An Online Environmental Scan of Right-wing Extremism in Canada Interim Report Jacob Davey Mackenzie Hart Cécile Guerin Edited by Jonathan Birdwell About the authors Jacob Davey is a senior research manager at the Cécile Guerin is a research co-ordinator at ISD, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) where he leads supporting the organisation’s European development research on the extreme right-wing and hate groups. and analysis work. She works on the Online Civil His work focuses on mapping extreme right-wing Courage Initiative, a project which aims to upscale civil mobilisation globally, the development of new software society efforts against hate speech and extremism for tracking hate speech online, and the intersection of online. Cécile also contributes to ISD’s research and hate and disinformation. His recent research outputs policy work, with a focus on social media analysis and have looked at how extreme right-wing movements network mapping related to hate speech, extremism connect across borders, the mainstreaming of extremist and disinformation online. She has written for a range ideology and conspiracy theories, disinformation of publications, including the Guardian, Prospect and campaigns and de-radicalisation work. Jacob regularly the Independent. Cécile holds an MSc in International advises senior policymakers and delivers lectures on History from the London School of Economics and extreme right ideology, and he has provided expert an MA in English from the École Normale Supérieure testimony to the UK Home Affairs Select Committee. in France. Jacob’s research has been featured in a range of publications and outlets including the BBC, the Guardian, The Times, The New York Times, El Pais, Sky News, CNN and the Hill. Jacob is a fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. Mackenzie Hart is a research associate at ISD, working Acknowledgements across various projects in the research and policy Special thanks is given to Jakob Guhl, Jan Rau, Amarnath division. Mackenzie focuses on hate, disinformation Amarasingam, Eisha Maharasingam-Shah, Zoe Fourel, and the far-right, and has been involved with ISD’s Barbara Perry, Ryan Scrivens, David Hofmann, Brynn election analysis units, mapping and analysing online Trofimuk, Bradley Galloway, Austin Lawrence, Victoria information operations, as well as the activities of Ginsley and Tiana Gaudette for their research support extremist groups. Before coming to ISD, Mackenzie throughout this project. completed her MA in Terrorism, Security and Society at King’s College London, where she worked as an This report was delivered with funding support from intern at the International Centre for the Study of the Public Safety Canada Community Resilience Fund. Radicalisation and as a research assistant in the War Studies department. © 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 Danny Arter. 3 An Online Environmental Scan of Right-wing Extremism in Canada Contents Summary 04 Key Findings 05 Project Overview and Approach 10 Platform Overview: Twitter 17 Platform Overview: Facebook 25 Platform Briefing: YouTube 30 Platform Overview: 4Chan 33 Platform Overview: Gab 35 Platform Briefing: Iron March 36 Platform Briefing: Fascist Forge 38 Concluding Remarks 40 Technical Appendix 41 4 An Online Environmental Scan of Right-wing Extremism in Canada Summary In January 2020 former Canadian Armed Forces This report represents the interim findings of a two- reservist Patrik Mathews was arrested with two year study designed to increase understanding of the other men. The trio were suspected members of social media footprint of right-wing extremism (RWE) The Base – a violent neo-Nazi organisation – and in Canada. This work is part of a larger project designed had allegedly been planning an attack at a gun rights to understand RWE in Canada led by Ontario Tech rally in Richmond Virginia with the aim of causing University (OTU), in partnership with Michigan State chaos and accelerating the initiation of a civil war.1 University and the University of New Brunswick. This team are currently working on a similar project designed This arrest was part of a global pattern – acts of to map offline RWE in Canada. The project follows a terrorism committed by the far-right have increased similar study delivered in 2015, enabling researchers and by 320% over the past five years,2 supported by an policymakers to understand how RWE has changed in increasingly connected and internationalist community the past five years.5 of right-wing extremism. Canada has not been isolated from this trend and in recent years the number of hate To date, our researchers have assessed the scale of groups operating in the country has tripled.3 Canadian right-wing extremist activity across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, 4chan, Gab, Fascist Forge and Iron Central to this increase in activity