This interview is based on Mohamed Salhi‘s article Reinventing the Right in Morocco: Right-Wing Populist Discourses and Sentiments in Moroccan Online Spaces. It was conducted by Alex Yates.
Your article looks at the far-right in Morocco, particularly a digital culture known as the ‘Moorish nationalist Right.’ What are the key ideological and discursive features of this group, and how do they connect to the wider regional context?
Morocco is a country not typically associated with far-right politics as they manifest globally, although it has its share of populist discourses, namely around the people/elite polarity. Nevertheless, there has been a notable momentum for a few years now through which a newly-found right-wing, ethnonationalist discourse and identity came into existence in Moroccan digital spaces. This article views Moroccan or Moorish right-wing nationalism (RwN) to be mimicking and drawing inspiration from global far- and alt-right discourses and communication styles, with ethnonationalism, hyper-nationalism, and nativism as its core ideological features.
Discursively, Moorish RwN mixes moral panics and crisis discourse with perceptions of national insularity and uniqueness, constructing a superior identity and an exclusive moral space. In the insularity frame, it strategically uses discourses of revivalism and revisionism, including reinventing imperial flags and maps as forms of contemporary identification, such as maps of Greater Morocco, which include parts of modern-day Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, and Andalucia. The crisis discourse builds around a populist polarisation and reinvents patterns of prejudice (e.g., anti-black racism) to racialise security (i.e., sub-Saharan immigrants as a threat). Moorish RwN appropriates even conspiracy theories (e.g., ethnic replacement) and culture wars rhetoric. In the same vein, RwN reinforces anti-feminist, anti-intellectualist, anti-“woke”, and anti-communist ideological and discursive resources in its political rhetoric.
It does not seem that Moorish RwN has any influence on the Moroccan political scene, but it offers discourses and ideologies through which its followers can explain the world around them and their relationship to others, primarily immigrants, the left, and feminism. Beyond what has been discussed in the article, there are more recent instances of racist, anti-migratory discourses that use neo-Nazi language and symbolic resources.
Moroccan RwN and its mimicry of the global right remain an anomaly. Others have indeed attempted, and perhaps still attempt, to establish a digital, ethnonationalist identity in neighbouring countries (e.g., Tunisian nationalism, Egyptian Kemetism), but it has not achieved comparable resonance. More broadly, Moroccan RwN can be located within a long-standing and complex ideological matrix of revisionist, revivalist, and nationalist ideologies in the MENA such as Arab nationalism and Islamism, which it positions itself in opposition to, aligning more closely with ideologies such as the Lebanese right-wing Christian Phalangism.
Your research focuses on how the ‘Moorish nationalist Right’ uses images and symbols. What do these visuals reveal about this particular case in Morocco, and why is it important to look at visuals when studying far-right movements?
Visual, symbolic, and iconographic resources are especially central to the Moroccan far-right as a visual identity. Moroccan RwN deploys historical emblems, flags, and revisionist maps, functioning as tools for the ahistorical glorification of Morocco that connects modern Morocco to previous empires as a source of pride. Interestingly, there is also the use of the slogan “Morocco First”, à la America First. More practically, the prevalence of symbolic resources in this case reflects the visual boundaries of social and political identification. This is particularly the case where partisan identification is not a common trait in Morocco due to, among others, political disengagement.
Memes and humour contribute to the banalisation of ethnic and political othering, exclusion, and even violence, as well as to the simplification of social and political phenomena. The fact that memes tend to portray two oppositional characters is used to humorously reinvent polarities such as natives/immigrants or right wing/communism. In this vein, Moroccan far-right actors have long visualised polarisation between the “self” and the “other”, often through racialised or xenophobic caricatures, reinforcing imaginations of difference between physical, moral, or intellectual superiority of the “self” and inferiority of the “other”.
You show that the ‘Moorish nationalist Right’ borrows ideas and language from far-right actors in other countries. What does this tell us about how far-right movements are influencing each other across the world?
While RwN developed within a political context where populism was already in use, for instance, by the PJD and its confrontational leader Benkiran, ethnonationalism was not particularly mainstreamed as it has become due to the Moorish RwN. The adoption of ethnonationalist, far-right discourses using the language of the global right reflects the latter’s overarching appeal and ability to adapt to various contexts and histories. Fascism and exclusion are, after all, attractive. They fulfil emotional needs for safety, comfort, and order in response to invented or sensationalised threats such as forced ethnic hybridisation, or Algeria as a geopolitical foe. If this indicates anything, I guess, it would be that radical right ideals and discourses have long become available for grabs, not only within “typical” bases such as white supremacy and fascism in Europe and Anglo-Saxon world, but in unexpected areas such as Morocco.
Mohamed Salhi is an early-career researcher and lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt and member of the RPRN, working at the intersection of political science, sociology, and linguistics. He is currently working on my first book, Crisis Discourse of the Radical Right, for the Cambridge University Press Series in Critical Discourse Studies. His research interests include critical discourse analysis, crisis discourse, far-right populism, visual populism, and the mainstreaming of the far right.
Originally published by the Reactionary Politics Research Network. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence.
More content from this blog
- Empathising With Iran Must Recognise the Internal Struggle Against Religious Despotism, by Nissim Mannathukkaren – 20 March 2026
- Are ‘Hyper-Meritocracy’ and Feminist Backlash Driving South Korean Young Men to the Right?, by Yewon Kang – 10 January 2026
- No, “Gender, Race, and Climate” Are Not “Middle-Class Preoccupations”, by an RMT member – 30 September 2025
- Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World. Interview with Katharine Gerbner – 16 May 2018
- The U.S. Strike in Nigeria: A Roundup of Critical Reporting and Analysis, by Alex Thurston – 15 January 2026