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This is the timeline of the articles with their respective colour code

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This is the timeline of the articles with their respective colour code

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How has right-wing extremism impacted our international relations and on a local scale?

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How has right-wing extremism impacted our international relations and on a local scale?

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This Padlet explores the rise of far-right extremism and how it has become a pillar for the global crisis that is these types of movements becoming forces of great violence and feared ideals, as fundamentally being racially and ethnically motivated terrorism. Right-wing extremism, as it will be explored below has negatively been a part of our international relations connecting governments and groups around the world in an effort to further an agenda of supposedly creating order by dismantling the existing order and societal values.
Taking advantage of the medias reach and accessibility to the ears, eyes, and thoughts of the public, of which is also beneficial to these violent groups in that they can provide an international attention as well. The availability and influence of world news and social media has allowed extremist groups to share gruesome videos and promote propaganda, instilling fear and gathering more actors for their movement. Similarly, as media plays a key role in the rise of this ‘political violence’, the times when countries and governments fall into a vulnerable state with dire circumstances, such as current worldwide lockdowns (COVID-19), they are getting more opportunities to strike and force their ideology on others, leading acts of severe crime and terrorism. This is ultimately all made real with these groups insurgence into a countries government, or into their political system, highlighting these types of groups’ racist extremism in their quest to undermine some of the governments policies and institutions. It also poses the question of if there needs to be more done in politics and policing to deal with right-wing extremism.

All the columns listed are all intricately connected to each other and contribute to the issue of far-right extremism and how the processes and systems in our society are in some way a part of the rise of this movement.

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Due to the limited current articles in the media, this timeline has been created to show how far-right extremism and the media have been used to encourage acts of terrorism and share gruesome videos through social media. Each contain a small statement introducing the event and have articles attached with more details. Whilst this is not every event that has occurred, this timeline compiles many attacks that shook the world to its core.

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An overall video detailing the rise of far right extremism in the USA and reasons why

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An overall video detailing the rise of far right extremism in the USA and reasons why

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this video explores how social media and these extremist views becoming homogenized in politics

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far-right terrorism is on the rise - cnn video

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The shisha bar attack in Germany is only one of many examples of far-right extremist attacks in the past few years.

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Due to the recent outbreak of Covid-19 across the world, the media has been relatively quiet in regard to far-right extremism and terrorism. With the lock down on borders and introduction of isolation on the local level, it has become difficult to explore what may be happening in other countries, as well as our own. The coverage of the rippling effects of Covid-19 has been extremely prominent on social media and news outlets, therefore, there is minimal articles detailing acts of extremism and it is unknown how many may actually be occurring.

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"White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit."

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"White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit."

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An article exploring how far right groups have capitalised on COVID-19 and the stay-at-home orders in the US in order to recruit new members and to push their 'anti government' views

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"Whoop-dee-do," wrote one critic on a Telegram channel frequented by white supremacists.

Several recent plots have been linked to people who frequented such discussions.

Mr. Kawczynski's former sentiments did not entirely disappear. With virus cases expanding in New York and elsewhere nearby in early April, he suggested on Twitter that New England had to work "independently for survival."

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

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The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists

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"Whoop-dee-do," wrote one critic on a Telegram channel frequented by white supremacists. Several recent plots have been linked to people who frequented such discussions. Mr. Kawczynski's former sentiments did not entirely disappear. With virus cases expanding in New York and elsewhere nearby in early April, he suggested on Twitter that New England had to work "independently for survival."

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The National Security Podcast Right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism

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The National Security Podcast Right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism

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A thorough and exploratory discussion from Australian academics and professionals.
Was a very good listen! discusses the history of the Right wing in Australia and the current activities happening in Australia and the way security agencies and police are working to counteract these groups.

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In the first of a two-part episode series of National Security Podcast, Chris Farnham talks to terrorism expert Kristy Campion and investigative journalist Alex Mann about right-wing extremism.
What poses the greatest risk, Islamic terrorism or far-right extremism? In the first of a two-part episode series of National Security Podcast, Chris Farnham talks to Kristy Campion and Alex Mann about right-wing extremism. In the second pod of the series Nick Rasmussen, the former head of US national counter-terrorism, and terrorism expert Jacinta Carroll will talk policy options to deal with this challenge. First exploring whether right-wing extremism is a new challenge and why conspiracy theories seem to have such great influence with the 'alt-right' and ultra-nationalists, the panel ask if there is a counter-balance to the threat of right-wing extremism. Listen here: https://aca.st/fb05dd

Alex Mannis a Sydney-based broadcast journalist with the ABC's flagship investigative podcast, Background Briefing. In 2017, he was recognised as South Australia's Journalist of the Year and has won several other media awards for his reporting.

Kristy Campion is a lecturer in terrorism studies at Charles Sturt University, with special focus on the history of terrorism and right-wing extremism. She holds first-class honours in terrorism history and a PhD on the same topic.

Chris Farnham is the presenter of the National Security Podcast. He joined the National Security College in June 2015 and is currently Senior Outreach and Policy Officer. His career focus has been on geopolitics with experience working in and out of China for a number of years as well as operating in Australia and Southeast Asia.
We'd love to hear your feedback for this podcast series! Send in your questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes to podcast@policyforum.net. You can find us on . The National Security Podcast is available on , , , and wherever you get your podcasts.

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National Security Podcast: Right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism (part one) - Policy Forum

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In the first of a two-part episode series of National Security Podcast, Chris Farnham talks to terrorism expert Kristy Campion and investigative In this episode of National Security Pod, Chris Farnham talks to terrorism expert Kristy Campion and journalist Alex Mann about right wing extremism.

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Recognizing the Dangers of Right-wing Extremism | Barbara Perry 

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Recognizing the Dangers of Right-wing Extremism | Barbara Perry 

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A discussion on why we cant discount the danger that Far-Right Extremist groups pose, and a brief overview of some of the groups operating (whilst referring to Canada some of these group operate in Australia and other nations) . Plus a discussion of what needs to be done.

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Recognizing the Dangers of Right-wing Extremism | Barbara Perry | TEDxCalgary

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UN update on the rise of far-right extremism around in the world in 2020

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UN update on the rise of far-right extremism around in the world in 2020

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In this document by the United Nations, it talks about everything important to do with the rise of this extremism movement from the major forces that drive it (gender, finances, etc.), to their approach efforts on tackling this issue.

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This articles explores the similarities between far right groups and Islamist manifestos

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An international terrorism specialist has found an 'eerie similarity' between the manifesto released by right-wing terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 50 people and injured dozens more in New Zealand last year, and jihadist propaganda issued before and after Islamist terror attacks.

Professor Boaz Ganor is the author of a new ASPI special report, 'Terrorism is terrorism': The Christchurch terror attack from an Israeli CT perspective, released today. He examines the events leading up to the 40 minutes of terror on 15 March 2019 when Tarrant, 28, attacked two mosques in Christchurch. Most of the victims were Muslim immigrants and refugees who came to New Zealand from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia or India.

Ganor notes that, 'Unlike many of the terror attacks perpetrated globally in the past few decades, the attacker was not an Islamist jihadist terrorist but rather a Christian Australian who was motivated by an extreme right-wing racist ideology.'

Reviewing the manifesto in which Tarrant attempted to justify his actions, Ganor outlines eight major points of similarity which highlight common justifications for violence and comparable mindsets of right-wing and Islamist extremists:

Altruism: Like many other lone wolves, Tarrant sees himself as an altruist acting to secure the future of his people by protecting them from 'invading immigrants'. He sets out to create an image similar to that built by Islamic terrorists, including many suicide bombers, who see themselves as protecting the Islamic 'nation' or the Islamic faith.

Defensive action: Despite the cruel and brutal nature of Tarrant's attack, he describes it as a defensive action meant to convey a clear message to the 'invaders' that the lands and countries of white people will never be theirs and that they will never replace the white race. A similar message is conveyed by Islamist terrorists who present their actions as defensive and as a response to colonialism and the conquest of the lands, resources and holy sites of Islam by 'crusaders' and Jews.

The target: Tarrant positions himself and his Anglo-American reference group in contrast to the immigrant 'invaders'. He declares war on the invaders much as Islamic jihadist terrorists declare war on 'infidels', which include any Muslim who doesn't subscribe to their fundamentalist views on Islam as well as members of other faiths.

Modus operandi: Tarrant's attack was intended to scare his perceived enemies and deter them from continuing with their course of action. Similar motives are held by Islamic terrorists, who strive to create a rift between the citizens of Arab Muslim countries and their 'corrupt' governments.

