Extremist groups use social media to lure recruits, find support

Extremist groups use social media to lure recruits, find support

Published 20 July 2015

 

In the past, extremist groups have used tools and forums which were available: Rallies, pamphleteering, and marching in parades were the primary means used for recruitment and spreading their message. Now, as is the case with many other individuals and groups, these efforts have adapted to more contemporary media to target college and university campuses, to gain new members or, at least, sympathy to their cause. They now use the Internet to conduct forums and publish newsletters, a method that exposes potentially millions to their message.

In the past, extremist groups have used tools and forums which were available: Rallies, pamphleteering, and marching in parades were the primary means used for recruitment and spreading their message.
Now, as is the case with many other individuals and groups, these efforts have adapted to more contemporary media to target college and university campuses, to gain new members or, at least, sympathy to their cause. They now use the Internet to conduct forums and publish newsletters, a method that exposes potentially millions to their message.
Most of these Web sites are relatively new, while some have existed from at least the late 1990s. One such Web site, and one of the first to take advantage of the potential of an Internet presence, is stormfront.org, which has been an active White Nationalist Web site since at least 1997. The home page makes the claim that the group, in their words, proclaims that “We are White Nationalists who support true diversity and a homeland for all peoples.”
The site contains forums on seemingly every conceivable topic, from homemaking and health and fitness, to science and technology and music and entertainment. Most of the forums available are for members only, although the site maintains a cluster of forums for guests.
The organization claims their largest number of logged in users was on 6 December 2011, when the site served 9,798. HSNW found nothing of major significance that occurred that day or the day before, which would prompt their busiest day.
The site also maintains a radio program, Stormfront Radio, which they claim is followed by David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and a 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial candidate.
Mark Potok, editor of the “Intelligence Report” for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, says many hate groups are motivated by resentment and reaction to perceived second-class status for Caucasians by such programs as immigration and affirmative action.
Nor are hate groups stopping with online recruiting. They have also moved onto college and university campuses. According to a report by Phillip Martin of WGBH in Boston, on a recent evening near Boston’s Kenmore Square, bright red posters, printed in Boston University colors, appeared along Commercial Avenue. They spoke out against the hiring of an African-American professor, Saida Grundy, who had tweeted that the problem on campus was white males. The posters referred to a tweet in which Grundy, a feminist sociologist of race & ethnicity and incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, complained that “Black privilege means not being fired after saying that white college males are a problem population.”
The message played to the feelings of some of BU’s students.
“They’re saying that white people can’t be racist towards black people but black people can do whatever the hell they want,” complained a student named Nicolas. “It’s a double standard. They’re compensating for what happened 200 years ago, which there should be a statute of limitations on.”
The recent killing of black congregants in a Charleston, South Carolina, church by Dylann Roof has re-ignited concern over racial terrorism and the extreme right-wing worldview on which it is built. Roof had said that he hoped to ignite a race war. This ideology is not new by any means. It was translated into action some time ago, and continues on today.
It materialized in the person of Timothy McVeigh, who, in 1995, detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah office building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people and some 680 were injured.
McVeigh himself, was heavily influenced by The Turner Diaries, a novel in which extreme right-wing militia members detonate a bomb at an FBI office.
Domestic terrorism is one of the top worries of law enforcement, eclipsing worries about radical Islamist terror.