It's absolutely astounding to me the number of folks who have done little to no research or work on Nazi Telegram but somehow feel qualified to say that deplatforming the terror channels is bad because they enjoyed dipping their toes in once & a while to supplement a hot take.
Deplatforming Nazis is good, actually.
If your research isn't strong or deep enough for you to know where the Nazis go next, that's an issue with your competency, not a reason to come down on deplatforming terrorists.
And if you didn't archive (which is *extremely* simple to do on Telegram, btw)... that's also a problem with your research methods, not damning evidence that deplatforming has made fascism impossible to document or track.
We go through this every time we win a major deplatforming campaign.
Folks who have been doing the work and have been embedded in these online terror community sound the alarm, folks who are attracted to the sensationalism arrive and declare themselves experts...
...and then the Johnny-come-latelies and folks with only superficial knowledge complain that their research has been wrecked when the alarm-sounders finally succeed in deplatforming it.
If you think terror Nazi Telegram has been shut down and is inaccessible for your research...
I hate to break it to you, but you're just bad at this research.
Nearly all the old channels are back up, they're just *much* harder to find if you aren't an expert.
They aren't publishing directories anymore, and most of the channels have only a fraction of their former followings (which is good and very much the point of deplatforming-- to repeatedly isolate and quarantine-- it's always whack-a-mole).
Deplatforming works not because the Nazis don't reappear, but because when they *do* inevitably reappear, their audience and exposure is much smaller.
Which makes it that much harder for them to recruit/radicalize at a meaningful scale.
Terrorgram is not an exception to that rule.
The Nazis didn't go away.
They aren't off the radar.
Most channels rebooted.
They're still easily monitorable.
There are just fewer people listening.
A LOT fewer.
Deplatformed Nazis either
1) pop back up somewhere (in which case... we monitor them there), or
2) they give up (in which case, there's nothing to monitor anymore).
There's no top secret online Nazi lair with magical, untraceable antifa infiltration detectors.
And, it bears repeating: if you're a journalist, it is *absurd* to get mad that antifascist activists are deplatforming a Nazi space.
We are under no obligation to preserve Nazi community in amber for your hot takes.
Takedowns are part of the story, not obstructions.
It makes about as much sense as a White House pool reporter or a poli Sci prof getting mad at Biden because his election victory got in the way of the piece they were planning to write about Trump's second term, lol.
Taking down Nazis is good.
Arguing that antifascists should avoid taking down terrorist communities because it makes those communities "harder to study" is absurd.
The folks who make these arguments are not interested in countering fascism.
They are interested in branding themselves as "experts" without actually doing much actual, meaningful work.
Even if it means arguing on behalf of fascists' own interests to do it.
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Proud Goys-- the "Christian nationalist" Proud Boys offshoot mad about PB not more avertly avowings white supremacy-- is leaning hard into Edgar Cayce-based racist vaccine conspiracy.
Cayce was a supposed clairvoyant with a huge influence on contemporary New Age thinking.
We're still sort of at this place where we think of New Agers as hippie and therefore "left" and unlikely bedfellows for QAnon and other racist/antisemitic far right conspiracy theory, but New Age has *always* been tightly linked to fascist thought and race theory.
The Theosophists-- arguably the founders of New Age and certainly a huge influence on Cayce-- played around all the time with race theory.
They were also a strong influence on Nazi occultists.
Telegram is doing *very* little to take down Nazi terror channels now that the Capitol coup attention is past.
We're getting some takedowns, but it moves like molasses.
The good news: when @telegram implements advertising, they'll be extremely vulnerable to activist campaigns.
Telegram has never been revenue-generating, which means there isn't yet a way to pressure them by messing with their profits.
As @nandoodles' work proves, though, advertisers don't like getting called out out for advertising on fascist platforms, much less terrorist platforms.
It's clear from Durov's awkward attempts to get users onboard with advertisement that he's no longer interested in paying for this pet project out of pocket (or whatever his previous funding sources were).
Where there are advertisers and profits, there's leverage.
I've said it before, but Dem establishment electeds like Pelosi want to be treated with the deference we accord elder statespeople without stepping down & into that role.
You can't be a current elected *and* an elder statesperson.
By statesperson, I mean someone who acts as an advisor based on their experience, who has stepped back from a direct leadership role and into the role of offering and embodying learned wisdom.
It's not *just* on the folks planning to leave elected office in a coffin-- it's on the party for not making room and respect for statespeople elders.
I say "aging" not to be down on elders, but because the elders in the establishment have not built up any meaningful back bench of younger leaders and actively fight emerging young leaders.
The problem isn't the presence of elders, it's the absence of any sort of age diversity.
In lieu of accepting a diversity of age in leadership in a way that would allow for younger voices to be represented, they pay a small universe of privileged younger operatives to tell them what they want to hear-- that they can win young people with slick, empty marketing.