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The Online Ecosystem of the German Far-Right Jakob Guhl, Julia Ebner and Jan Rau

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The Online Ecosystem of the German Far-Right Jakob Guhl, Julia Ebner and Jan Rau The Online Ecosystem of the German Far-Right Jakob Guhl, Julia Ebner and Jan Rau supported by Acknowledgements Authors’ Bio This report would not have been possible without Jakob Guhl funding support from the Robert Bosch Foundation. Jakob Guhl is a Coordinator at the ISD, where he mainly works with the digital research team. The report was written with research Jakob has co-authored research reports on support from Celia Gomez, Hannah Winter, reciprocal radicalisation between far-right Zoe Fourel and Amalia Schliemann. extremists and Islamists, coordinated trolling campaigns, hate speech and disinformation campaigns targeting elections. He has published About this Paper articles in Journal for Deradicalisation and Demokratie gegen Menschenfeindlichkeit, and co-authored This report presents the findings of a research an essay for an edited volume of the Munich project of ISD’s Digital Analysis Unit about the Residence Theatre about the origins of alternative online-ecosystem of the far-right, contemporary political anger. including alternative social media platforms and alternative media outlets. While these Julia Ebner platforms draw in a global audience this Julia Ebner is a senior research fellow at ISD, report focuses specifically on the German- specialising in far-right extremism, reciprocal speaking and Germany-focused communities radicalisation and European terrorism prevention and outlets within this ecosystem. initiatives. Julia is the author of The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism and Going Drawing together ISD’s digital ethnographic work Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists as well across dozens of forums and channels with the latest as several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters in machine learning and natural language processing, and policy briefings. Julia draws on her research this report provides an overview over the size and when she advises parliamentary working groups, nature of the far-right communities on these platforms, frontline workers and technology companies, the motivations for participating in these communities speaks at international conferences and delivers and assesses whether banning far-right groups from workshops in schools and universities. mainstream platforms leads to the displacement of their followers to ‘alternative’ platforms. Jan Rau Jan Rau is an Associate in ISD’s Digital Research We also analyse the role of alternative ‘news’ outlets and Policy team. His work interrogates how the in disseminating far right concepts, drawing on the internet shapes the media sphere, including analysis ‘Hate Observatory’, a joint initiative of ISD and the on the nature and effect of echo chambers, MIT Media Lab , based on their Media Cloud software, counter-publics, public opinion manipulation and and compare the frequency and types of coverage far-right movements. Jan is the first author of an of far-right themes in mainstream and alternative academic article about echo chambers online media. This report also recommends steps to be and has contributed to several research reports. taken by tech companies, government, civil society Before joining ISD he worked with GESIS – Leibniz and researchers to counter the far-right online. Institute for Social Science (Germany), Princeton University (USA) and the Oxford Internet Institute (UK). © ISD, 2020 London Washington DC Beirut Toronto This material is offered free of charge for personal and non-commercial use, provided the source is acknowledged. For commercial or any other use, prior written permission must be obtained from ISD. In no case may this material be altered, sold or rented. ISD does not generally take positions on policy issues. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organisation. Designed by forster.co.uk. Typeset by Janina Neumann Design. Henry Tuck - Contributing author on report Recommendations Henry Tuck manages ISD’s research programme and leads ISD’s policy-focused work to counter online harms in collaboration with a range of key stakeholders, advising leading governments, international organisations and major private sector tech companies. Since starting at ISD in 2013, he has led a series of ISD’s education and counter- narrative programmes and conducted research on foreign fighters, deradicalisation and the far-right. Edited by Jon Birdwell Jonathan is Deputy Director, Policy & Research, overseeing ISD’s policy work and networks, and ISD’s work on education policy and programming. Jonathan supervises ISD’s research and primary datasets, programme monitoring and evaluation, and edits all of ISD’s written outputs. He currently focuses on building out