Revenge: Tarrant stresses that his attack is meant to avenge the killing of Western citizens, including children, who perished at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Jihadi terrorists often present their attacks as revenge for attacks on Muslims or for counterterrorism activity. This rationale carries a special danger, because an attack carried out as revenge by a right-wing extremist against Muslim targets may trigger a counterattack by Islamist jihadists, and vice versa.

Restoring old glory: Tarrant claims that he acts to correct a historic injustice. He wants to restore the status quo ante, under which immigrants live in their countries of origin and Anglo-Americans live in the West. He stresses that he doesn't have anything against Muslims or Jews living in their own countries. Similarly, Islamist jihadists excuse their actions by relying on an obscure 'historic justice', saying they're acting to restore Islam's golden age, when vast areas in Europe and other parts of the world were controlled by Muslim empires.

Call for action: Tarrant stresses that one of his goals is to call the 'dormant, individualist, nihilist' Anglo-American masses to action against the 'invaders'. Islamist terrorists entreat their target Muslim audience to shake off complacency and join them, either as foreign fighters in jihadi theatres of action or as home-grown lone-wolf terrorists in their countries of residence.

Sense of urgency: Tarrant anxiously observes the wave of Muslim immigration into Europe and concludes that European culture is nearing an imminent demise or, as he calls it, 'white genocide', because of the differences in birth rates between Europeans and immigrants. This process and its severity in his eyes create a sense of urgency to act. This sense of urgency is also typical of the incitement messages promoted by Islamist terror organisations that rely on a 'godly' religious directive which they say compels them to take action.

Ganor analyses the different phases of Tarrant's attack and looks for the lessons to be learned for preventing, thwarting and managing such atrocities, based on Israeli counterterrorism experience.

The report steps the timeline of Tarrant's actions from his preparations to his arrest, and explores his right-wing indoctrination and radicalisation, mostly online, in the two years leading up to the attack.

Ganor discusses Tarrant's livestreaming of the event, which caused outrage across the world. While governments and social media companies swiftly intervened to have the footage removed, the somewhat lawless nature of the internet meant those efforts weren't fully successful and Tarrant's manifesto and video remain accessible to those who want to find them. This has helped spread Tarrant's message and has been the catalyst for terrorist acts in the United States and Norway.

Ganor emphasises the important role intelligence and law enforcement agencies play in gathering public information and using data analytics to identify people who may be undergoing radicalisation or who are intent on committing an act of terror.

The report is a compelling piece of analysis that provides insights into the mindsets of terrorists and outlines opportunities for preventing and disrupting terrorist actions at key points in the planning phase.

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Motives of far-right and Islamist terrorists 'eerily similar' | The Strategist

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An international terrorism specialist has found an 'eerie similarity' between the manifesto released by right-wing terrorist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 50 people and injured dozens more in New Zealand last year, and jihadist propaganda issued before and after Islamist terror attacks.

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Right-Wing Extremism in Europe: Case Studies from Germany

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Right-Wing Extremism in Europe: Case Studies from Germany

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This Zoom recording in April 2020, of the discussion between Arie Kruglanski and David Webber by the International Centre for Counter Terrorism was very insightful as they talk about the interconnection of their study of psychology and that of global terrorism and extremism.
what is also fascinating that Kruglanski discusses is the impact and power a tragic terrorist event (9/11 attacks) in the world has on the rest of the world and how that event can foster more outbreaks of this type of violence, and also the support and actions taken from world leaders and governments against these movements.
It shows just how much we are all connected and how one event, leader, politician, group/organisation, media outlet or world crisis (COVID-19) can affect everyone in the world, thus being forces that drive our international relations.
**skip past introductions to 9:25 when the real discussion begins and watch as much as you wish.

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On Monday 20 April 2020, from 16:00 to 17:30 (CET/GMT+1), the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague (ICCT) and Leiden University's Centre for Professional Learning jointly hosted a guest Live Briefing, followed by a Q&A session.
Right Wing Extremism In Europe: Case Studies from Germany
Arie Kruglanski and David Webber have conducted extensive empirical research on violent extremism, and they will share their insights on the question of why individuals feel attracted to, join, stay in or leave violent (extremist)movements and how this may be counteracted. Specifically, they will present the findings of their latest book: The Radicals' Journey: German Neo Nazis Voyage to the Edge and Back. The authors delve deeply into the motivations of German Neo-Nazis that prompt their initial membership in these groups, the elements that make membership appealing, and the factors that ultimately cause members to leave.
Speakers:

Arie Kruglanski: Distinguished University Professor, a recipient of numerous awards, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society. As a founding Co-PI and Co-Director of START (National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism), Kruglanski also conducts research with the support of grants from the Department for Homeland Security and from the Department of Defense on the psychological processes behind radicalization, deradicalization, and terrorism.

David Webber: Assistant Professor, Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. Webber utilizes a mixture of social psychological experimental methods, field surveys in at-risk locations, and qualitative analyses to examine the factors involved in the radicalization and deradicalization processes of violent extremists. In conjunction with the U.S. State Department and ICCT, Webber is consulting with the Philippine prison system on the use and implementation of risk assessment tools for imprisoned violent extremist offenders.

To join this Live Briefing, please register and you will receive the log-in details 24 hrs before the start of the Briefing.

For further reading on right wing violence, please read the ICCT Research Paper by Tim Wilson, Rightist Violence: An Historical Perspective, tracing the evolution of extreme right-wing violence by paying close attention to its changing patterns from the late nineteenth century to the present. For more on ICCT's work, and to keep up with future Live Briefings, check out our and follow us on Twitter @ICCT_TheHague.

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Recording ICCT Live Briefing - Right Wing Extremism In Europe: Case Studies from Germany - 20 April 2020 - ICCT

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﻿ On Monday 20 April 2020, from 16:00 to 17:30 (CET/GMT+1), the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague (ICCT) and Leiden University's Centre for Professional Learning jointly hosted a guest Live Briefing, followed by a Q&A session. Right Wing Extremism In Europe: Case Studies from Germany Arie Kruglanski and David Webber have conducted extensive [...]

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Do you consider the terrorist nature of Far-right extremism is down played in the media and by politicians in order to propel the notion that acts of terrorism can only be committed by foreign non-state actors?
Many Governments and their police/security forces have been criticized for not being as pro-active in the fight against Far-Right extremism as they are towards more stereotypical forms of terrorism. It is argued that governments tend to downplay Far-Right Attacks as acts performed by a lone wolf; a mentally unhealthy loner who was angry at the world, not motivated by an ideology. Where as it is often clear that they are part of a strong and larger online community that easily resembles a terrorist organisation.

More commonly than not Far-Right  groups are employing the same online behaviors and tools to recruit young and impressionable people as terrorist organisations.

Governments and police forces deny being biased and argue that the laws surrounding hate crimes and domestic terrorism have a very strict definition and that often the 'attacks' performed by these groups cannot be considered as acts of terrorism.

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The media plays a crucial role in the daily lives of many people across the world, its reach and accessibility have many benefits to the current society. However, as social media and other media outlets continue to grow and spread, it can be used for more harm than good. Social media allows a wide range of extremist ideologies and beliefs to be expressed to an extensive amount of people. Its availability and influence has been utilised by far-right extremist groups to share gruesome videos and promote propaganda; and whilst many social media outlets are heavily monitored, many forms of terrorist content slips through the cracks.

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The Correlation Between the Media and Extremism

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The Correlation Between the Media and Extremism

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This article explores the concept that “terrorism is inconceivable without mass media”, and by having a myriad of platforms available to use may be perpetuating the issue at hand. Moreover, society has become “so habituated to terrorist attacks that they must have a far greater body count” in order to grab the attention of the media and spark outrage, terrorists now seem to need an act of shocking grandeur to access the type of media exposure to the world. In this way, the media has become a way for extremists to propagate their ideologies and draw in the attention of the masses. Additionally, as stated in the article, manifestos and writings have been used to inspire acts of terrorism and extremism for many years. The Christchurch killer stated in his 74-page manifesto that he had been encouraged by Anders Behring Breivik after reading his manifesto he’d written after killing 80 people in cold blood. This long-lasting imprint of the internet and media can be seen to facilitate malicious intent nearly 8 years later, a concept that when provoked, proves to be a scary thought

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People write condolence messages to the victims of a mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, during a candlelight vigil outside the New Zealand Embassy in Brussels on Friday. (Laurie Dieffembacq/AFP/Getty Images)

The livestreamed slaughter of 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has shined a spotlight on how terrorists employ social media. As The Post noted on Friday: "The New Zealand massacre video, which appeared to have been recorded with a GoPro helmet camera, was announced on the fringe chat room 8chan, live-streamed on Facebook, reposted on Twitter and YouTube and discussed on Reddit."

