Digital neocolonialisms and civilizational retreats through the agency of childhood and youth

Abstract

The essay problematizes the rise of alt rights in the agency of children and youth, through
discursive and aesthetic strategies aimed at the public cultivation of reactionism, denialism
and revisionism, in which the unusual uses of digital technologies have become central in
the mobilization and expression of fear, tiredness, disaffection and hatred in the masses
as structures of a neocolonial project. Through political communication studies, media and
childhood studies and political psychology, notably, the work seeks to explain some events
(cut from recent Latin American and Brazilian scenes, already reported by journalistic media)
and weave some analyzes around this unique project of power-knowledge that is based and
strengthened affectively by the “management of hate”, with narratives of destruction (with an
emphasis on memories and historical, scientific, cultural and environmental knowledge) and by the so-called militarization of information/communication, among other aspects. The essay highlights a
tendency towards a growing wave of violent political socialization and subjectivation - mostly young, white and
male - that is, of new political identities that start to call for the extermination of the “different”, “other (s)” and
the environment, for “individual freedoms” and the “tough hand” of the State, among other issues. Finally, the
work seeks to discuss some possibilities for coping in these scenarios.