By: Paola Molina 2/5/2020
This research talk captured my attention just by hearing the title – I think I would have joined in regardless of my intern duties. For a long time, I have been baffled by how we have come to our current political era. I think everyone is still trying to figure that out, even if we are almost done with Donald Trump’s first term. One thing is for sure, and it is that hate groups have risen and there are more and more acts of terror against people the current president attacks like political rivals, members of certain religious or ethnic groups, etc. Dangerous alt-right propaganda has spread immensely online in these past few years which have caused the rise of heinous actions. So, I was really interested in learning more about how such rise came about. But like Dr. DeCook explains, this form of recruitment, spreading of hateful messages, etc. has existed for as long as the internet has been alive, and it is hard to get rid of them. But it not impossible. Potential fixes require us to look at fundamental principles like the first amendment and how tech companies operate to stop feeding the alt-right machine.
Roots of the Internet Are One of the Reasons We See the rise of the Alt-right
First, Dr. DeCook started to talk about the internet and how we thought the internet was the tool of the future because we could connect with people, do unimaginable things, and fix all of our problems. That has become partly true – we have done great things thanks to the internet – but there are also tremendous downsides. It all started with the libertarian view of the internet which said that we could say what we want, whenever we wanted, and without any infringement on the information shared online. This is good in theory, but like DeCook mentioned, we failed to think that not all speech should be free. She gave us the example of how shouting fire in a crowded theater is not protected under the first amendment because you are literally putting people’s lives at risk with what you said. But because we live in a society that thinks that ALL is fair when it comes to free speech, we have come to this point where it is totally unacceptable to put restrictions on it. And this phenomenon, the professor explains, is a reflection of who created the internet – privileged, cis-gendered, white males. The consequences of the internet did not affect them; thus, when it was time to release this tool to the world, it was met with various downsides for the general public like cyber racism, unequal representation on the internet, among other issues. When we ignore that such bias exists, we come across the specific example Dr. DeCook talked about in this research talk which is the prevalence of the alt right – a group that spreads extreme right-wing ideology that has gotten to dangerous levels because people belonging to that identity have caused harm. Jessie Daniels author of White Lies and Cyber Racism says in “The Algorithmic rise of the “Alt-Right”” that,
“Yet despite all this evidence that race is coded into these platforms, the ideology of color-blindness in technology—both in the industry and in popular understandings of technology—serves a key mechanism enabling White nationalists to exploit technological innovations. By ignoring race in the design process and eschewing discussion of it after products are launched, the tech industry has left an opening for White nationalists—and they are always looking for opportunities to push their ideology” (Daniels, 2018)
Thus, we have to take this fact into context and understand that this is one of the reasons why it is so difficult for us to get rid of this group. I will talk more about this in detail later, but lets just go over what Dr. DeCook explained in the talk and that is how these groups have been so successful at spreading their message.
The Alt-Right Were Early Adopters of the Web
These radical groups existed before. Groups such as the KKK and neo-Nazis have been around for a long time, so why has hate risen so rapidly and visibly over the past couple of years? As the emergence of the internet began, so did the savviness of these individuals who started to learn the ways in which they could advance their ideology to other people. Dr. DeCook mentioned that in the mid 1990’s there were already articles ringing the alarms about how Nazis were using the internet to push their ideology. They became so good at navigating the internet that they did not have to hide or operate on the dark web – they were out in the open, fearless of any retaliation. However, this was the point. They wanted their message to reach all people on the internet which is why they do not try to shadow their identity. Thus, DeCook explains that these movements have been very adaptive to changing digital technologies and use whatever is new, to make propaganda. The internet has been such a powerful tool for them that former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke, mentioned in his 1998 website that the internet has been the best tool for their movement, “I believe that the internet will begin a chain reaction of racial enlightenment that will shake the world by the speed of its intellectual conquest” (Daniels, 2018). This is because their messages can travel in a matter of seconds and can reach various corners of the country – even internationally. The fact that they are transparent and shameless of what they believe makes it even easier for those who want to join, join.
DeCook also wants us to take into consideration that these men already have some form of radicalization before they join the online world to continue their hateful path. The internet is just, as she puts it, “the gasoline that sparks the fire”. So, the internet is just providing them with easier ways to become more radicalized as they see a “community” that they can align themselves with and no longer feel shameless of what they think. The example she gave us was of the South Carolina shooter who shot African Americans inside a church. This individual already had a negative view on Black people because he typed on Google, “Black on White crime” – he was finding information based on stereotypes of this group. What appeared first on his result’s page was alt-right websites that led this shooter to further believe his racist and hateful ideology.