This is horrifying but not surprising. Terrorism is inconceivable without mass media. Terrorists, after all, typically operate by themselves or in small groups. (The Islamic State is one of the few exceptions: It had grown into a quasi-state before being reduced to its terrorist roots.) They cannot hope to defeat their enemy - a powerful nation state - by brute force. They can only hope that acts of violence will call attention to their grievances and possibly generate such a powerful backlash that the resulting repression will drive more recruits into their ranks. This is why anarchists referred to their attacks as "propaganda by the deed."

In my book, "Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present," I noted that the rise of terrorism in the 19th century was rooted in four phenomena: First, "destructive and portable weaponry," such as dynamite and the breach-loading pistols. Second, the growth of mass media - first, cheap, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines produced on Linotype machines and later radio, movies and television. Third, the spread of literacy made possible by the expansion of public education and the establishment of universities where students were often radicalized. And, fourth, the rise of secular ideologies such as Marxism, anarchism, nationalism and fascism that inspired so much bloodletting.

The anarchists arose in the late 19th century when all of these trends reached a critical mass. In hindsight, most of their outrages seem relatively tame - one particularly notorious bombing at a cafe in Paris in 1894 killed only one person. Like a junkie needing ever-higher doses, we have become so habituated to terrorist attacks that they must have a far greater body count to grab our attention. Terrorists were more novel and, therefore, more terrifying around the fin de siècle. President Theodore Roosevelt even said in 1908 that "when compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance."

The anarchists were eventually suppressed, but new terrorist groups arose to take their place. The 1960s and 1970s saw a wave of Marxist and nationalist terrorism associated with organizations such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Weather Underground and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of Islamist terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. Aside from a devotion to violence, all these groups shared a certain skill in exploiting the mass media of their day.

The Palestinians brought terrorism into the television age: the hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics in 1972 would remain the best-known act of terrorism until Sept. 11, 2001. Terrorist leaders Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat became global celebrities. Their notoriety was finally eclipsed by Osama bin Laden after 9/11. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq (which morphed into the Islamic State), took butchery to another horrifying level by slaughtering tens of thousands of Shiites in Iraq. Unlike bin Laden, Zarqawi did not sit for TV interviews, but he and his fanatical followers were brazen and skilled at publicizing their attacks by spreading manifestos, pictures and videos via text messages, email and social media. One may go so far as to say they carried out many of their attacks for the express purpose of generating online content.

After Zarqawi's death, the Islamic State became even more adept at using social media to spread its propaganda, recruit acolytes, raise funds and inspire "lone wolf" jihadists to carry out attacks in the West. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, whose most prominent member was the Yemeni American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, was equally skilled at propaganda, publishing an online English-language magazine called Inspire that, true to its name, inspired a number of terrorist attacks. Awlaki's videos, which still circulate online, also helped to motivate terrorists long after his death in an American airstrike in Yemen in 2011.

Right-wing extremists are less organized than the Islamist extremists, but they also depend on the Internet to spread their sick messages. In France, the extreme right's online network is called the fachosphère. Many white supremacists leave behind online manifestos to explain their hideous acts. These, in turn, inspire fresh outrages in the future. The Christchurch shooter, for example, cited the influence of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right Norwegian who had emailed a 1,500-page manifesto just before slaughtering nearly 80 people in July 2011. The alleged Christchurch killer, in turn, left a 74-page manifesto of his own.

The United States and its allies long ago recognized the need to combat jihadist propaganda online. They have spent many millions of dollars to take down jihadist websites and to offer anti-jihadist messaging online. But efforts to fight far-right propaganda online lack comparable funding or urgency, though right-wing terrorists have killed far more people in the United States in the past decade than Islamist extremists have. Indeed, the Trump administration has been cutting funding to fight right-wing extremism. That needs to change, before there are more atrocities such as the ones in Christchurch or Pittsburgh.

Elizabeth Bruenig: The New Zealand attack and the fundamental thoughtlessness of evil

Anne Applebaum: Radicalism kills. Why do we only care about one kind?

Max Boot: Not all terrorism is treated equally

Henry Olsen: Now more than ever, Trump must protect and stand by Muslims

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Opinion | Why social media and terrorism make a perfect fit

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The livestreamed slaughter of 49 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, has shined a spotlight on how terrorists employ social media. As The Post noted on Friday: "The New Zealand massacre video, which appeared to have been recorded with a GoPro helmet camera, was announced on the fringe chat room 8chan, live-streamed on Facebook, reposted on Twitter and YouTube and discussed on Reddit."

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How Social Media Fails to Protect Society From Extremism

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How Social Media Fails to Protect Society From Extremism

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This article highlights how social media platforms, whilst acting to protect society from terrorist content, continues to fail in many cases. This is a common thread between this article and the one above, that the encompassing presence of social media enables terror and extremist groups to broadcast their ideologies online; and this will continue to happen until guidelines become more strict and outlets more vigilant.

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Sunday marked one year since the horrific mosque shootings in Christchurch, in which 51 people were brutally murdered.

On that day, 12 months ago, New Zealand, and indeed the world, was shocked further to find footage of the killings was streamed live on Facebook, the world's most ubiquitous social media website.

The video stayed up for hours, replaying in the feeds of Facebook users as they trawled through advertisements and autoplaying viral videos to connect with their friends and families.

Today, the memories are raw; Christchurch, and New Zealand as a country, is still coming to grips with the effects of the horror on its people and its way of life.

The massacre, New Zealand's worst peacetime shooting, shocked the world, and spurred calls for tech companies to do more to combat extremism on their services.

Weeks after the massacre, Facebook announced it would be tightening rules around its livestreaming feature, as well as joining with a number of other tech companies under the "Christchurch Call To Action", to take stronger action against far-right hate groups and racism.

"It is right that we come together, resolute in our commitment to ensure we are doing all we can to fight the hatred and extremism that lead to terrorist violence," a May 2019 statement from Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Google and Amazon said.

The Christchurch Call action plan committed the tech giants to stronger rules around hate speech, better tools to report and remove extreme content, and working with anti-extremist groups to "challenge hate and promote pluralism and respect online".

But while Facebook says it has since taken measures to prevent the possibility of such events being livestreamed, there is plenty more still to be done when it comes to the proliferation of hateful content on social media.

New Zealand media last week reported on claims by a Muslim group that Facebook had failed to live up to its stated aims, and had not yet resolved the issue of Islamophobia and other extremist views being peddled online. The group maintains there is evidence that Facebook is still "allowing extreme and bigotry-based views to be normalised ... and emboldening ordinary people to commit public acts of hatred."

In the weeks after the massacre, Facebook executives maintained that it had learned from its mistakes, and called for other tech companies to do more to prevent the internet from becoming a hub and a haven for extreme hate. But Facebook's statements and updates since then have remained ambiguous as to its own community standards, and have often seemed to fall short of the zero tolerance approach it should have adopted by now.

The anniversary is an opportunity to take another look at how social media enables extremist communities to thrive. The fact that millions of people were able to, inadvertently or otherwise, view footage of a massacre as it unfolded, as well as many weeks later as it continued to pop up in people's feeds, is an indication of the scale of the problem, and the need to be ever-vigilant. Companies like Facebook now have more power than we could ever have imagined possible a decade ago, and it must wield that power as a force for good. Facebook also needs to unequivocally demonstrate that it takes the problem of online extremism seriously, and is taking measures to deal with it proactively.

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Big tech falls short when it comes to tackling extremism

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Sunday marked one year since the horrific mosque shootings in Christchurch, in which 51 people were brutally murdered. On that day, 12 months ago, New Zealand, and indeed the world, was shocked further to find footage of the killings was streamed live on Facebook, the world's most ubiquitous social media website.

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Attempts to draw attention to this issue have occurred, the United Nations held a meeting in 2016 to address the growing issue of social media and terrorism; addressing the work of social media outlets to contain and diminish accounts made to stimulate terrorist content.

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United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee

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Exploitation of the Internet and social media for terrorist purposes can only be defeated through sustained and comprehensive action involving the active participation and collaboration of Member States, international and regional organizations, civil society, and the private sector. This was a common theme expressed by of a number of participants in a special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, held at the United Nations in New York on 1 December 2016.

