Subversion 2.0: Leaderlessness, the Internet, and the Fringes of Global Society

by Christopher Whyte

Why are conspiracy theories, extremist rhetoric, and acts of antagonism by fringe elements of society so much more visible today than in years past? The Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the surge of medical skepticism during the global COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the challenge of extreme rhetoric in global society, with increasing attention paid to the enabling role of the Internet. But beyond the ways in which the Internet allows for connection, how do fringe ideas travel into the mainstream to become more significant movements?

In Subversion 2.0, Christopher Whyte describes the transformation of societal subversion in the digital age. Whyte makes the case that "leaderlessness"--characterized by an evolving and uneven feedback loop linking fringe spaces to mainstream elite rhetoric and popular discourse--has emerged in recent years as the default format of subversive activity. Through case explorations and novel data, Whyte shows how extreme narratives that originate in conspiratorial, restrictive virtual spaces are rapidly filtered into mainstream settings due to a series of socio-technological conditions present in the Web 2.0 era. As a result, fringe narratives and symbols often become the lens through which social and political elites interpret information that they then spread through public speech, which is projected back to subversive spaces and used to perpetuate fringe narratives.

By examining the uneven feedback loop of leaderlessness, Whyte argues that social Internet platforms act as a vehicle for transmitting and amplifying extreme rhetoric but often fail to moderate extremism in turn. He ultimately shows how societal subversion, an activity that is about degrading existing power structures without directly attacking them, has taken on a new, dynamic form in the digital age.

281 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 24, 2024

About the author

Christopher Whyte (Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin) is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria Rilke, and an innovative and controversial critic of Scottish and international literature. His work in Gaelic also appears under the name Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin.

Whyte was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 1952, educated there by Jesuits at St Aloysius College, and took the English studies tripos at Pembroke College, Cambridge between 1970 and 1973. He spent most of the next 12 years in Italy, teaching under Agostino Lombardo in the Department of English and American Studies at Rome's La Sapienza university from 1977 to 1985.

Whyte first published some translations of modern poetry into Gaelic, including poems by Konstantinos Kavafis, Yannis Ritsos and Anna Akhmatova. He then published two collections of original poetry in Gaelic, Uirsgeul (Myth), 1991 and An Tràth Duilich (The Difficult Time), 2002. In the meantime he started to write prose in English and has published four novels, Euphemia MacFarrigle and The Laughing Virgin (1995), The Warlock of Strathearn (1997), The Gay Decameron (1998) and The Cloud Machinery (2000).

In 2002, Whyte won a Scottish Research Book of the Year award for his edition of Sorley Maclean's Dàin do Eimhir (Poems to Eimhir), published by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. He has also compiled some anthologies of present-day Gaelic poetry and written critical articles and essays.