Anyone called "far-right" would naturally bristle at the label. Most people, when they hear the word, picture skinheads with closely shaved heads and combat boots, or racists marching through the streets carrying torches. But today, far-right extremism is seeping into our midst not through such visible markers, but in far more subtle and pervasive ways.
The new book "Where Does the Far-Right Come From" (original title: "Hate in the Homeland") poses a fundamentally different question. While conventional far-right research has focused on the individual psychological dimension, such as "why do people fall into extremism," and on organizational strategy, such as "how do far-right organizations operate," the author presents a third axis.
That is, the book focuses on "where" and "when" extremism occurs. It pays attention to the places and moments where ordinary people first encounter far-right extremist messages in their daily lives. The book traces the process by which far-right hatred seeps into everyday life across five settings: food, fashion, mixed martial arts, campuses, and online.
According to the author, the far-right spreads through daily life in the following ways: YouTube cooking shows that naturally insert racist messages and far-right ideology while sharing vegetarian recipes, and strategies for cultivating far-right intellectuals who distribute flyers on university campuses and use "freedom of expression" as a shield to package hate speech as academic debate.
"The far-right is already an independent market that makes money," the author says. "From clothing to coffee, from music to festivals. The far-right produces products, builds brands, and sells lifestyles." What is sold along with these products in such a market can be "camaraderie," "identity," and "a sense of belonging."
The author cites the United States as an example, but this is not "a faraway country's affair" in Korea either. The analytical framework this book provides seems valid for understanding the increasingly sharp conflicts across various layers in Korean society, the hatred of migrants, and the spread of extreme discourse in digital spaces.
So what is to be done? The author presents the concept of a "hate vaccine." Comparing the prevention of extremism to "herd immunity" in the prevention of infectious diseases, the author argues that the everyday spaces where extremism takes root must be cleansed. 20,000 won.
