Germany’s far-right group PEGIDA is mobilizing weekly ‘virtual marches’ livestreamed on YouTube. On a Monday evening in early April 2020, around 1,000 users are waiting for a YouTube livestream, hosted by Lutz Bachmann, co-founder of the Dresden-based protest movement ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident’ (PEGIDA). For the second time already, Bachmann’s YouTube… Continue reading “Under lockdown, Germany’s PEGIDA goes to YouTube”
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”
The world is watching over a billion hours of video content per day on YouTube, and easy-to-use recording and streaming tools can turn anyone with a smartphone into a broadcaster. Social media platforms are rewarding this new crop of “content creators” with the ability to become a household name and earn money from their videos.… Continue reading “Alt-Tech & the Radical Right, Part 2: Inside the Radical Right’s Video Addiction”
As media platforms evolve and mature, they give birth to new expressive forms shaped by the exigencies of their technological and political-economic regimes. The dramatic and affective flows of American television, for example, emerged in the twentieth century to suit an advertising-based profit model, which is itself the outcome of complex regulatory and commercial origins.… Continue reading “Analyzing YouTube “Rekt” Videos as a Vector for Radicalization”
Earlier this week, Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone, two North American YouTubers popular with the alt-right met, with Aleksandr Dugin, a well-known Russian geopolitical theorist on the radical right. Dugin’s thinking “draws heavily on the post-war attempts to recover the fascist project,” in particular appropriating three themes “familiar” to this intellectual lineage: the organic nature… Continue reading “Reintroducing Dugin to the alt-right: Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone’s recent interview”