"We must work together to promote dialogue among all stakeholders in order to find effective ways to prevent the exploitation of information and communication technologies for terrorist purposes," H.E. Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Egypt to the United Nations, said in his closing statement. Ambassador Aboulatta is Chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Security Council.

The meeting - Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms - was held against the backdrop of the significant and growing threat posed to Member States by the exploitation of ICT, in particular the Internet and social media, for terrorist purposes. In a number of resolutions, the Security Council has recognized this threat and called upon Member States to take the measures needed to deliver an effective response. The formal meeting was preceded by technical sessions on the same theme organized by the Executive Directorate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTED) on 30 November and 1 December 2016.

Representatives of the private sector underscored their commitment to preventing the exploitation of ICT for terrorist purposes. Maryam Mujica, Public Policy Team Manager for Twitter, highlighted that the company "has suspended over 360,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts" since mid-2015.

Participants in the special meeting and the accompanying technical sessions included Member States, international and regional organizations, United Nations entities, the private sector, academia, faith-based leaders, and civil society representatives. Having relevant actors from various sectors gathered in the same room provided an opportunity for dialogue and for a frank discussion about challenges and ways forward.

Documents
Concept note Agenda, technical meeting Agenda, CTC special meeting ICT4Peace report - Private sector engagement in responding to the use of the Internet and ICT for terrorist purposes
Presentations
2016-11-30-Session I 30 Nov - Arije Antinori, European Counter-Terrorism Centre (ECTC) 2016-11-30-Session I 30 Nov - V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland 2016-11-30 - Vidia Arianti, ICPVTR 2016-11-30-Session V 30 Nov - Maxim Grigoryev, The Foundation for the Study of Democracy 2016-12-01-Session I 1 Dec - Rafal Rohozinski, CEO and Chief Innovation Officer at SecDev Group, ICT4Peace 2016-12-01-Session V 1 Dec - Dr. Mahmoud Nagah Ahmed Farag Khalaf, Al-Azhar Observer Speech By Jan Kleijssen Director Information Society and Action against Crime Directorate Directorate General Human Rights and Rule of Law - DGI Council of Europe Contribution de Mme Patricia Herdt, Représentante permanente a.i.
de l'Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) auprès des Nations Unies "International Cooperation and Public-Private Partnership while Respecting International Human Rights" A Speech Delivered by: Dr. Reham Abdullah Salamah
Media coverage
Related media coverage Special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (1 December 2016: Session III) Special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (1 December 2016: Session II) Special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (1 December 2016: Session I) CTED-organized meeting: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (1 December 2016: Session V) CTED-organized meeting: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (30 November 2016: Session IV) CTED-organized meeting: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (30 November 2016: Session III) CTED-organized meeting: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (30 November 2016: Session II) CTED-organized meeting: Preventing the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms (30 November 2016: Session I)

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United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee holds special meeting on preventing exploitation of the Internet and social media for terrorist purposes

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Exploitation of the Internet and social media for terrorist purposes can only be defeated through sustained and comprehensive action involving the active participation and collaboration of Member States, international and regional organizations, civil society, and the private sector.

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In September 1972 at the Olympic Games, members of the Black September terrorist group took 11 Israeli Olympic team members hostage and utilised a live television broadcast. This is arguably the first instance of extremists using the media as a tool of destruction.

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Written by: Ben McEvoy, Alina Kulesh with Rich Cooper

What began as the 1972 Munich Olympic Games quickly became a live broadcast of terror that forever changed the world. The organizers had aimed to overcome the dark history of Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were coloured by the spectre of Nazi power, by stressing the themes of unity and peace going so far as naming the event the 'Happy Games'.

Despite this message, the Munich Olympic Committee refused to acknowledge two requests by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to compete in the Olympic Games. This snub inspired the leaders of the Black September Organization, who put forward a plan to use media coverage of the Olympics to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinian people and pressure Israel to set free Palestinian prisoners.

The first live broadcast of terror

Early in the morning of September 5, 1972, eight members of Black September shot their way into the Israeli quarters at the Olympic village. By 5:00 a.m. the terrorists had taken 11 Israelis hostage, killing one and wounding another. By 8:00 a.m. news of the siege had been broadcast by Bavarian radio.

The coverage that ensued was the first time that TV networks broadcast an act of terrorism to an audience of almost 900 million in real-time. Black September demanded a plane to fly the hostages to Egypt. German authorities schemed to ambush the terrorists and rescue the hostages. Initial reports indicated the police had succeeded, but the unprepared rescuers bungled the mission. The remaining nine hostages died horribly at Fürstenfeldbruck airbase just after midnight that same day.

Jim McKay of ABC News got official word of the disaster back in the United States - during primetime no less - and delivered the terrible news.

"They're all gone."

The event left an indelible mark on the souls of millions. For Olympic athletes, their families, their countrymen and an audience of 900 million worldwide, the image of an unknown man in a balaclava became the defining image of the Munich Games. The Munich Olympic crisis became "one of the hottest news stories of the year" dominating the U.S. network evening news of all three networks for days ⁠- only to be superseded by the unfolding Watergate Scandal.

It was the first terrorist spectacle to be exposed to the public in such visceral, electrifying detail. And it was this spectacle that set in motion a relationship between the media and terrorists that has had an indelible impact on all of us today.

Media gives terrorists the attention they need to succeed

Terrorists require attention to succeed. American scholar Mark Juergensmeyer calls terrorism "performance violence" and notes "if terrorism is theatre, then terrorists want to perform where there are plenty of spectators in the seats." The success of an attack then is measured not only by the number of casualties and whether demands are met but by how many people witness the act itself.

After Munich, terrorists learned to attract worldwide attention through mainstream television in order to achieve this end. The relationship between terrorism and the media had become crucial to their success - and the media has almost always obliged. So why do they continue to cover terrorism so extensively?

The media makes money on how much engagement their content gets. More viewers mean more advertising or subscriber dollars, which means more profit. It makes sense that the media is eager to report - and even over-report - on terrorist attacks and groups. In 2015, Priceonomics researcher, Nemil Dala, found that "regardless of the reason, currently, terrorism deaths are the single most heavily covered type of death per capita in the first pages of the New York Times compared to every other way a human can die."

Margaret Thatcher famously addressed this concern in 1985. She proposed a voluntary code of conduct among the media to "try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend."

Larry Grossman, then President of NBC News, believed that NBC should not be held accountable, stating "the job of the press is not to worry about the consequences of its coverage, but to tell the truth... and let the chips fall where they may."

Recent studies have revealed that the media's reporting actually elicits terrorist attacks. One report by scholar Michael Jetter shines a light on CNN, CBS, NBC, and Fox News and shows how a one-minute news segment about a terrorist act caused on average of 1.4 attacks the following week.

Terrorism is decreasing, while reporting of it is increasing

There's a fine line between reporting on terrorist attacks and spreading fear. In fact, the coverage of terrorism has only increased, despite an actual decrease in terrorism worldwide, most notably in North America. What many of us may not realize is the underlying bias of how terrorism is reported, and how this skews our perception of the actual threat proposed by terrorists in our own backyards.

Today, the total number of annual terrorist attacks globally is 1 4,000 - 16,000. However, the vast majority of these attacks occur in the Middle East, North Africa and South-East Asia. In 2016, the US had 61 attacks (less than 1%), compared with 3,365 attacks in Iraq (25%), 1,615 in Afghanistan (13%), and 1,019 in India (10%), the vast majority of which are unreported in Western news.

Source: Our world in data

Western reporting about terrorist attacks almost always, explicitly or implicitly, notes a connection to Islam. Researchers at Georgia State University recently performed an analysis of documented terrorist attacks in the United States and the bias against the Islamic community. Remarkably, only 12% of perpetrators were Muslim, yet research shows that a terror attack committed by a Muslim receives approximately 4.5 times more coverage than if the attack was conducted by a white person.

The fear of terrorism outweighs the reality

The above type of inaccurate reporting sends an unhealthy and false message that terrorism is an immediate and probable threat to the public. This feeling of an impending threat has begun to outweigh the reality of the threat itself. It is felt beyond personal impacts and into the political realm, where the threat of terrorism is often used to feed political agendas and xenophobia. These flaws in reporting distort our view of the modern world, which in turn affects how we shape our policy and values.