is the use of social March. Over the next year we will analyse extremism media. It provides avenues for a broad spectrum on these platforms in more detail, and incorporate of right-wing extremists to mobilise by recruiting additional digital forums into our study. This represents new members, broadcasting disinformation and one of the most comprehensive efforts to date to propaganda, harassing opponents, and co-ordinating assess the scale of right-wing extremist activity online activity including publicity stunts, protests and acts of in Canada. violence.4 Social media used includes popular platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and a constellation of fringe forums including ultra-libertarian platforms with lax content moderation policies such as Gab, and specially created extremist hubs like Iron March and Fascist Forge. 5 An Online Environmental Scan of Right-wing Extremism in Canada Key findings • We identified 6,660 right-wing extremist March 2019, and spikes in activity in October 2019 channels, pages, groups and accounts across on Twitter, Facebook and 4chan. We were able to link 7 social media platforms for this report. To conclusively the March spike on 4chan and Twitter date, this project has studied Canadian right-wing to the attack in Christchurch, and the October spike extremist communities across Facebook, Twitter, across all platforms to the federal election. YouTube, Iron March, Fascist Forge, 4chan and Gab. This included analysis of a network of 6,352 Twitter • Pages, accounts and users connected to RWE accounts, 130 public Facebook pages and groups, 32 on Twitter and Facebook rarely engage in YouTube channels, 42 Gab accounts, 88 Iron March explicitly extremist conversation. On Twitter accounts and 31 Fascist Forge accounts. The reach we identified a network of 6,352 Canadian users of these channels, pages, groups and accounts was who were closely connected to extremist accounts, significant, and collectively they have reached over and who had used the platform in a way which 11 million users across these platforms. Furthermore, indicated evidence of right-wing extremist beliefs we found that Canadians are highly active on forums at least once in 2019, including the use of violent, associated with white supremacy, representing the dehumanising or othering language targeting third largest nationality using 4chan’s politically minority communities; extremist slang; or reference incorrect board after the US and UK, and were the to RWE conspiracy theories. However only 1% (76) third largest community on Iron March when the of these users were classified as ‘prolific’ (posting platform was active. 12 or more extremist tweets in 2019), while 43% (2,775) of these users had only made one extremist • A spectrum of right-wing extremist communities comment in 2019. Similarly, on Facebook we found are active across different platforms. We identified that only 0.7% of posts made by pages and groups five ideological subgroups of right-wing extremists: associated with RWE actively contained an white supremacists, ethnonationalists, anti-Muslim anti-minority slur or extremist slang. groups, sovereigntists and militia groups, and the ‘manosphere’. Individuals and groups were then • Anti-Muslim and anti-Trudeau rhetoric are assigned to one of these classifications according the most salient topics of conversation among to pre-existing literature produced by anti-hate RWE actors in Canada. On Twitter we found that organisations and academia, explicit references to highly prolific extremist users were more likely to be certain ideas, and analysis of the tone and nature of engaged in anti-Muslim conversation, and spikes in material produced and shared online. We found that activity often contained anti-Muslim conversation. ethnonationalists are the largest RWE community Similarly, on Facebook we found that Muslims were operating on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the most widely discussed minority community, accounting for 60%, 53% and 46% of RWE communities and the most common target of posts containing on these platforms respectively. However, we found explicit hate speech (23%), with anti-Semitism being that on more fringe platforms, white supremacist the second largest grouping of hate speech (16%). In groups are more prevalent, accounting for 100% addition to anti-Muslim activity we found that anti- of Canadian users identified on Fascist Forge, government sentiment was a highly salient topic in 72% of Canadian users identified on Iron March, RWE circles. Justin Trudeau was mentioned in 11.4% and 40% of Canadian users identified on Gab. of posts made by RWE Facebook pages and groups, and was the most frequent topic of videos made by • The Christchurch attack and the Canadian federal RWE YouTube channels, accounting for 28% of all election led to the largest increases in activity content analysed.