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This article explores how cyberspace and social media are being used as instruments for the growth of extremist discourse in Malaysia—83% of militant detainees charged under anti-terrorism laws relied on social media platforms to access materials and establish virtual networking with likeminded individuals. The internet also provides a conducive environment for the incubation and growth of extremist discourse, where cyberspace and social media serve as vehicles of propaganda and recruitment—these have been major foci of research by academia and law enforcement alike. This article explores the issue from three angles: (1) the interplay between radicalisation and extremist discourse, particularly violent extremism; (2) the linkages between social media and cyberspace with democracy and postmodern discourse; and (3) the online manifestation of violent extremist groups, thus highlighting three growing threats based on religious, political and health-oriented radicalisation. This article suggests that three factors contribute to the growth of such extremist discourse and “marginalised voices”: (1) a democratic setting and postmodern discourse offer a conducive ecosystem and environment; (2) the use of “democratic rights” narratives to promote extremist discourse, particularly on certain platforms; and (3) the use of extremist discourse as counterpoint and alternative to dominant discourse and culture in mainstream media.

This essay contributes to a materialist theory of media populism by criticizing America First, an influential U.S. American reactionary live-stream hosted by Nicholas J. Fuentes, and its Groyper fans. Fuentes has expanded his online presence despite the deplatforming, or administrative suspension, of his social media accounts on account of his antisemitic, antiblack, and sexist hate speech. To understand the ideological ramifications of deplatforming populist influencers, I read clips from America First into the economic and infrastructural context of U.S. far-right subcultures. I argue that media studies must attend to bourgeois digital platform management as a technology which reproduces the undemocratic conditions of racial capitalism. The deplatforming of Fuentes facilitates the ascent of reactionary populism by reinforcing possessive individualism, or a white masculine fantasy of unmediated access to the public. “The people” of populism functions as media whose lost presence naturalizes sovereign violence against marginalized people. Media populism illustrates the need for to move beyond the dichotomy of “mainstream” versus “fringe” platforms to consider the material affinity of bourgeois digital publics and white nationalist provocation.

Expressions of ‘eco-fascism’ are said to entail ethnonationalist actors advocating extreme population control measures, and accelerationists hastening the collapse of societies worldwide. These expressions emerge from political-ideological environments in which Global North actors have erroneously assigned blame for climate change with the Global South, through rhetoric about migration, population control and fossil fuel usage. To assess the influence of these themes in the development of eco-fascist ideologies online, this paper presents insights from a mixed-methods analysis of climate change discussions on Stormfront; the first dedicated online white nationalist media platform still drawing cross-national participation and viewership from generalized public audiences.

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Mainstream risk assessment frameworks such as TRAP-18, ERG22+, VERA-2R, and RADAR largely use Structured Professional Judgement to map individuals against four critical factors; ideology, affiliation, grievance, and moral emotions. However, the growing use of online communication platforms by extremists presents a series of opportunities to complement or extend existing risk assessment frameworks. Here, we examine linguistic markers of morality and emotion in ideologically diverse online discussion groups and discuss their relevance to extant risk assessment frameworks. Specifically, we draw on social media data from the Reddit platform collected across a range of community topics. Nine hundred and eighty-eight threads containing 272,298 individual comments were processed before constructing high-order models of moral emotions. Emotional and moral linguistic content was then derived from these comments. We then conducted comparisons of linguistic content between mainstream left and right political discourse, anti-Muslim (far-right), Men’s Rights (Incel-like), and a nonviolent apolitical control group. Results show that a combination of individualising moral communication and high emotionality separate far-right and Incel-like groups from mainstream political discourse and provide an early warning opportunity.

A review of relevant empirical literature shows that many features of social media platforms actively promote or encourage hate speech. Key factors include algorithmic recommendations, which frequently promote hateful ideologies; social affordances which let users encourage or disseminate hate speech by others; anonymous, impersonal environments; and the absence of media ‘gatekeepers’. In mandating faster content deletion, NetzDG only addresses the last of these, ignoring other relevant factors. Moreover, reliance on individual user complaints to trigger platforms’ obligations means hate speech will often escape deletion. Interviews with relevant civil society organisations confirm these flaws of the NetzDG model. From their perspectives, NetzDG has had little impact on the prevalence or visibility of online hate speech, and its reporting mechanisms fail to help affected communities.