Terrorism is a complex, multidimensional topic that merits more truthful and consistent news coverage. The breathless coverage of the terrorist events in Munich, which began as a brief glimpse into a terrible aspect of the world rarely seen by most of the west, has become commonplace and even more worrisome, dangerously inaccurate. In this new age of user-generated content and massive social networks, the relationship between media, terrorists, and the audience has only become exponentially more troublesome.

This article was created for After Munich a documentary that explores the emotional aftermath the Munich Massacre over 45 years later. Visit aftermunich.com for additional exclusive content for a deeper look into the rippling effects of Munich on us all.

After Munich premiers on documentary Channel on September 8 at 9 PM.

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Terrorism at the Munich Olympic games: how an event four decades ago has a lasting impact today

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Written by: Ben McEvoy, Alina Kulesh with Rich Cooper What began as the 1972 Munich Olympic Games quickly became a live broadcast of terror that forever changed the world. The organizers had aimed to overcome the dark history of Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were coloured by the spectre of Nazi power, by stressing the themes of unity and peace going so far as naming the event the 'Happy Games'.

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In 2012, Mohamed Merah committed multiple attacks in Lyon in which he killed seven people, including three small children, and filmed the entire ordeal.

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who was french gunman mohammed merah? - cnn

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Who was French gunman Mohammed Merah? - CNN

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French gunman Mohammed Mera, the self-styled al Qaeda jihadist accused of killing seven people, died Thursday as police moved in to end a day-long siege.

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ISIS has utilised the reach and accessibility of the media for many years, from all parts of the world ISIS propaganda has been plastered on the internet, recruiting and spreading fear through vile videos and social media accounts.

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Update: August 21, 2014

As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, an Al Qaeda inspired terrorist organization seeking to create an Islamic empire) gains confidence and territory in the Middle East, its social media presence has expanded its influence well beyond the battlefields.

Building on techniques pioneered by other terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Shabaab, ISIS not only employs social media to spread its messages and recruit followers, including Westerners, but also to empower its supporters to take part in that process.

The increasing numbers of Americans and other Westerners seeking to join ISIS, combined with the support it has received on the ground in some places, suggest that its online efforts may be paying off.

Current reports estimate that between 12,000 and 15,000 foreign fighters, including as many as 100 Americans, are currently engaged in the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Although it is impossible to say that social media has played a definitive role in their recruitment, ISIS's online propaganda has often targeted westerners.

Of the five Americans arrested on terrorism charges in 2014, three had allegedly attempted to join ISIS: Shannon Conley of Colorado, Michael Todd Wolfe of Texas and Nicholas Teausant of California. Donald Ray Morgan of North Carolina was arrested on weapons charges, but is allegedly believed to have been attempting to join ISIS as well. And two apparent Americans have been featured in pro-ISIS propaganda videos: One using the name Abu Dujana al-Amriki in 2013, and one using the name Abu Abdurahman al-Trinidadi in 2014.

The involvement of foreign fighters with ISIS and other militia and terrorist groups raises particular concerns that they may pose a risk to their home countries upon their return. This concern was driven home with the May 2014 shooting in the Brussels Jewish Museum. The suspect in the attack, Mehdi Nemmouche, was believed to have spent about a year in Syria, where he may have fought with ISIS.

ISIS's sophisticated use of social media - a blueprint that will likely be copied and expanded upon by other terrorist groups as well - serves as a stark reminder of the role social media plays for terrorists around the world.

Dissemination

Although various terrorist organizations have maintained Twitter accounts since at least 2010, they often did so as a secondary means of communication. Terrorist propaganda was generally made available on extremist forums, featuring downloadable content such as magazines, videos and brochures.

ISIS, however, has disseminated information almost exclusively via Twitter, where it can quickly share its views around the world and enable supporters to take part in that process. ISIS also relies on this network of support to increase the reach and influence of its messages.

Twitter users are also able to conceal their identities more effectively than on forums and other social networking sites. And while Twitter accounts can be - and indeed, sometimes are - shut down by Twitter, new ones can almost always be immediately established.

ISIS has maintained Twitter accounts for several of its official media outlets, including Al-Hayat media, which mostly distributes polished propaganda pieces in Arabic, although it also maintains Twitter feeds in various other languages, including English; Al-Medrar, which publishes in a variety of languages; Platform Media, which primarily tweets news updates in Arabic; and Al-Battar media, which has English and Arabic feeds that tweet news, graphics, official statements, and videos. In addition, multiple ISIS regional groups maintain Twitter feeds posting news, images, and video of their activities.

ISIS has also attempted to branch out to alternate social networks such as Friendica, Quitter and Diaspora, but with limited success; Friendica and Quitter in particular were quick to remove the group's presence from their sites. In August 2014, following ISIS's online release of a video depicting the beheading of an American journalist, Diaspora removed ISIS accounts on its site and Twitter adopted a more active policy of removing ISIS and pro-ISIS accounts (which it had already been doing to some extent prior to the release), suspending accounts that posted imagery from the video. However, ISIS has been adept at quickly reinstating its Twitter accounts.

ISIS official Twitter accounts are augmented by supporters, some of whom seem to have quasi-official status. The Markaz al Islam Twitter feed, for example, has not only promoted ISIS propaganda (primarily in English), but has also directed supporters to his English-language Facebook pages (continuously replacing pages as they are removed by Facebook for content violation) that do the same. Several other feeds appear to serve similar roles. Such supporters are often active in a variety of languages and on a variety of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the question and answer service Ask.FM.

Supporters can also sign up for an app for Android through Google Play called "Dawn of Glad Tidings" as a way of receiving information from ISIS on the smart phone. When they do so, ISIS also gains the ability to post Tweets from users' Twitter accounts - which therefore become defacto ISIS propaganda outlets.

ISIS also organizes hashtag campaigns, skewing trending terms by encouraging supporters to repeatedly Tweet various hashtags such as #AllEyesonISIS or #CalamityWillBefallUS. The goal is that these terms will then trend on Twitter, vastly increasing the visibility of tweets with ISIS's message.

Similarly, ISIS encourages tweets of "active hashtags," or hashtags that are already trending. Thus, it will encourage its supporters to tweet ISIS messages with popular hashtags such as #worldcup so that people searching for those hashtags will inadvertently come across pro-ISIS posts.

Views of the U.S. and the West

ISIS emerged out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that had been largely dedicated to fighting the U.S. presence in Iraq. When the group shifted its focus to Syria it rebranded itself ISIS. Anti-American sentiment played a relatively minor role in teh initial deluge of ISIS propaganda at that time.

That changed in June 2014, when ISIS resumed fighting in Iraq. Fearing U.S. intervention against ISIS advancements, ISIS launched a social media campaign called a " Warning to the American People." Official ISIS Twitter accounts encouraged followers to post threats against the U.S. on social media with the hashtag #CalamityWillBefallUS. Among the official ISIS suggested tweets were:

"If the United States bombs Iraq, every citizen is a legitimate target for us."

"This is a message for every American citizen. You are the target of every Muslim in the world wherever you are."

"For every drop of blood shed of the Iraqis, Americans will shed a river of blood."

"Every American doctor working in any country will be slaughtered if America attacks Iraq."

"Don't come to Iraq unless you want another 11th September to happen."

In August 2014, when the U.S. began limited airstrikes in Iraq to counter ISIS and provide humanitarian aid, ISIS resumed this social media campaign using the #CalamityWillBefallUS hashtag along with the hashtag #AMessageFromISIStoUS. Tweets from official ISIS Twitter accounts included "Would you like to taste the losses, pain, death and all what (sic) you tasted in Iraq again?" and "O Westerners, your governments have lost their minds, and they will let you pay the cost of their stupidity, the Islamic State is too strong, so you must yield to it, not fight it!"

On August 19 2014, ISIS acted on those threats, releasing a video depicting the beheading of American journalist James Wright Foley and threatening to behead a second American journalist. The video cited American airstrikes as the reason for the murder.

ISIS has disseminated various other statements attacking the U.S. via social media. The official ISIS translation of an April 2014 speech from the group's main spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, states, "Yes, verily the plot of Shaytan [Satan] is weak. America came to Iraq leading a frenzied crusade....The Crusaders thought that no one would be able to overcome them; however Allah the Mighty and Majestic disgraced them and showed us the weakness of their plot." Mohammad al-Adnani also claims credit in the speech for ISIS expelling the U.S. from Iraq.

Some of these posts target Westerners or non-Muslims more generally. The video "Ya Junod Al-Haqq Hayya" ('Soldiers of the just cause, let's go!') video, released in June 2014, features a song with the lyric: "Break the crosses and destroy the lineage of the grandsons of monkeys," apparent references to Christians and Jews and, therefore, indicating that Christians and Jews are the enemy.

