The next speaker in this session at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City is Christian Schwieter, whose focus is on deplatformed far-right activists on Telegram during COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. How do such activists claim legitimacy during crises?
The focus here is on the UK far-right activist ‘Tommy Robinson’, a former leader of the fascist EDL who has self-styled himself now as a citizen journalist; and the Austrian Martin Sellner, an Identitarian influencer who is also the chief strategist of a ‘remigration masterplan’ endorsed by the German far right and presents himself as a metapolitical strategist.
Both were deplatformed in 2018-2020, and disowned by far-right parties, yet they continue to play a significant influential role in far-right politics; this might be understood from both a social movement and individual influencer perspective, and these activists might have moved from the former to the latter especially in response to external crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 in particular galvanised the far right, while the Russian invasion of Ukraine provided a more complex situation which saw various members of the far right on different sides of the debate. Actors’ success in positioning themselves is therefore how they manage these crises.
Telegram plays a critical role here; it is seen as a space of refuge after deplatforming events, but later also became a central space of organisation for reactionary publics opposing COVID-19 policies and other mainstream political approaches. This was then also driven by distinct far-right actors as political influencers and micro-celebrities, with both internal, audience, and content dimensions to their activities.
Out understanding of these activities tends to focus on self-branding, with legitimacy as a byproduct, but legitimacy should be centred further here; influencer practices can therefore also be understood as personal legitimacy claims. Internal-cooperative activities can be seen as networked, audience-centred activities as parasocial, and content-related activities as lexical practices then.
These can then be operationalised in an analysis of the Telegram posts of these activists; Christian applied this to some 7,000 posts from the two activists about COVID-19 and Ukraine. Sellner is very embedded in COVID-19 networks and shares many posts from other channels; Robinson mostly broadcasts his own messages. On COVID-19 they have a shared repertoire of claims and rhetoric; on Ukraine, Robinson continues his rhetoric against Joe Biden, against Ukraine, and against NATO, while Sellner positions himself instead as a neutral geopolitical analyst.
Overall, then, Sellner is high on networked and parasocial practices, while Robinson remains low; Sellner positions himself as an influencer, then. Ukraine seems more difficult to exploit for both than COVID-19.
But this shows that there is agency in how such actors choose to interact with crises; Sellner comes across as a smarter (and therefore more dangerous) operator here, who is more adept at positioning himself in response to external developments while Robinson sticks to his shouty broadcast approach only.
