Save Europe: the alt-right movement spreading hate with dance music (2024)

18June 2024

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In the middle of May, a viral video circulated showing people outside of a bar in Sylt, an island in Germany, chanting “Foreigners out, Germany for the Germans!” to the tune of the Italian Gigi D’Agostino’s 2000 techno hit “L’Amour Toujours”. The song has nothing to do with ethnic purity or xenophobia. It’s about passionate love, but not for this crowd: at least one man was reportedly seen giving a Nazi salute, while some guests allegedly made a racist remark at a young Black woman and punched her in the face. To prevent more extremist actions like this, Oktoberfest organisers have since banned the tune from being spun at the yearly festival; the Austrian Football Association also prohibited it from being played at stadiums.

“L’Amour Toujours” is one of a growing swarm of songs that far-right trolls have co-opted into a made-up genre they call “Save Europe” music. Internet creators use these tunes, which are often sped up to delirious nightcore insanity, in YouTube edits and TikTok memes with racist, anti-immigrant calls to make Europe fully white, as well as explicit neo-Nazism. One popular page has clips with hundreds of thousands of views saying North Africa and the Middle East are a “creeper farm” and the only “problem” places out of the world’s 195 countries. There are now dozens of popular Save Europe-themed Spotify playlists and YouTube channels dedicated to the style, like “Aryan Classic”, with millions of views. Viewers brag in the comments about how they’re “pure-blooded” and worship Nazi state sculptor Arno Breker. Some fervent fans even remix the music by weaving in audio of chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. And yet somehow, platforms haven’t caught wind of the overt racism in these clips and comment sections.

Save Europe memes have existed for over a year, but the trend really exploded a few months ago on TikTok. A slew of people made viral clips saying they didn’t agree with the Save Europe horde’s racism but loved their music taste, inadvertently boosting the toxic subculture. One user even made a popular “Top 10 Save Europe bangers” list with stuff like Lil Texas’ pummeling edit of Ke$ha's “Die Young” and a squeaky-speedy revamp of Malo Tebya‘s “SEREBRO”. The comments on these ostensibly anti-Save Europe videos are rife with people admiring Save Europe tunes and adherents trying to lure passersby into the movement. In one clip, looksmaxxing influencer Kareem Shami says he doesn’t like Save Europe but can’t deny “they got some bangers”, and nearly every top comment promotes the ideology and has thousands of likes. “I heavily f*ck with save europe music! And the ideas too,” goes one.

There’s no single explanation behind extremists christening certain songs as racist-core. Some of the most common were already popular long before their troubling takeover, like ATC’s eurotrance classic “All Around the World (La La La La La)” and a manic version of a section taken from Scott Brown’s “Taking Drugs?” Maybe the most chilling track is a slow-yet-hardstyle edit of Peter Schilling’s stratosphere-soaring “Major Tom (Coming Home)”. The way it’s remixed feels anaemic and hyperreal, like a soundtrack for zombie warfare. Save Europe truthers have used it in videos obliquely urging viewers to “Defend Europe,” calls for an Anglo-American takeover of Yemen, and hyper-Christian rallies for violence. “Defend the cross and your nation,” one person commented.

Most of the tunes are distorted and overheated – accelerated to a fever pitch, injected with the militant ferocity of slamming hardstyle kicks. The combo of aggro hypermasculinity and nightcore edits may seem bizarre, given the remix style’s association with anime girl imagery and Kawaii aesthetics. But it makes sense: the alt-right has always been obsessed with feverish intensity. More recently, there was the Nazi-themed vaporwave offshoot “fashwave”, and the late bodybuilder Zyzz inspired a fad of gym pump-up playlists with hardstyle versions of pop bops like Nicki Minaj’s “Starships”. The clips show absurdly ripped dudes flexing while Katy Perry chipmunk-chirrups over blistering kicks. These deranged vocals and unruly rhythms capture what most of these Save Europe videos are trying to convey: an imminent battle to protect the West. It’s a perfect soundtrack for imagining you’re watching humankind crumble before your eyes, the rise and fall of the new Roman Empire in one hectic hype montage.

Save Europe also has a strain of slowed-down themes, many of which use the otherworldly MGMT track “Little Dark Age”. In the last few years, the song has become a longtime fixture of alt-right meme videos, becoming the surprise anthem for a slew of hom*ophobic and misogynistic YouTube videos. Some of these older clips juxtaposed images of Harry Styles in a skirt with Greek statues and a horrifyingly buff Arnold Schwarzenegger to whine about how soft the new generation is. Others fantasised about teleporting to the mythical Greek world of Hyperborea and Agartha, a “legendary kingdom” that Hollow Earth conspiracy theorists believe is hidden in the middle of the globe (ancient Greece remains very popular in alt-right circles). In the comment sections, men talk about returning to these clips whenever they need encouragement and share vices they’re trying to overcome: “Quitting p*rn, Focusing on my career, physical and mental health”, one person wrote on a “Masculinity” edit. For some, it’s obviously cathartic: a space to meet fellow stans of platonic Masculinity, who are also fighting against feelings of societal impotence.

@notsyrianpsycho gotta admit 🎶 #syrianpsycho ♬ Originalton - 06lx

There’s a similarly motivational air to the Save Europe videos’ rush of images and rave-rabid sounds. Instead of denouncing Harry Styles, Save Europe creators catastrophise about a future where Islamic thought conquers Europe. They’ve also created a whole language of in-jokes to help evade platform detection. There are phrases like “millions must listen”, a riff on the meme character Chudjak, who was intended to parody alt-right 4channers with the catchphrase “The West Has Fallen, Billions Must Die”. Rather than taking it as a joke, the Save Europe throng parrots it sincerely, along with the racist dogwhistle “well well well” and the intentionally misspelled “now yuo see,” which has a history of being deployed in antisemitic content.

On the surface, this digital trend might seem more likely to pacify terminally online racists than actually birth a new army of incel warriors. But it’s clearly having a real-world effect, rewiring old songs into bigoted Bat signals for lunatics who hear them in the wild. YouTube uploads of “L’Amour Toujours” are now full of xenophobes celebrating what happened at the Sylt bar: “Millions need to visit Sylt, billions even”, one wrote in a comment with hundreds of likes. “Take back Europe,” another urged. “Keep the invaders out!” (There’s even a channel called “PartyEnjoyerFromSylt” with a popular remix of D’Agostino’s song using chants from the bar.) Some viewers have written about how the music’s veneer of cool pushed them down the rabbit hole, inspiring them to dig deeper into the ideology and “slowly get into it”, as one user commented on a clip.

Platforms need to moderate this content more aggressively, and yet they’re failing. Rather than just blocking the hashtag “SaveEurope”, TikTok should track the coded, dogwhistle language; on YouTube, there’s an onslaught of overt Nazi fetishism and xenophobia the platform could easily remove.

The takeover of sweet, classic anthems makes it especially fraught. Artists like D’Agostino don’t want their music prohibited online or in public spaces, since it wasn’t created with malice. I felt especially icky watching Save Europe clips with “Coming Home”. I have a core memory of dancing around my family’s apartment to it as a toddler, gleefully freaking out at the chorus. I imagined I was the guy in the song, blasting off into the galaxy aboard a rocket ship. We can only hope if these trolls listen enough, they’ll be shipped away to Agartha themselves – and quit terrorising Europe.