The same video also included more direct anti-Jewish statements: "Wherever our war goes, Jewish rabbis are humiliated." Such Messages highlighting a 'Jewish enemy' to recruit followers is commonly employed by terrorist organizations.

Another video, released in August 2014, featured individuals allegedly from the U.S., Great Britain, Finland, Tunisia, Indonesia, Belgium, Morocco and South Africa praising ISIS and encouraging Muslims from around teh world to join the organization and to establish themselves in the territory it holds.

Similarly, ISIS and its supporters have disseminated propaganda against Israel. Official ISIS maps have included Israel as part of the group's territorial ambitions, with one threatening rocket attacks and noting that the organization is operating but 220km away from Israel. Similar threats were issued during the conflict bewtween Hamas and Israel in the summer of 2014. Following the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, one ISIS supporter who regularly tweets messages praising ISISwarned that the kidnappings would be the first of many such attacks by ISIS militants. And the second issue of ISIS's English-language Dabiq magazine stated that, "The Islamic State will do everything within its means to continue striking down every apostate who stands as an obstacle on its path towards Palestine.... It is only a matter of time and patience before it reaches Palestine to fight the barbaric jews (sic) and kill those of them hiding behind the gharqad trees - the trees of the jews (sic)."

Recruiting and Image

The vast majority of non-Arabic propaganda distributed by ISIS is designed to get attention (often tweeting information at members of the media and government), enhance the group's image and encourage Westerners to support and join the organization.

Much of the social media campaign centers on depicting ISIS as a goodwill organization. Several Twitter feeds maintained by ISIS (as well as accounts on Facebook and other social media outlets belonging to ISIS or supporters) regularly distribute images of militants engaging with children, distributing food and performing other social services. In April 2014, ISIS released a video featuring former German rapper-turned-ISIS-militant Denis Cuspert engaged in a snowball fight with fellow extremists, stating in German, "Now you see...here in Syria, we also can have fun!...That's jihad, jihad makes fun...and we have fun here with the children...Come on, we invite you to jihad!"

In June 2014, ISIS began posting a series of short videos called "Mujatweets" (named ostensibly for their brevity) to YouTube. The videos are designed to depict ISIS as a charitable organization, beloved by civilians and establishing a better society. The first episode depicts an apparent European recruit singing a song in German praising ISIS. The second episode shows clips of children having fun with ISIS militants. The third episode features an apparent Syrian chef - an everyday civilian - who explains how good life is now that ISIS controls his region.

The fourth, released in July 2014, takes a slightly different tack, following an apparently German ISIS member who visits supposed wounded militants in a hospital, telling viewers, "Come to the land of honor and search for shahada (martyrdom)." The fourth episode is in German with English subtitles. By August 2014, ISIS had released 8 Mujatweets episodes in total.

Some ISIS propaganda also focuses on the work the organization is doing to establish a supposedly model Islamic state. Along with multiple short Tweets and messages by the organization and its supporters praising a coming caliphate, the organization has released highly popularized videos such as "Khairah Ummah," a fifteen minute film released in June 2014 and promoted on multiple Twitter feeds and on Facebook that shows an ISIS member "reminding" shopkeepers to go to the mosque on Friday and not to display manikins with women's clothing, among other things. This, he explains, creates, "the best Ummah [community] produced for mankind."

The video later shows how ISIS found and executed someone they claimed to be a sorcerer - a scene meant to show the extent to which it is working to eradicate evil and implement Islamic law and values. The Khairah Ummah video was released in multiple versions for western audiences, with subtitles in several languages, including English, French, Russian and Turkish.

Other social media efforts tout ISIS's military strength, calling on followers to join in fighting. The "Ya Junod Al-Haqq Hayya" video, released early in June 2014, featured prominently displayed English subtitles of a song bragging about ISIS's military conquests and its ability to instill fear in its enemies. Later in the same month, a video called "Haya alal-Jihad" or "Let's go for Jihad!" featured a song in German, with prominent English subtitles, with the lyrics: "Brothers join us/We slaughter until the day of Judgment," and proclaims that ISIS members "love to die." The song was accompanied by images of explosions, casualties and fighting ISIS members.

The image ISIS seeks to portray is reminiscent of Inspire magazine, published by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The magazine's earlier issues attempted to encourage Americans to join terrorist training camps abroad by depicting an almost summer-camp like atmosphere.

ISIS has created its own English-language magazines that are distributed on Twitter as well. Its first attempt, the Islamic State Report, primarily featured images with headlines and quotes from the Qu'ran, along with occasional short essays praising ISIS. Various news items in the report included brags about killing sorcerers and information about grain distribution and implementation of Islamic law in relation to giving charity and tax.

In July 2014, ISIS issued a second English-language magazine called Dabiq. In its first issue, Dabiq was more similar to other terrorist magazines like Inspire, featuring 50 pages of graphics and articles on ideology, theology and praise of the organization, as well as quotes from American military and political figures describing ISIS's strength. The second issue of Dabiq, released in July 2014, included philosophical justifications for ISIS and its ideology and urged readers to move to ISIS territory or at least pledge allegiance to the organziation.

Like that of other terrorist organizations, ISIS propaganda does not shy away from graphic military imagery. It regularly posts images of shootings, crucifixions, beheadings and mass executions it claims to perpetrate, as well as images of individuals it claims as martyrs. These can be seen on organizational Twitter accounts as well as on the accounts of its regional affiliates. Throughout the winter of 2013-2014, ISIS also released a number of propaganda posters explaining the "virtues of swords," "virtues of seeking martyrdom," and the benefit of "racing towards jihad."

Background on ISIS

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization in 2003 (as Al Qaeda in Iraq). In June 2014, ISIS renamed itself IS, the Islamic State, reflecting its claims of territorial sovereignty in parts or Iraq and Syria.

ISIS was founded in 2003 as Al Qaeda in Iraq with a mission of defeating the U.S. coalition forces that had invaded Iraq and, imposing Islamist governance. In 2006 it became The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and, while still affiliated with Al Qaeda, incorporated a number of additional insurgent groups into a coalition.

Following the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, ISI forces began fighting along with other rebel forces there as well. In 2012, the group renamed itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (Syria), reflecting its new regional ambitions. While fighting in Syria, it acquired strength and greater numbers of foreign recruits, drawn specifically to that conflict. However, it also began clashing with other rebel organizations including Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syria Al Qaeda affiliate.

In February 2014, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda, formally disowned ISIS for disobeying his orders to stay in Iraq and for clashing with JN and other groups. Rather than disbanding, ISIS apparently grew stronger, attracting more recruits and gaining a reputation for brutal tactics.

In June 2014, ISIS renewed its attention toward Iraq. It organized a series of successful attacks in Iraq and quickly conquered significant territory stretching between Iraq and Syria. At the end of the month, it declared the territory it held in Syria and Iraq the third Caliphate and renamed itself the Islamic State. Abu Bakr al Bagdhadi, the group's leader, was named Caliph under the name Caliph Ibrahim.

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Hashtag Terror: How ISIS Manipulates Social Media

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Update: August 21, 2014 As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, an Al Qaeda inspired terrorist organization seeking to create an Islamic empire) gains confidence and territory in the Middle East, its social media presence has expanded its influence well beyond the battlefields.

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Christchurch, New Zealand 2019: Mosque Attack 

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Christchurch, New Zealand 2019: Mosque Attack 

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Last year on March 15th, Australian man Brenton Tarrant live streamed to Facebook a terror attack at a mosque in New Zealand, killing 51 men, women and children and injuring 49 more. The live stream lasted more than 17 minutes and was uploaded to many other social media outlets.

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Christchurch shootings: 49 dead in New Zealand mosque attacks

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PM Jacinda Ardern condemns the “terrorist attack” in Christchurch, which was live-streamed by a gunman espousing far right, anti-immigrant views.

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Tarrant has since pleaded guilty in March 2020 for the attack, and will be convicted of all charges.

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The man accused of killing 51 worshippers in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last year has changed his plea to guilty.

Fifty-one people were killed and 49 injured in March last year when Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant opened fire during Friday prayers.

Tarrant now admits all charges. He faced 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and one charge under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

It was the worst massacre in New Zealand's modern history, and the country's first major terror related incident.

