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Following the rise in far-right inspired terrorist attacks globally, social media and electronic communications companies have been criticized, mainly by politicians, for allowing far-right extremist content to be available. This article is a comparative legal study focusing on Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.’ legal provisions regarding the right to freedom of expression, hate crime, and proscription of terrorist organizations. This study found a disparity in the form of expression protected under this right. This disparity widens further when related to hate crime and proscribing groups as terrorist organizations. As such, social media and communications companies have difficulty setting at global level a baseline in determining whether content is legitimate commentary or is extremism promoting or inciting hatred and violence. The article concludes with a recommendation for how states can provide comparable legislation on hate crime as they have done in relation to Islamist inspired extremism. This will assist social media and communications companies in removing content and suspending accounts. These companies are not the guardians of freedom of expression, that is the role of states’ legislatures and judiciary.

VOX-Pol Blog Post.

Most analyses of far-right communication on social media focus on one specific platform, while findings are generalized. In this study, I argue that the far right’s use of social media depends on technology affordances – the linkage between platform design and usage – and, thus, might not always be generalizable. After discussing six affordances – persistence, scalability, replicability, connectivity, searchability, and identifiability – I apply them to studies about the far right on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Telegram in a systematic literature review. I conclude that most research focuses on aspects linked to connectivity, scalability, and replicability, while persistence, searchability, and identifiability are barely researched so far. I further discuss shortcomings and possibilities for future research to consider aspect of technology affordances.

The terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand is a landmark in far-right terrorist behaviour within the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The Australian far-right terrorist held both domestic and transitional connections to other far-right extremist groups and travelled extensively before committing the attack in New Zealand. The assailant’s proficiency with weaponry and technology is considerable, as is his relationship with the online far-right community. However, little discussion is made about this incident as an evolutionary step for far-right terrorism and how it could impact the region. Accordingly, this article examines the Christchurch far-right terrorist attack, how this attack may impact the future of far-right terrorism and what are the responses to the attack by politicians and tech companies. The article finds the assailant’s behaviour significant for far-right terrorist behaviour in the APAC region with the potential for mimetic instances in the region.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about trauma and uncertainty for vast swathes of the world population, including in Australia. One effect of this has been the growth of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and general conspiracism. This article explores efforts by fascists and neo-Nazis to exploit the rise in conspiratorial thinking for recruitment and dissemination of their ideas. Five Australian conspiracist Telegram channels are studied for signs of fascist cross-pollination, and it is found that users with fascist sympathies attempt to influence the channels’ discourse through appeals to purported ideological and situational commonalities.