Adding on the complication of the matter, is the fact that there is so poor regulation of these networks. One example of this is that it is not possible for all data to be inspected. There are millions and millions of posts that are shared every second. So, even if we put every person on the planet to review online content, there is still the chance that content will not be looked at. Even when having people who moderate online material, these workers are often overworked, exploited, and underpaid. Consequently, this can cause malicious content to slip through the cracks and into the screens of people.
Upon doing more research, I came across one example of how they achieve this innovation by manipulating new and emerging technologies. Daniels wrote in her piece the story of how two former KKK Grand Wizards, David Duke and Don Black, joined forces in 1996 where Black created a website called Stormfront and Duke hosted a podcast. At such an early stage of the internet and the web, these two individuals had acquired advanced technology, even before anyone else in their day-to-day lives, and used such equipment to build the foundation of their hateful propaganda. Black’s son remembers how this happened, “’Pioneering white nationalism on the web was my dad’s goal…We had the latest computers, we were the first people in the neighborhood to have broadband because we had to keep Stormfront running, and so technology and connecting people on the website, long before social media’” (Daniels, 2018). This was just the start, soon they started to think of clever ways to “sneak in” their message after having explored weaknesses of the early web and its users. Here is what I mean by this, Black created another website in 1999 with the name martinlutherking.org (Daniels, 2018). Why would a White Supremacist do that? Well, it was certainly not to celebrate and honor the life of a civil rights activist and icon – which was exactly the point. The website was instead littered with fake information about Dr.King and White Supremacist propaganda that claimed that Dr.King was a, “communist, wife-beater, plagiarist, sexual deviant and all-around fraud” (Thompson, 2011). The problem was that a lot of people fell for the trick, so much so that, “If you enter “Martin Luther King, Jr.” as a search term, the site netting the third-highest ranking is martinlutherking(dot)org” (Thompson, 2011). With a domain name like martinlutherking.org one would not suspect that it is malicious because, 1) who would be evil enough to do that, 2) it has Dr.King’s name in the domain which could symbolize that his name was legitimately acquired by the organization or the family that represents him, and it made sense that a website was built to honor him, and 3) it has dot.org which further suggests that it is credible. Daniels notes, however, that if you scrolled down to the website, all the way to the bottom, the site says, “Hosted by Stormfront” (Daniels, 2018). They take advantage that people at that time didn’t critically analyze content. They know that with a domain name like that, people just automatically assume it is a legitimate site, and click on it with confidence. They also know that with all those clicks, they will move up further and further up the search results on Google. Which, again, will incentivize people to click on it more and continue the confidence of it being a legit site because it is on the top of the search results. Lastly, they know that not all people look at the bottom of the screen and read the little text, Daniels mentioned that 85% of people never scrolled down that far (Daniels, 2018), so they know that people will not question this site if they can’t see who the original creator is. I remember that in school we would be taught about this website as an example of what a non-credible resource looks like. I thought that this was such an extreme example because it was really well thought of for the malicious purpose it was created for. Never did I imagine that these sorts of tactics would create the giant movement the alt-right is now. Nonetheless, this is one of the ways they operate. These are all the ingredients they use to force their message to appear in your life, even if you don’t want to, in hopes that their message is talked about in mass and that they hopefully hook someone along the way.
In Part Two we will see how the Alt-Right uses YouTube’s algorithm to their advantage and why this type of extremist is affecting the public. Part Two Will Publish On Monday, February 10, 2020
Bibliography
Daniels, Jessie. “The Algorithmic Rise of the ‘Alt-Right.’” Contexts, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 60–65, doi:10.1177/1536504218766547.
DeCook, Julia. “The Infrastructure of Hate: How Online Networks Are Manipulated and Exploited by the Right-Wing Extremist.” Research Talk Conference, October 16, 2019, School of Communication – Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL.
“Documenting Hate: Charlottesville.” Frontline and ProPublica, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/documenting-hate-charlottesville/. Accessed Oct. 16, 2019.
“Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2018.” Anti-Defamation League, https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018. Accessed 24 Oct. 2019.
Svrluga, Susan. “Jury Awards $450,000 to Father of Sandy Hook Victim in Defamation Case.” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/16/jury-awards-father-sandy-hook-victim-defamation-case/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2019.
“The Alt-Right Are Savvy Internet Users. Stop Letting Them Surprise You.” Wired. www.wired.com, https://www.wired.com/story/alt-right-youtube-savvy-data-and-society/. Accessed 25 Oct. 2019.
Thomson, Keith. “White Supremacist Site MartinLutherKing.Org Marks 12th Anniversary.” HuffPost, 16 Jan. 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-supremacist-site-ma_b_809755. Accessed 28 Oct. 2019.