Online Library

The contemporary rise of popular support for fascism is investigated in this article through an examination of Golden Dawn’s remarkable appeal to a section of Greek youth. This leads to the problematization of mainstream explanatory and interpretive discourses that attribute Golden Dawn’s electoral and political attractiveness almost exclusively to anger and a will to punish the political system which is regarded as being responsible for the country’s collapse and the harsh consequences of austerity and recession. Drawing upon the findings of ethnographic research on Golden Dawn and its young voters’ and supporters’ ideology and political activism conducted as part of the MYPLACE project, we argue that Golden Dawn’s young voters and supporters are much more than angry youth. Their choice to support a fascist political agenda and practice cannot be reduced solely to an emotional reaction to the crisis but rests on wider ideological and political affinities and links that have been building over the previous two or three decades. In this sense, the contemporary rise of fascism in Greece appears as not merely a straightforward and simple outcome of the crisis but the complex result of previous socio-political transformations, sharpened, magnified and accelerated by the current systemic crash.

Online platforms are used extensively as a propaganda
tool to convince young people to support the
various groups fighting in Iraq and Syria. Many individuals
outside of the conflict partake in propaganda
efforts on social media, using their profiles to provide
electronic support to ISIS and other extremist
groups. An analysis of various profiles indicates that
those engaged in the Syria conflict use their profile
to disseminate information about the conflict, which
can be used for propaganda. The typical feature observed
across these profiles is the virtual association
between them.

This study investigates how a far-right extremist group, The Base, enacts communicative resilience (CR) strategies across digital platforms despite deplatforming efforts. In our empirical analysis, we conducted a content analysis of 69 conversations about bans that occurred in The Base’s encrypted chatrooms on Matrix and Wire between 2018 and 2020. We examined if and how the CR processes outlined in the communication theory of resilience (CTR) applied to far-right extremists groups operating online. Our analysis shows that deplatforming, while disruptive, triggers CR processes that activate collaborative discovery of new methods to remain resilient. Additionally, we discovered an additional, online performative process of persistent presence in response to a perceived constant, existential threat. That strategy demonstrates operational capacity, reinforces group-based identities, accrues social capital, and performs a proven capacity to challenge detractors. By assessing The Base’s online dynamics, this study contributes to broader conversations on mediated CTR, deplatforming, extremism, and the role of CR in political legitimation.

The online game Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, has amassed 141 million active users since it was launched in 2011. It is used in school communities, among friend groups and even has been employed by the U.N. Despite its ubiquity as an online space, little has been reported on how hate and harassment manifest in Minecraft, as well as how it performs content moderation. To fill this research gap, Take This, ADL and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in collaboration with GamerSafer, analyzed hate and harassment in Minecraft based on anonymized data from January 1st to March 30th, 2022 consensually provided from three private Minecraft servers (no other data was gathered from the servers except the anonymized chat and report logs used in this study). While this analysis is not representative of how all Minecraft spaces function, it is a crucial step in understanding how important online gaming spaces operate, the form that hate takes in these spaces, and whether content moderation can mitigate hate.

Kølvraa’s article focuses on the cultural imaginary of the Scandinavian extreme right by analysing the online presence of the so-called Nordic Resistance Movement. He seeks to show how the cultural imaginaries of this National Socialist organization make use of the Scandinavian Viking heritage in three distinct ways. First, to produce a distinctly Nordic form of National Socialism and thus potentially make this ideology palatable to Nordic publics. Second, to differentiate their racially oriented political project from a wider far-right or populist right concern with the defence of European Christian heritage and/or civilization against Islam. And, third, to thematize and perform a certain hyper-masculine identity, especially in the context of martial and sporting competitions arranged by the organization.

The use of the internet for recruitment and the dissemination of violent extremist materials raises significant policy challenges for the European Union (EU), its Member States, and content sharing platforms (CSPs) 1 alike. This problem requires – through the eyes of the EU – a combination of legislative, non-legislative, and voluntary measures based on collaboration between authorities and CSPs with respect for fundamental (human) rights.