Prioritising free speech above the harms that extreme speech may cause has dominated the moderation strategies of social media platforms. Note: This piece was originally published at Scroll.in as part of a series on Extreme Speech Online, edited by Sahana Udupa, Elonnai Hickok, and Edward Anderson. The author thanks organisers of a workshop in… Continue reading “Debate over regulating right-wing extreme speech online must shift to harms such speech can cause”
To date, the notion of gateway organizations has in the most part been used to help explain processes of radicalization in relation to Islamic extremist Islam. Since September 11, 2001, the radical right has been on the rise in terms of popularity and reach across Western states. The 9/11 attacks, the subsequent war on terror… Continue reading “Gateway Organizations: Understanding the Lure of the Radical Right”
Over the past ten years, the UK has seen significant shifts on the far right. As the prospect of parliamentary representation by the neo-fascist British National Party petered out in 2010, a new wave of anti-Islamic protests and direct action initiatives swept the country. Over the same period, we have seen the rise and fall… Continue reading “Local policy responses to anti-Islamic protest in the UK need to consider both exclusionary and inclusionary approaches”
In October 2018, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) took to the streets of London in their thousands to protest against issues such as “returning jihadists” and “rape gangs”. Keen to stress they are not racists but concerned members of the public, a grassroots movement who simply want to be heard, they claim the voice… Continue reading “Catalyst or Catharsis: Inside the DFLA Secret Facebook Groups”
The old adage claims that as soon as something is removed from the internet, it pops up somewhere else. Britain First, founded in 2011, is an organization that describes themselves as a “patriotic political party and street movement” with “pro-British”principles. They claim that they aim to protect British and Christian morality and campaign against the… Continue reading “Far-Right Hate Group ‘Britain First’ (That Trump Retweeted) Joins Extremist-Friendly Gab”
Britain First is a ‘radical right’, ultra-nationalist movementthat promotes anti-Muslim hostility and has incited racial and religious hatred. The group has been led until recently by Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding, both of whom are now serving a prison sentence for religiously aggravated hate speech that incited anti-Muslim hatred. Despite numerous concerns raised above about… Continue reading “I Was Blocked On Social Media By Tommy Robinson: Now Twitter Are Removing His Hate”
Britain’s radical right is at a worrying crossroads. ‘[P]olitically marginalised, fractured, leaderless and increasingly violent’, Britain’s radical-right is now more ‘isolated and in retreat’ than at any point over the past twenty years – ‘becoming more extreme and violent’ in the process. Despite popular outbursts of nationalism and xenophobia after the 2016 EU referendum, it… Continue reading “A Peculiar Turn for Britain’s Radical Right? ‘Islamisation’, Vigilantism and Britain First”
During the 2016-17 Home Affairs Select Committee on Radicalisation, Google claimed that, in 2014, they had removed over 14 million videos relating to different forms of abuse, including content that promoted violent extremism. They have now announced they will be employing an additional 10,000 staff as human moderators to take down videos and comments that… Continue reading “Corpus Linguistics and the Problem of Non-Violent Extremism”
This month Facebook banned Britain First from its platform, saying the group had “repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups”. This follows Twitter’s ban in December 2017 of the organisation’s leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, from its platform. Similarly, at the end of March 2018 it was announced that… Continue reading “What does banning individuals and organisations from social media platforms mean for efforts to counter extremism in the U.K.?”
2017 started as a terrible year for the UK radical right. With the leader of Britain First in prison and the far-right group UKIP tanking in the June 2017 General Election, the bluster that had put wind in the sails of Britain’s fringe political movement after the 2016 Brexit Referendum and American Presidential Election seemed… Continue reading “What next for the UK Radical Right? Electoral Misfortune and the Rise of New Actors”