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Steam, the largest and most important online store for PC gamers with over $4 Billion in revenue in 2017, has recently gained popularity among white supremacists for being a platform, like Gab and Telegram, where they can openly express their ideology and calls for violence. The difference between Steam and social media platforms like Telegram or Gab is that while the latter do not share a formal business relationship with the wider social media industry, Steam has direct and lucrative relationships with most major game companies, including 2K, Electronic Arts, Xbox Game Studios, Ubisoft and others. Many of these game companies have made public statements about and dedicated significant resources towards keeping their products safe from the kinds of hateful ideologies espoused by extremists — while continuing to work with Steam.

This article represents an initial exploration of the content and posting strategies of the current wave of racist flyer drops in the US, focusing specifically on a dataset of all documented flyers posted in 2018. The dataset was generated by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and augmented by the authors. The dataset is unique among open sources and includes a large number of incidents which were not reported in the media. The article consists of three parts. The first documents and briefly discusses the groups engaged in racist flyer development and drops. The second describes and characterises the text and image content of the flyers. The final section uses open sources and leaked material to describe the process by which flyer drops are instigated, planned and documented.

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The World White Web provides an interdisciplinary analysis of far-right radicalisation in the digital age, drawing from criminology, history, and computer science to explore how technology and imagery accelerate extremist recruitment. The book examines 20,000 internet memes to reveal white supremacy’s deep historical roots. It demonstrates how far-right propagandists leverage historical narratives and symbols to influence modern-day recruitment, bridging fringe and mainstream ideas across diverse time periods, countries and contexts, amid technological and social changes. Topics include racism and xenophobia in Greek and Roman antiquity, antisemitism in the Middle Ages, anti-Black racism rooted in the Antebellum South, the weaponisation of the Reconquista in Spain, the memeification of the Rurik Dynasty in Russia, Crusader iconography in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, eco-fascist propaganda in the Balkans, neo-Nazi mythology in India, and Völkisch ideology in Germany and Austria. The book emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary, socio-technical and multi-stakeholder approaches to truly comprehend and address the contemporary manifestations and threats posed by the global interconnectedness of the far right online.

Although a plethora of literature exists on hate or extremist group activity, the role of racist women remains an unexplored area. The current study sought to explore one method of communication for racist women, the Internet. The researchers conducted a content analysis on 227 discussion threads provided on one of the oldest extremist websites on the Internet, Stormfront. The purpose of this study was to investigate the content of the discussion threads described as ‘For Stormfront Ladies Only.’ Of primary interest to the researchers was whether the content discussed by women in this ‘White Nationalist’ cyber community supported the assertion by some scholars that the role of women in racist activities is undergoing a transformation and the implications of this study in that regard are discussed.

The rise of the far right has captured the attention of scholars across media studies, political science, and sociology. Digital technology played an important role in the rise of the far right and has deeply shaped this global movement. Focusing on research in Western societies (primarily Europe and North America), this review takes stock of how scholars in these three disciplines have studied the intersection of the far right and digital technology. The review introduces the problem of fuzzy collectivity to understand how scholars have made sense of the far right as an assemblage of increasingly complex networks of actors distributed across websites, alternative media, and platforms. Exploring solutions to the problem of fuzzy collectivity in the literature, the review proposes that far‐right engagement with digital technology should be conceptualized as a racial project engaging in metapolitics, a term used by far‐right ideologues that understands cultural movements to be prefigurative of political change. The review then explores the intersection of the far right and digital technology today, examining how it uses technology and the context of this use. The review then identifies pathways to reintegrate critical perspectives on racism in future research on the far right and digital technology.

People do not want social media platforms to facilitate murder, writes Robert Hannigan