Ambient Extremism in Reactionary Digital Politics

In this second talk of ACES’s “Diagonalism” series, Robert Topinka engages with the idea of “ambient extremism.” This type of contemporary digital reactionary politics entails a dissolution of distinctions between democracy and authoritarianism, information and misinformation, legitimacy and illegibility. How does this phenomenon reshape the terrain of democratic discourse and, thus, democratic public life generally speaking?

“Ambient extremism” is on the rise in contemporary digital reactionary politics, as the collapsing boundaries between fringe and mainstream discourse display. No longer confined to obscure subcultures, extremist rhetoric now saturates political and affective spaces via platforms like X (formerly Twitter). In his talk, Robert Topinka will discuss a case study of posts about Ireland’s so-called “immigration crisis,” highlighting how actors such as Tommy Robinson and anonymous accounts like @EuropeInvasionn curate a discursive atmosphere of constant crisis and affective mobilization.

Subsequently, Topinka will situate this within a broader shift from discrete propaganda to ambient persuasion, drawing on recent scholarship in rhetorical studies and digital media theory. Topinka argues that the aesthetic and affective textures of ambient extremism operate through pre-emption: framing political events as future losses that must be urgently forestalled. This logic of anticipatory grievance is central to the ambient turn in reactionary politics, recoding the everyday as a site of ideological saturation and destabilizing the discursive foundations of democratic public life.

About the speakers

Robert Topinka is a Senior Lecturer in Transnational Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. His research focuses on reactionary digital politics, race, and urban media cultures. He is the author of Racing the Street: Race, Rhetoric, and Technology in Metropolitan London, 1840–1900 (University of California Press, 2020). Dr. Topinka leads the British Academy-funded project “Misinformation in Everyday Life” and co-hosts the Reactionary Digital Politics podcast. His work has been featured in New Media & Society, Theory & Event, and Big Data & Society.

Marc Tuters (moderator) is assistant professor New Media Culture at the department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. He writes on radical subcultures online and is affiliated with the Digital Method Initiative.