far-right actors ambiguate ideological signifiers within culturally normalized expressions to facilitate ideological expression between linguistic, visual, and auditory modes of communication. Methodologically, this paper applies multimodal discourse analysis to examine meaning construction across different communicative modes in short-form video artifacts. These results are then compared against a targeted reading of the German prevention strategy against extremism. The contribution of aesthetic camouflage to the study of contemporary radicalization processes is twofold. First, analytical attention is shifted from isolated and explicit ideological communication towards multimodal configurations of meaning-making and ideological construction. Second, it shows how mainstreaming does not occur despite ambiguity but rather through ambiguity itself. Lastly, the German prevention strategy requires a conceptual expansion towards multimodal, platform-specific, and culturally embedded understanding of radicalization.