In April 2025, Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) announced the detention of a 17-year-old boy who had planned to attack five local mosques. Radicalised online through sustained exposure to far-right extremist content, the self-described “East Asian supremacist” expressed deep-seated animosity towards Islam and the Malay ethnic minority. He idolised Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant, and subscribed to a localised variant of the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory believing that Muslims and Malays are displacing Singapore’s Chinese-majority population.
Far-right extremism is often framed as a Western export, but Southeast Asia is less a passive recipient than a testing ground for its digital narratives and aesthetics. Online subcultures steeped in memes, conspiracy theories, and borrowed fascist symbols are adapting global far-right ideologies to local grievances. What may appear fringe is, in fact, the foundation of a nascent extremist ecosystem that demands closer scrutiny.
This close-call incident—Singapore’s fourth recorded case of far-right extremism (FRE) in five years—is indicative of the deeper, concerning regional trend emerging across Southeast Asia and beyond. Within the past half-decade, the region witnessed various real-world manifestations of this trend. Disinformation-driven xenophobic attacks were taken out against Rohingya refugees in Indonesia. Amidst Malaysia’s 2022 general elections, violent online threats invoked the spectre of the May 1969 racial riots.
The ideological core of the global far-right—nativism, authoritarianism and populism—is finding resonance and embedding itself within Southeast Asia, particularly visible through online FRE communities.
Far-right movements with ethno-nationalist aspirations have historical roots in the region, but the current strain is distinct in both form and function. Enabled by networked digital spaces, Southeast Asia’s FRE online communities are adopting the aesthetics and narratives of the global far-right while adapting them to local grievances, historical legacies, and identity-based fault lines. This reflects the dynamics of glocalisation, in which interaction between the global and local contexts produces movements that share internationally recognisable features while remaining shaped by local particularities.
Across the region, attention remains focused on the prevailing threat of Islamist extremism—understandably so, given its long-standing impact on regional security. However, this dominant focus risks obscuring the creeping influence of FRE. What begins as a fringe online subculture can evolve into a violent grassroots movement or embolden extremist actors, as already seen in the West. Understanding how these communities adapt, circulate, and legitimize far-right ideologies for local audiences is critical to anticipating the trajectories of FRE now taking shape in Southeast Asia.
Regional Adaptations of Global Far-Right Aesthetics
The seemingly eclectic aesthetic choices in FRE online communities are rarely incidental; they are deliberate and strategic. In Southeast Asia, far-right digital propaganda, often circulated through memes, reveals how global far-right visual culture serves as a key reference point for crafting group identity and projecting ideological alignment.
Regional FRE communities, such as the Austronesian supremacists, a group whose adherents claim supremacy for the ethno-linguistic populations of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, frequently incorporate fascist figures like Adolf Hitler and neo-Nazi symbols, including the SS lightning bolts and the Sonnenrad (Black Sun), into their memes and social media profiles. The Sonnenrad draws on similar occult and pseudo-historical roots as the swastika, and is often used as a stylised counterpart to evoke fascist and white supremacist ideology.
Other recurring references include romanticized portrayals of contemporary far-right attackers: a trend known as ‘saints culture.’ Imagery also includes the skull mask, often associated with neo-fascist accelerationist movements. Notably, such symbolism was present in Singapore’s third recorded FRE case, where the youth, a self-identified white supremacist, had a Sonnenrad tattoo and was also found in possession of clothing emblazoned with the symbol.
Yet this adoption goes beyond imitation. Within the Austronesian supremacist community, individuals have at times substituted Western FRE iconography with culturally distinct alternatives. For example, the Sonnenrad has been replaced with locally meaningful sun emblems such as the Indonesian Surya Majapahit (Majapahit sun) and the Sun of Liberty from the Philippine flag. Likewise, regional historical figures, such as the Filipino nationalist and pan-Malayan advocate José Rizal and Javanese general Gajah Mada, are reimagined as ethno-nationalist symbols used to project narratives of racial and civilisational supremacy.
