The far-right has always created “alt-histories” and used historical revisionism to protect their power. President Trump is no different. In 2017, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to US President Donald Trump, coined the phrase ‘alternative facts’ to describe why the Trump administration had differing figures about the size of the audience at the newly elected president’s inauguration… Continue reading “Amid COVID-19, Trump Attempts To Rewrite History”
An analysis of YouTube comments and tweets finds that anonymity online leads to the spread of fake news, conspiracy theories, and hate. In 2019, I was asked by the Commission into Countering Extremism to provide my insights into the role of extremism online and whether conspiracy theories about Muslims were leading to hate; both online and offline.… Continue reading “How Fake News Can Lead To Online Islamophobia”
In late August, the east German city of Chemnitz startled observers from all over the world. On 26 August 2018, 35 yr.old German Daniel H. was stabbed to death after a quarrel had escalated at a city festival in Chemnitz (Saxony). Shortly afterwards, the police arrested two asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq as… Continue reading “Scenes of ‘civil war’? Radical right narratives on Chemnitz”
Germany to the Germans! Foreigners out” was the central slogan of the racist riots in the city of Rostock in 1992. For around three days, neo-Nazis controlled the streets in the plattenbau district of Lichtenhagen where the central registration for asylum-seekers (as well as a housing block of Vietnamese contract workers) were situated. With stones… Continue reading “The truth lies in Chemnitz?”