Thread by @DdesimoneDaniel

A thread on some of the context around the @BBCPanorama we broadcast this week.

The networks we investigated are often in focus due to their potential to generate terrorist attacks.

But the violence and hatred encouraged is far broader
bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…

Fascist Forge, the neo-Nazi website whose founder we exposed, hosted terrorist instructions and was used to promote racial hatred, but also sexual violence against women

One thread provided a pseudo-intellectual justification for rape. Another advocated “sexual terrorism”

In an encrypted chat group for forum members - managed by the founder - some users argued in favour of sexually abusing young teenage girls

The private chat group contained members of various neo-Nazi groups, including The Base, Atomwaffen Division and the Sonnenkrieg Division

One network of overlapping circles.

I didn’t want name the forum - even in any previous court reporting - until we were in position to challenge the founder

Many of those in these digital spaces are young teenage boys.

In order to be granted full membership of Facist Forge, people had to take a lengthy ‘exam’ that was marked by the founder - 25-year-old Matthew Baccari - and his team of helpers

Questions in exam included ‘what are views on Jews’.

Those on the forum not judged to be extreme enough were ridiculed and excluded

We heard a similar grooming process on the secret recordings in the film, with teenagers encouraged to familiarise themselves with a racist, violent ideology - and talk by older men of ideologically shaping the younger applicants

What is the context for all this?

In general, a move away from any attempt by large parts of the extreme right at gaining popular support for their ideas.

There is scorn for those who engage in more traditional activities, such as rallies or marches

A look this trend was published yesterday by @cassiepmiller splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020…

Instead, there is an apocalyptic prediction of racial warfare and social collapse - allied to a belief that such ruptures are the only route to exerting real influence or taking power.

We heard these beliefs expressed candidly on the recordings

The ideology suggests that, in order to accelerate the arrival of these events, people can stress or attack the “system” in order to undermine it

This result is an encouragement of terrorism by lone actors or small cells, but also violence and cruelty that doesn’t meet such definitions, with seemingly any actions justified as long as they cause some kind of harm

The language of wanting ’system collapse’ - meaning societal breakdown for everyone - was acknowledged by the site's founder to be an abstraction.

He stated instead that “our enemies are the people in the system” and that people should be the target

This dehumanising trend has blended online with other violent ideas, such as those seen in the case of a US soldier charged this week with plotting to murder his colleagues

He was allegedly associated with a neo-Nazi movement that glorifies the rape of women. Yes honestly

Absorbing these multiple hatreds can only make a person more hateful, crueller, more prone to violence.

Thus, the everyday effects of the kind of racism and misogyny promoted by these networks are not abstractions