This visual blending of the global and local reveals a duality: the enduring allure of global far-right aesthetics, whose prominence and shock value offer regional FRE advocates a sense of belonging to a broader movement defiant of existing power structures, alongside a parallel drive to assert distinct regional identities.
Narrative Appropriations in Southeast Asia
Far from superficial, memes and other forms of digital propaganda with Southeast Asia’s FRE communities play a central role in shaping and disseminating extremist narratives—distilling complex themes of ethno-national pride, existential threat, and civilizational decline into accessible yet emotionally charged visual content. These narratives are not entirely homegrown; they borrow heavily from global far-right scripts, selectively adapted to local grievances and socio-political contexts.
One widely appropriated narrative is the ‘Great Replacement’ theory. In Western far-right discourse, it frames white populations as facing impending extinction through the systematic replacement by “inferior” non-white immigrants. In regional FRE communities, this narrative is recast to reflect specific majority-minority dynamics. As seen in the aforementioned case in Singapore, it has been reinterpreted in the country to portray the Chinese-majority as being”‘replaced” by Malays and Muslims.
Among Austronesian supremacists, however, the narrative is localised to channel animosity towards groups such as Rohingya refugees and minorities like the Chinese and Arabs. These groups are portrayed as diluting “indigenous” populations or making illegitimate claims to regional heritage. This rhetoric of demographic siege is often paired with a call to action, with Western FRE slogans like “Total N***er Death” (TND) repurposed into variants such as “Total Rohingya Death” (TRD) or “Total Chinese Death,” each adapted to target locally perceived outsiders.
Beyond demographic fears, regional FRE communities also adopt broader narratives of civilisational decline and national rebirth, mirroring authoritarian and anti-elite populist arguments from the global far-right. For instance, the Philippine Falangist Front (PFF)—a youth movement influenced by fascist and Third Positionist thought— portrays the country as a nation in crisis: gripped by moral and spiritual decay, betrayed by liberal elites, and threatened by leftists and Muslims. In the lead-up to the 2025 Philippine general elections, the group framed the country’s political system as irredeemably broken, called for the rejection of democracy, and positioned itself as the only viable ‘third way’ forward.
Such pervasive borrowing of narratives and language from global far-right discourse reflects not only a desire to embed local discontent within a larger civilizational struggle, a perceived existential threat to their culture, identity, and way of life, but also an effort to legitimize grievances by importing a ready-made ideological vocabulary where local frameworks are seen as insufficient.
The Foundations of a Nascent Extremist Movement
Armed with glocalised aesthetics and narratives, FRE actors in Southeast Asia are constructing extremist online communities whose digital ecosystems increasingly mirror patterns observed in more established movements elsewhere. Anchored in both mainstream and encrypted messaging platforms, these communities function as echo chambers much like their Western counterparts. They foster a sense of solidarity, ideological purpose, and mutual validation among extremists and sympathisers, including those with potential to translate their beliefs into real-world action.
Although activity remains largely confined to digital spaces, early signs suggest some regional FRE groups are beginning to explore offline mobilization. The PFF, for example, has used its private channel on the gaming adjacent platform Discord to encourage its followers to distribute propaganda flyers—echoing tactics used by Western far-right groups such as the Patriot Front—and to coordinate small-scale outreach efforts, albeit still limited in scope.As researcher J.M. Berger forewarned in a 2019 paper, extremist movements do not always begin with violence, but can shift between violent and non-violent phases depending on opportunities, capabilities, and milieu. The same holds true for Southeast Asia’s extremist far-right. Though still relatively marginal, these communities’ expanding digital ecosystems and deepening alignment with global far-right currents warrant close scrutiny. Recognizing these developments early-on is essential for timely intervention and effective policy measures, helping to pre-empt the escalation and real-world violence witnessed elsewhere.