Hard to say which was my personal highlight in Extreme and Online, the first of Louis Theroux’s new documentaries exploring the underbelly of internet subcultures. Was it the young man who had been able to set up a sold-out conference event unimpeded, from which he declared “white people are DONE being bullied!”? Was it the guy who threw Louis out of his house, while wearing a Louis Theroux t-shirt, because Theroux asked him about the time he was filmed doing what appeared to be a Nazi salute? Or was it the sheer Black Mirror-esque surrealism of watching a man who calls himself ‘Baked Alaska’ being paid by an invisible online audience to run around saying offensive things to strangers? One thing I can say for sure is that these young men – and they are basically all men – sure know how to deliver the content.
But although their shenanigans were jaw-dropping, the film-making is masterly and subtle. I hooted with laughter more than once, but by the end I was very scared. Theroux’s sleight of hand is to show that assuming these are just loser trolls belies how truly dangerous they may indeed be. The internet and social media has allowed them to build platforms in ways they would never previously have been able to, and their extreme rhetoric can and does infect the mainstream. We saw it ourselves just this month, with the Prime Minister’s explosive and discredited attempts to link Keir Starmer to the failure to prosecute Jimmy Savile - a claim which originated as an internet conspiracy theory.
First we meet “rising star of the far right”, 22-year-old Nick Fuentes. He’s apparently so right wing that he’s banned from Republican Party events, and set up something called the America First Political Action Conference. He laments the missing comma in the event flyers - “America First Bitch,” it reads. “That makes it sound like you’re the bitch,” ponders Theroux. “That’s the worst possible outcome.” Fuentes has built a following by broadcasting nightly livestreams where he shares his views, two of which happen to be that America should have no immigration and women probably shouldn’t have the right to vote. “Nick lives at his parents’ house, where he livestreams from the basement,” is one particularly enjoyable bit of deadpan narration.
Also featured are confrontational livestream specialist Baked Alaska, who was at the Capitol riot and wrote a song called Twitter is F***ing Gay after being banned from the platform, and the Louis t-shirt wearer Beardson Beardly who starts slagging Theroux off on a livestream minutes after throwing him out of his house. (I couldn’t stop thinking about the t-shirt – what did he do with it afterwards? Take it off and stamp on it? Give it to the British Heart Foundation?) They are all very, very emotional and they go absolutely crackers if you describe them as white nationalists, even when espousing what would generally be considered to be white nationalist views.
All of them are guided by a powerful sense that America has been lost in some way – a classic form of nationalist nostalgia. They couch their views in irony and humour, both as a defence when criticised and to disguise anything more sinister. Women are almost entirely absent because of the movement’s rank misogyny; Brittany Venti, Theroux’s only female interviewee, was hounded out by deeply upsetting, visceral attacks. A video in which Beardly said “I’m going to rape you” and maniacally laughed gave me a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.
But why should we pay any attention to these fetid scrotums? Isn’t making a film about them just giving them a platform for their abject views? Clearly not. The fact they get so weaselly whenever they are asked a direct question shows how desperate they are not to be held to account. They shrivel under this kind of forensic scrutiny. They - literally - start sweating and cry foul play at the mildest bit of pressure. Theroux’s calm interview technique works well. He understands it’s not possible to have a rational conversation with a troll – they simply want to bait people into an orgy of frenzied escalation. They regard journalists with devoted suspicion, capturing their own footage of everything and there’s a lot of “you’re pushing a narrative!” chat. But it turns out you don’t need to push – just give them a prod and it all unfurls. Here, their answers – or their propensity for storming off – speak for themselves. They don’t want to justify their views, because they can’t.
This new series also dives into Florida’s rap scene, and how the porn industry is responding to the MeToo movement. The former is Theroux back on highly memeable form - “Why do you have that...?” he asks innocently while gazing upon a massive machine gun. But it’s his encounters with the far right that should prove to be one of the most talked about TV documentaries of the year. It offers a stark warning about something we need to take very seriously, and it absolutely needed to be made.
