[+6] 463 points 7 hours ago* Online radicalization is a real problem as bigoted & violent views are normalized, in some instances leading to violence.
For example the Australian gunman that live-streamed his massacre in New Zealand believed in the central tenet of the far right conspiracy known as "The Great Replacement."[1] The tenet being that "European peoples" are dying out and supposedly being "replaced" by immigrants with a different, inferior and dangerous culture. The conspiracy theory is a central part of a growing range of far right online forums including hidden groups on Facebook and other social media platforms. These online groups are hate echo chambers where believers are divorced from reality and trusted reputable sources of information. Instead they share fake news links that reinforce their own fear and hatred.[2] And unfortunately the New Zealand terrorist was a white nationalist who shared these views. This New York Times piece is quite illuminating;[3]
Based on the video, the manifesto and social media posts, a picture has begun to emerge of a man primarily driven by white nationalism and a desire to drive cultural, political and racial wedges between people across the globe. That, he hoped, would stoke discord and, eventually, more violence between races.
...The gunman appeared to pair the shooting with the typical trolling tactics of the internet’s most far-right instigators, playing to a community of like-minded supporters online who cheered him on in real time as they watched bodies pile up. And the manifesto states plainly what usually goes unstated by internet trolls: By design, its author wanted to get everyone upset and arguing with each other.
One of the goals of his bloodshed, he wrote, was to “agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.” He said he wanted to “incite violence, retaliation and further divide.”
The manifesto, the harrowing video and what appear to be the gunman’s social media posts feature typical white nationalist rhetoric with layers upon layers of irony and meta jokes, making it difficult to parse what is genuine and what he just thought was funny.
The gunman seems to have a significant interest in history — at least, the parts that fit into a white nationalist narrative. On his weapons, he wrote the names of centuries-old military leaders who led battles against largely nonwhite forces, along with the names of men who recently carried out mass shootings of Jews and Muslims.
The manifesto refers to nonwhites as “invaders” who threaten to “replace” white people. The author says he used guns instead of other weapons because he wanted the United States to tear itself apart arguing over gun laws.
His choice of language, and the specific memes he referred to, suggest a deep connection to the far-right online community. The link to the livestreamed video was first posted to the /pol/ forum of 8chan, a notorious far-right space, where the gunman was hailed as a hero after the shooting.
Some of his references were subtle. As he drove to the mosque, he listened to a song associated with a 1995 Serbian nationalist video, which has recently been co-opted as a racist meme.
Another example is a Canadian that committed a terrible murder spree in 2017 after being radicalized online. The 2017 Quebec City Mosque shooter killed 6 innocent people. The shooter told interrogators that he was worried refugees would come to Quebec and kill his family following Prime Minister Trudeau's rebuke of President Trump's Muslim travel ban. The shooter told a social worker that he “wanted glory” and regretted “not having killed more people.”[4] The shooter was consumed by fears of refugees and was obsessed with far right personalities.[5] He was the product of the far right media he consumed online and his ideas were reinforced by politicians who espoused far right rhetoric.[6] The judge presiding over the case depicted the shooter as an anxious and insecure man who thought a final act of “glory” would lift him out of anonymity. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 40 years.[7]
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