ISD’s unique partnerships and online analytic technology and capabilities to provide up-to-date understanding of extremist propaganda and recruitment tactics, and evaluating online campaigns and ISD’s online one-to-one interventions. Prior to joining ISD, Jonathan was Head of Programme at the UK cross-party think tank Demos, where he published over 40 research reports on topics including violent extremism both Islamist (The Edge of Violence, 2010) and far-right (The New Face of Digital Populism, 2011). Jonathan has also written extensively on education (The Forgotten Half, 2011), social and emotional learning (Character Nation, 2015), youth social action and attitudes towards politics (Tune In, Turn Out, 2014), digital politics and marketing (Like, Share, Vote, 2014), trust in government (Trust in Practice, 2010) and religion and integration (Rising to the Top, 2015), among other topics. 4 The Online Ecosystem of the German Far-Right Contents Glossary 5 Executive Summary 7 Introduction 15 1. Findings 19 1.1 Platform Selection 19 1.2 The Size of Far-right Online Communities 21 1.3 Motivations for Joining Platforms: Findings from Gab, 4chan and Discord 22 1.4 Themes Within Far-right Communities Using Alternative Platforms 26 1.5 Case Study 1: Ideologies: Findings from an Alt-right Discord Server Survey 31 1.6 Case Study 2: Analysis of Anti-minority Content on 4chan 36 1.7 Reach of far-right groups and influencers on Mainstream and Alternative Platforms 37 1.8 The Interplay Between Alternative and Mainstream Media 41 2. Conclusion 44 3. Recommendations 46 3.1 Responding to illegal online content & activities 46 3.2 Responding to legal but potentially harmful online content and activities 47 3.3 Civil Society and Frontline Practitioner Responses 48 3.4 Further Research 50 Bibliography 51 Appendices 56 The Online Ecosystem of the German Far-Right 5 Glossary Alternative Platforms Far-right We define ‘alternative platforms’ as platforms that are used In line with academic and far-right expert Cas Mudde, by groups and individuals who believe major social media we define the far-right as groups and individuals platforms have become inhospitable to them because exhibiting at least three of the following five features: of their political views. Alternative platforms may include nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy or platforms built to advance specific political purposes, strong state advocacy.3 platforms that tolerate a wide range of political positions, including hateful and extremist ones, because of their Far-right is an umbrella term, which encapsulates broad understanding of freedom of speech, and platforms both the ‘radical right’ and the ‘extreme right’. which were built for entirely different, non-political According to Mudde, the radical right and the extreme purposes such as gaming. While the focus of this report is right both ‘believe that inequalities between people are on alternative platforms used by the far-right, other radical natural and positive’, but they hold different positions or extreme movements also use alternative platforms they on democracy.4 While the radical right is opposed to perceive as less hostile to their views. certain aspects of liberal democracy (e.g. minority rights, independent institutions) it is not in principle against Alternative Media Outlets (Alt-media) democracy, but favours a majoritarian democracy led by We define alt-media in line with Heft et al. (2019) the in-group it identifies with. Extreme-right actors on as outlets who self-identify as an “alternative” the other hand are in principle opposed to democracy and “corrective to a perceived political and media as a form of governance, instead favouring authoritarian mainstream”. While the focus of this report is on rule.5 For this report, we investigated both the radical right-wing alternative media, alternative media right and the extreme right. Thus, the research does outlets may express other political stances as well.1 not just cover neo-Nazi groups opposed to democracy, but the entire spectrum of the far-right, including right- Anti-Muslim wing populist actors such as Patriotische Europäer We define anti-Muslim as groups or individuals who gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) or have a negative perception of Islam and/ or Muslims the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD; Alternative for which is used to justify discrimination against and/or Germany). Although the AfD does not openly oppose the exclusion of Muslims. democracy in principle, it has voiced opposition to aspects of liberal democracy such as minority rights, Antisemitism attacked independent institutions, failed to exclude We use the definition of antisemitism from the extremists from the party and pushed nationalist, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: racist and xenophobic positions. ‘Antisemitism
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