Tarrant, a former gym instructor from Australia, has maintained a not-guilty plea throughout. His trial was set down for 2 June in Christchurch.
This is a developing news story, please check back for updates Topics

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Christchurch shooting: Brenton Tarrant pleads guilty to New Zealand mosque attacks that killed 51

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The man accused of killing 51 worshippers in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last year has changed his plea to guilty. Fifty-one people were killed and 49 injured in March last year when Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant opened fire during Friday prayers. Tarrant now admits all charges.

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Ultimately, this collection of articles and events of terror that have been broadcast across the world encapsulate the notion that extremism relies on social media to project ideologues and instill fear into the greater community.

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The far-right extremists quest for attention in the streets 

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The far-right extremists quest for attention in the streets 

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The common theme of the modern far-right groups is to get attention online which is the place these groups usually get the most support. However, these articles are showing that these groups are taking the same approach as their predecessors(fascist groups and organizations from the 1920s and onward), by taking advantage of the people’s misfortune in dire circumstances.

This unfortunate development could mean that as the frustration over lockdowns, the loss of jobs and a crippling health situation gets worse, the sympathy for the far-right extremists grows. In these times the ideology of those groups can coincide more and more with the common “civilians” views.
It isn't hard  to find plenty of these scenarios throughout history.

When the blame on immigrants and the state apparatus becomes mainstream and not only some crazy rant on a alt-right website, the danger in these ideas becomes prevalent and important to notice through patterns on the news and the change in the people’s attitude towards ideologies that were unimaginable before.

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The same pattern repeated itself in Europe to where far-right groups are interfering, infiltrating and in other ways taking protests against COVID-19 lockdowns to their advantage and use it to spread their hateful ideologies.

So we can see that they operate in a similar fashion across the world, taking advantage of dire circumstances and looking for any platform to be heard from.

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Many people are looking for explanations since lockdown measures were introduced to contain the coronavirus outbreak. In Germany, right-wing extremists are trying to take advantage of this. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Last weekend, demonstrations against the lockdown measures decided by the federal government were held in numerous German cities.

The protesters are typically a mixed bunch: anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, left-wing extremists, neo-Nazis and hooligans, and others with no particular political affiliation.

But what's worrying officials in Berlin is that protesters have long ceased to merely appeal on the government to respect fundamental rights.

"What unites people is the hatred of the political elite and public broadcasting," said Matthias Quent, right-wing extremism researcher and director of the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ) in Jena.

Quent describes the demonstrations as "classically populist, anti-intellectual and anti-institutional".

Worse, extremist groups are increasingly trying to infiltrate these protests, politicians warn.

"We are certainly noticing that the most diverse groups within our society are trying to take advantage of the current situation," said an interior ministry spokesperson on Monday (11 May).
Anti-Semitism on the rise
The idea that the coronavirus was invented by the pharmaceutical industry and that the erection of 5G masts is linked to the outbreak of the virus are among the more popular conspiracy theories. Besides, many theories also have anti-Semitic elements.

"We can see that current conspiracy theories can be linked to existing ones," said Naika Foroutan, head of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM).

Anti-Semitic attributions to the COVID-19 health crisis are particularly evident, researchers say. "Anti-Semitism is always present when there is the idea that there is something like a central control or power that has an interest in harming people," said Matthias Quent.

"In the corona-crisis, we are already seeing a further normalisation of anti-Semitism and racism, which threaten social cohesion and the participation of those attacked," warned Gideon Bosch, right-wing extremism expert at the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European Jewish Studies in Potsdam (MMZ).

The "rapid dynamics of heating up" give rise to fears of new "right-wing terrorist radicalisation surges", Bosch said.
Right-wing extremists undermine the protests
Experts fear in particular that extremist far-right groups are using these protests for their own purposes.

The Dortmund police already warned last weekend against "staged escalations" by right-wing extremists. And it wasn't only in Dortmund that members from the scene had been spotted in these so-called 'anti-coronavirus protests'. In various cities, AfD politicians and supporters of the Identitarian Movement have called for the number of protests to increase. Individual rallies were also registered and organised by AfD politicians.

"The pandemic is being used as an opportunity to criticise the federal government in a rash manner, to spread partly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and to stigmatise migrants as carriers of the virus," a spokeswoman of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's interior ministry in Schwerin declared last week.

Similar sentiments were expressed by the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, Holger Münch at a federal press conference last Monday. The right-wing spectrum has been "hijacking the protests from the bourgeois camp" to spread their own world views, he said.

And according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the situation currently "being looked at"
"Channeling harbours danger"
Among the demonstrators are also people without an obviously extremist background.

"If you now channel these concerns as right-wing fantasies, there is also a danger, because a large part of the population - without being openly right-wing - feels concerned by this and could end up being driven into the arms of the right," according to Naika Foroutan.

At the same time, Matthias Quent stresses that people with justified fears must nevertheless keep their distance from conspiracy ideologies, anti-Semitism and right-wing radicalism. The risk, he said, is that far-right populist movements could gain supporters with the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

Last Monday (11 May), Robert Habeck, the federal chairman of the German Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), called on the federal government to better explain the measures taken. Experts also called for a transparent explanation of the decisions and spoke of communication errors by the opposition.

"The impression has been created that everything is being let through and that no checks are being made on government decisions," Foroutan said, noting that this had increased existing mistrust in politics.

Referring to the comparatively low number of participants, Matthias Quent warned, however, against overestimating the importance of the protests.

According to current surveys, around 81% of the German population is satisfied with the government's management of the pandemic.
(Edited by Frédéric Simon)

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Anti-lockdown protests in Germany infiltrated by far-right extremists

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Many people are looking for explanations since lockdown measures were introduced to contain the coronavirus outbreak. In Germany, right-wing extremists are trying to take advantage of this. EURACTIV Germany reports. Last weekend, demonstrations against the lockdown measures decided by the federal government were held in numerous German cities.

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An interesting inside view on recruitment

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An interesting inside view on recruitment

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Julia Ebner spent two years infiltrating a number of extremist groups including Far-Right groups. she details the PR spin of rally's and the key aim of all these organisations is to get young people on board.

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Julia Ebner chases extremists for a living.

By day, she's a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue in London.

By night, she could be a white nationalist attending a neo-Nazi rock gig; or an anti-feminist TradWife discussing her possible sexual value to men; or an ISIS-sympathiser in a jihadi bride group.

Over two years, using five different identities, Ebner infiltrated extremist groups to see how they operated from the inside.

She wanted to know what drove people to join up, and what kept them coming back to the community for more.

"I couldn't quite grasp the motivational factors, and also the social dynamics," Ebner told Hack.

She went deep into their worlds, both online and offline, finding the spaces where attacks were planned, young recruits were targeted, and people like the Christchurch shooter were radicalised.

She says it wasn't uncommon to see a little Australian flag next to a user's name, showing how far-reaching these networks are.

Getting in: genetics tests, and stupid mistakes

Ebner took time to craft her online avatars, with many of the groups requiring strict proof of identity.

"One of the neo-Nazi groups that I went undercover, in the very beginning they asked me to submit a timestamped wrist picture, to prove that I'm white, and also the results of a genetic test to prove that I have no non-white heritage," she says.

Others required live voice chats, and in-person meetings. One weekend, she met up with white nationalists at an AirBnB in one of the most multicultural parts of London, and headed to the pub with them to talk conspiracy theories.

She says it could be hair-raising stuff, often done on-the-fly.

"It also meant that I made a lot of very stupid mistakes," Ebner said.

She accidentally signed off an email with her real name, and once dropped a credit card with her personal details on it.

That made it sometimes quite tricky and quite scary as well.

Once accepted by these movements, she noticed a common goal: young, new recruits.

Gaming, hipster clothes and hot extremists: hooking young recruits

For months before the Charlottesville rally in 2017, the white supremacist organisers were talking about clothes.
Ebner watched them finally agree on a look that would give them a 'normal, but cool' vibe: white tees, khaki pants, black gloves and helmets.

The orgsanisers were also keen to stack the rally with good looking members, asking everyone else to stay at home, so the crowd would look more appealing to new recruits.

She says brand management is a big concern for these extremist groups, and they're good at adapting to subcultures, language and visual ways of communicating to lure young people in. Think the 'OK' hand emoji / sign, which caused a stir with Victoria Police last year, not swastikas.

'Nipsters' - young neo-Nazis who've adopted a hipster aesthetic - are also a thing, apparently.

In her book about all this, Ebner is particularly worried by how many young people she sees in these communities - as young as 14.

It reflects something Australia's own spy agency, ASIO, has noticed.

