I am not sure this attack on the far right and its pernicious influence needs more of an introduction than to say it is my latest contribution to Arab Weekly. All my offerings can be seen at this link
When a woman in the studio audience for the BBC’s flagship political discussion programme Question Time spouted intemperate anti-immigrant rhetoric, one comforting thought was that she represented, at most, a tiny minority of the British population.
After all, demands that “we should completely close the borders”, a claim that Britain was sinking under the weight of immigrants and a complaint about hospital noticeboards offering the courtesy of translated versions of useful messages, would surely be dismissed as the ramblings of a deranged mind. She even turned out to have a long record of far-right attachment.
The more disconcerting reality was revealed by a glance at social media in the ensuing days. The BBC tweeted the rant and people were queuing up to applaud the woman. “Exactly what a lot of people think,” one user replied. “Thank goodness someone has the guts to speak the truth,” said another.
Support for her diatribe flooded in and did not noticeably recede as her political leanings, including support for two British fascist movements, were exposed.
Amid clamour for tighter controls on Islamic State “fanboys” who tweet delight at terrorist acts and on ISIS supporters who use encrypted messaging to plot crimes, it has often been overlooked that the far right’s presence on social media is not only an affront to decency but can have serious security implications.
There is ample proof that extreme right activists, aided by ready access to online resources and often running their own websites, pose as grave a threat as Islamists.
Twitter, to take an obvious example, demonstrates daily that it can be a valuable tool for the swift dissemination of information. It has become a routine channel of communication for governments, public services, politicians, businesses and others. However, anyone can use Twitter, fake news is easy to spread and the network has been slow or even reluctant to suppress insults, abuse and menaces.
The US president Donald Trump may not fit precisely into conventional definitions of the far right but embraces some of its preoccupations, notably in his occasional anti-Muslim outbursts. He is also one of the world’s most prolific social media users. The Washington Post fact-checking team reported in January that tweets accounted for 20 per cent of the 16,241 false or misleading claims it found Trump had made since taking office.
Neither Trump nor the BBC audience member is accused of promoting violence. Yet social media is awash with barely disguised anti-Muslim propaganda capable of fuelling hate crimes.
David Vance, British founder of the far-right site AltNewsMedia, tweeted that the BBC was “spinning Muslim violence in Delhi as if it is Hindu generated”, whereas a fairer appraisal of the BBC’s reports from India suggests an even-handed approach.
It is not difficult to find far more extreme examples of anti-immigration, racist and Islamophobic sentiments and the discovery often comes too late to prevent tragic loss of life.
Before shooting dead nine people at two shisha cafes in Hanau, near the German city of Frankfurt, on February 19, Tobias Rathjen — who also killed his mother and committed suicide — posted a racist manifesto and videos on his own site. He urged the killing of non-whites and bizarrely accused Trump of stealing his populist slogans.
In New Zealand a year ago, Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, also distributed a hate-filled manifesto before allegedly massacring 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch. It was sent to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern among more than 30 recipients. Links were posted on Twitter and the imageboard website 8chan and early stages of the attacks were streamed live on Facebook.
The New America Foundation think tank counted 111 deaths from far-right terrorism in the United States since 9/11, compared with 104 in jihadist atrocities. When 24 people were killed at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, last summer, the suspect, Patrick Crusius, was also found to have used 8chan, posting anti-immigrant and white nationalist material and citing Christchurch as an inspiration.
Against the backdrop of such crimes and deep suspicion of social media influence, the spotlight is inevitably focusing on those prepared to lurch from offensive but non-violent far-right polemic into deadly direct action.
With much of the left in disarray, far-right movements continue to gain ground across the West and they sometimes attract individuals who may seem unhinged but can easily learn online how to cause carnage with guns or bombs.
Last September, Neil Basu, an assistant commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, said right-wing extremism may still be a “small problem” but had become the fastest growing one. The shisha cafe shootings have taken that assessment a stage further, prompting the German justice minister Christine Lambrecht to describe far-right terrorism as “the biggest threat to our democracy right now”.
Almost three years have passed since Julia Ebner, who researches far-right extremism for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said even a British government counterterrorism agency had found “online hate speech against ethnic and religious minorities” had reached unprecedented levels.
The authorities, perhaps belatedly given repeated warnings from Muslim communities and mounting evidence of neo-Nazi activity in several countries, are therefore alert to the dangers. The complaint of many demanding serious measures to counter the threat is that it still feels like an exercise in catching up.
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