I find your research on how the New Right communicated itself transnationally highly engaging, not least because it shares considerable conceptual overlap with my own work on the transnational outreach of Ulster Unionism. In both cases, the focus lies on how seemingly unappealing or controversial ideologies attempt to present themselves to audiences abroad. This perspective carries important historiographical significance. By examining how such movements fashioned themselves through the domestication and adaptation of their discourse to foreign contexts, historians can move beyond their historiographical ghettoisation as inward-looking and insular phenomena, and instead reveal the broader transnational concerns that underpin their thinking. This approach neither seeks to endorse nor to vindicate the subjects under study; rather, it offers a more nuanced and detached interpretation of their internal complexities. In particular, it challenges the conventional assumption that such ideologies are rigidly compartmentalised and incapable of appealing beyond their existing adherents.
Your project’s selection of two periods—the 1960s–70s and the 2010s–20s—and its comparative framework is especially valuable. It introduces a diachronic dimension, enabling the analysis not only of differing persuasive strategies across contexts, but also of how these strategies evolve over time. The context of 1968, for instance, differs profoundly from that of 2017 in terms of global geopolitics, the role of public opinion, and the state of national and racial consciousness. In many ways, this approach has also informed my own research, prompting me to distinguish between unionist overseas propaganda in the 1970s and the 1990s. The latter period witnessed a more moderate turn in unionist publicity strategies, corresponding with the decline of violence in Northern Ireland and the emergence of the Peace Process. Such a distinction allows for a clearer demonstration of rhetorical flexibility, highlighting the capacity of these movements to adapt across both space and time.
What particularly interests me is your use of primary sources. Beyond more conventional materials such as pamphlets, your project can draw on the vast possibilities offered by the internet as a primary source base. In my own research, I have encountered a number of studies that examine twenty-first-century unionism’s self-presentation online, though this lies beyond my immediate scope. By focusing on the 2010s–20s—an era in which digital media play a central role in shaping public discourse—you open up a wide range of analytical possibilities: the content and visual design of websites, their evolution over time, and the dynamics of social media, including the production, circulation, reception, and moderation of online content.
This approach is particularly promising in that it provides access to a broad spectrum of popular voices and their interactions in real time. At the same time, it raises important methodological challenges. How can one recover posts that have been deleted by users or platforms? To what extent might online content have been edited after publication? And, perhaps most significantly, how can historians assess the representativeness and significance of digital material when the identities of contributors are often unclear? Despite these challenges, the use of the internet as a source base offers far more potential than limitation. I therefore look forward with great interest to how you approach and analyse these materials in your research.