Keyword – monument

Szekeres, Tamás:

Iconoclasm in the US alternative media: the 2020 statue removals in the articles of an alt-right and a liberal news site

This paper observes the presentation of iconoclasm as a tool of memory politics in the articles of Breitbart, one of the main representatives of American alt-right media, in the light of the events of the series of protests in the summer of 2020. During the wave of demonstrations held after George Floyd was killed, several statues and memorials were toppled by protesters or removed by authorities because of their difficult heritage or objectionable historical characters. The issue was widely covered by the press. This paper presents the possibilities of using monuments and their destruction for political objectives, and performs a thematic analysis with qualitative and quantitative methods on how an extremist news outlet portrays and comments these events. In an attempt to stress the complexity of the issue, it also analyses articles from the other end of the political spectrum, Vox, and compares the different approaches in search of similarities and differences.

Keywords: alt-right, alternative media, memory politics, memory, monument, iconoclasm, statue, statue toppling, protest, United States