Hyperfixations on ‘Making It’: Wealth and Resentment in the Digital Right

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

This project explores how late-capitalist values intersect with illiberal politics in digital media cultures. Over the past decade, new right-wing movements have reshaped global politics. What once seemed like a temporary surge of post-truth and far-right agitation now points to a deeper transformation in cultural power relations. While much research has examined racism, anti-intellectualism, and illiberalism, other dimensions of this shift remain underexplored: particularly a ‘getting-rich ethos’ and wealth-seeking practices that are at its core. This study explores the wealth-centred discourses circulating in an emergent sphere of online influencer economy I call the ‘metapolitical influencer sphere’: an online environment stretching from the manosphere and anti-woke rhetoric to conspiracy communities. There, wealth-seeking is promoted as entrepreneurial discipline but also as a moral and political stance. Making money is framed as requiring hostility toward institutions and the so-called “cult of tolerance.” The project asks: what kinds of subjectivities emerge when neoliberal self-capitalization merges with alt-right antagonism? How do these discourses shape relations to democracy? The research draws on 1) netnographic collection of wealth-related social media content (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok), 2) interviews with Finnish influencers producing prosperity-themed content and 3) network analysis of influencer links to cultural and political actors. This approach allows both close engagement with discursive practices and mapping of the broader influencer sphere. The intersections of illiberal ideology and late capitalism remain undertheorized. The project shows how resentment toward institutions and neoliberal self-fashioning combine into a hybrid subjectivity that deepens precarity. The findings (to be published in monograph form) will contribute to debates on digital politics, late capitalism, and embodied subjectivity in an era of intensifying antagonism.