Red Pill Stories: British Neo-Nazis’ Narratives of Radicalization

Abstract

Patriotic Alternative (PA) is one of Britain’s largest fascist organisations. PA members have served prison sentences for terrorism and hate crime offences and MPs have called for the organisation to be proscribed under counter-terrorism legislation. This article employs a cultural and narrative criminological approach to analyse PA activists’ accounts of their political journeys into the far right. PA activists’ stories are simultaneously personal accounts of conversion and narratives of impending racial apocalypse. The study offers insights into how the internet and social media now facilitate pathways into the far right, and the emotional dimensions of contemporary far-right narratives and beliefs.