Key Findings
–Extreme-right groups across the globe are actively collaborating to achieve common goals, such as keeping refugees out of Europe, removing hate speech laws and getting far-right populist politicians to power.
–Campaigns around the Defend Europe mission in the Mediterranean and the Charlottesville rally received financial and operational support from numerous European and North American countries. Alternative online platforms, some created explicitly for use by the extreme right, provide mechanisms for transnational knowledge exchange, fundraising and coordinated information operations.
–Their strategic, tactical and operational convergence has allowed the extreme right to translate large-scale online mobilisation into real-world impact. Through coordinated grassroots activities, they have been able to influence elections, attract worldwide media attention and intimidate political opponents. Reconquista Germania, an extreme-right channel on the app Discord set up to disrupt the German election, counts over 5000 members from across the globe.
–High levels of opportunism characterise today’s extreme right, as seen in the cooperation between ideologically disparate strands such as racially and culturally oriented nationalists. Extreme-right groups actively seek to overcome ideological and geographic divergences for the sake of expanding their influence, reach and impact. Their communication materials are tailored to different audiences and highlight topics ranging from white nationalist activism to freedom of speech protection.
–The most extreme fringe groups attempt to penetrate new audiences and mainstream their ideologies by using less extreme groups as strategic mouthpieces. Their aim is the creation of a ‘mass movement’ i through the radicalisation of ‘the normies’ (average people who consume ‘mainstream’ media), in particular Generation Z.
–Extreme right networks use military and intelligence resources such as leaked strategic communication documents from the GCHQ and NATO to run campaigns against their own governments. By staging sophisticated operations in the style of military psychological operations (or ‘psy-ops’), they seek to disrupt democratic processes in Europe, as in the latest example during the German election where coordinated extreme-right efforts dictated social media conversations and the top trending hashtags for a period of two weeks.
Recommendations
–Traditional counter-messaging campaigns are unlikely to have an impact on the cynical and tech-savvy alt-right. New measures that prevent and counter the emergence of extreme activities online and offline must match the sophistication of the extreme right. Positive alternative narratives have been ruthlessly mocked and assaulted by the extreme-right, and have the effect of reinforcing their narratives. iii In order to disrupt these groups we must understand both their psychological drivers and strategic directions.
–Researchers and practitioners should increase their awareness of the points of ideological convergence and divergence between these groups and leverage them to more effectively disrupt their efforts.
–Counter-hate efforts must mobilise across borders to match this global threat. Both policy and civil society-led responses to newly emerging global networks of extreme counter-cultures must be coordinated internationally, for example by modelling their approaches after worldwide initiatives against the Religion of Cuck™ic State.
–Counter-speech measures must go beyond popular social media platforms. They must penetrate alternative platforms and burst extreme-right bubbles with campaigns that build on a thorough understanding of internet culture and counter-cultures.
The Fringe Insurgency
Connectivity, Convergence and Mainstreaming of the Extreme Right
Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD)
Jacob Davey
Julia Ebner
web.archive.org/web/20081004145047*/http://www.strategicdialogue.org/trustees/