Just last week, the head of the agency, Mike Burgess, talked about disturbing cases they'd seen of extremists actively trying to recruit high school-age kids.

She also thinks there's something in the way recruitment, and extremism itself, has been 'gamified': made to look and feel like live-action-role-play (LARP) games that are pretty popular these days.

She was in the groups where the Christchurch shooter was radicalised, and shared the livestream of his horrific attack.

"A lot of the members that commented on the attack still seemed to see this all as a big game. One of the comments was like, is this a LARP?," she says.

"[It] showed how a lot of times, the lines between what is a game and what is real world violence or what is trolling and what is terrorism have become blurrier."

After Christchurch

On Sunday 15 March, it'll be one year since the Christchurch shooting, where 51 people were killed.

ASIO says Christchurch really put right-wing extremism on their radar last year.

"In Australia, the extreme right wing threat is real and it is growing," Mike Burgess said last week. "In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology."

Thinking about the lead up to the massacre, Ebner told Hack it shouldn't have been a surprise to authorities that all the extremist chat online turned into real-world violence. There's a danger in not being across how these networks operate from the inside.

She also thinks there could be more understanding of what pulls people into extremist groups, as a different counter-terrorism approach.

The feeling of being part of an exclusive group for people who were lonely, or looking for a kind of love, was a powerful force. In some cases, she felt empathy, and sympathy, for people in the groups.

"But I think that also gave me a lot of hope, because it also means that we can use those human dimensions as starting points for intervention in the radicalisation programmes."

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Julia spent two years undercover chasing extremists

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Julia Ebner chases extremists for a living. By day, she's a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue in London. By night, she could be a white nationalist attending a neo-Nazi rock gig; or an anti-feminist TradWife discussing her possible sexual value to men; or an ISIS-sympathiser in a jihadi bride group.

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Brief discussion on how Far-right groups are formed and are operating on the internet/social media. Closing with how these groups employ the news media and our ever growing click bait culture to drum up fear and exaggerate their following.

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ASIO boss Mike Burgess last night warned of a rising neo-Nazi threat in Australia.

So if there's an increased threat posed by far right-wing extremists in the country, what's behind the spike?

The World Today spoke to Jordan McSwiney, an expert on the alt-right movement from the University of Sydney.

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The rising threat of right-wing extremism in Australia

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ASIO boss Mike Burgess last night warned of a rising neo-Nazi threat in Australia. So if there's an increased threat posed by far right-wing extremists in the country, what's behind the spike? The World Today spoke to Jordan McSwiney, an expert on the alt-right movement from the University of Sydney.

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When Trump Defended White Supremacists | The Daily Show

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This article looks how the Home Office in the UK hasn't proscribed (flagged and made illegal for citizens to join) as many Far-Right groups as Islamist groups. As a result terrorism charges against Far-Right extremists are fewer.

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Islamist offenders convicted of online extremist crimes received prison sentences three times longer than those of their far-right counterparts, according to new analysis.

Researchers found that Islamists received on average 73.4 months compared with 24.5 months for far-right offenders, despite the government's ambition to treat both strains of extremism in the same way.

The study by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a foreign policy thinktank, said a primary reason for the disparity was a failure by the Home Office to proscribe far-right groups, making them harder to prosecute than their Islamist equivalents.

Although National Action became the first and only far-right group to be banned as a terrorist organisation in 2016, other organisations such as the neo-Nazi System Resistance Network, which advocates zero tolerance of non-white people, and of Jews and Muslims, has yet to be outlawed.

By contrast, it is illegal for a British citizen to be a member of at least eight Islamist organisatations, including Sunni militia group Ansar al-Sharia and the Islamic State.

"The lack of far-right groups subject to proscription in the UK, when compared to Islamist groups, has left the authorities reliant on hate-crime legislation rather than specific terrorist offences which carry heftier sentences," said the report's author Nikita Malik. She added: "The government needs to keep this situation under review in a fast-moving online world, where offending causes real and significant harm."

Malik examined 107 cases in which an individual was convicted of an "extremist-related" offence committed on social media from 2015-2019. Almost a third of the offenders used Facebook to disseminate their views, with 14.7% using Twitter, followed by the encrypted messaging services WhatsApp (14%) and Telegram (9%). A quarter of offenders had ignored warnings from technology companies, friends, family, or the police, and continued posting extremist context. Nearly two-thirds were aged 30 or younger, while a fifth had a history of criminal behaviour.

Of the 107 cases, almost 90% entailed attempts to glorify or justify violence, while two-thirds incited violence directly.

The majority of hate material identified, almost three-quarters, was Islamist, with much of it linked to Islamic State. Of the cases, 12% involved individuals who belonged to no identifiable group but who spread anti-Muslim hate. Another 10% promoted antisemitic or Nazi-related material. Islamists were more likely to commit offences on encrypted platforms, making them harder to monitor than their far-right counterparts. "They do so with intent and to a large audience," said Malik.

The research, released in parliament next week, was commissioned by Facebook as it works on identifying individuals who spread extremism.

The world's largest social network, with more than two billion users, has been under severe pressure to curb the rapid global spread of hate messages, pictures and videos through its site and apps that it owns, such as WhatsApp.

Last March, Facebook was used to disseminate the live video of the murders of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The HJS report also ranked those convicted of online-based extremism into six bands, using 20 indicators of risk level, including social media audience-size, lack of remorse, prejudice towards minority groups and glorification of violence.

According to the classification system, more than half of Islamists convicted of offences were in the highest three risk bands, demonstrating the most serious risk, compared to a third of far-right offenders.

The six-band risk categorisation system is designed to help social media firms target their action at offenders while avoiding a "ban or no-ban" approach, which critics argue is too crude.

Jeremy Wright, the former culture secretary who co-authored last year's "online harms" White Paper, said: "A consistent, cross-platform framework of 'online extremist harm' as put forward in this report can be used to assess and flag patterns of behaviour, focusing on both violent and non-violent [harmful] extremism.

"Technology companies can consider tailored approaches based on similarities of those individuals falling within specific harm categories. Of course, there is space for such a framework to evolve with time and in response to certain offline events, such as terrorist attacks."

Malik endorsed a new independent regulator on online extremism to help technology companies monitor the most harmful offenders.

Wright added: "This would assist with ensuring that a framework is implemented consistently across platforms, including lesser-known 'alt-tech' platforms where content and banned individuals and groups may migrate."

A Facebook spokesperson said: "Our work with groups like the Henry Jackson Society is critical to helping the industry understand and make progress on these important issues. It is through collaborations like these and with governments, academics, and others companies, through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, that we improve our collective ability to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms."

* This article was amended on 19 January 2020 to include a comment from Facebook.
Topics

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Islamists get longer jail terms than far-right extremists

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Islamist offenders convicted of online extremist crimes received prison sentences three times longer than those of their far-right counterparts, according to new analysis. Researchers found that Islamists received on average 73.4 months compared with 24.5 months for far-right offenders, despite the government's ambition to treat both strains of extremism in the same way.

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This piece explores the discrepancy between terrorist charges against international terrorist and domestic cases, and considers the message that is sent when Far-Right extremists aren't charged with terrorism.

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O n a narrow street in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. pressed the accelerator of his gray Dodge Challenger. Dozens of people were walking in front of him. They had come to protest Fields and hundreds of other white supremacists who'd descended on this pleasant Southern college town for the "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017.

"Our streets!" the protesters chanted in response to the white supremacists. "Our streets!"

When some protesters realized the gray car wasn't stopping, they screamed. Then came the scrapes and thuds and finally a crash as Fields barreled into the crowd, sending people into the air and diving for safety, before the Dodge slammed into the back of another car.

"Holy shit!" one of the protesters said. " That Nazi just drove into people. Oh my God! We need paramedics right now!"

Fields then shifted the car into reverse and backed out toward the main road, the front bumper scraping the pavement and the engine squealing.

Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old Charlottesville resident, was killed in the attack. At least 19 others were hurt.

Fields, a 20-year-old from Ohio who had been open about his racist views since high school, had marched in Virginia with the white supremacist group Vanguard America. He was charged in Virginia state court with murder and in federal court with hate crimes. He was not charged as a terrorist, despite then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions having initially described the Charlottesville attack as meeting "the definition of domestic terrorism."

In announcing Fields's federal indictment 10 months later, however, Sessions avoided using the word "terrorism" altogether, saying instead that the Justice Department remains "resolute that hateful ideologies will not have the last word and that their adherents will not get away with violent crimes against those they target."

An Intercept analysis of federal prosecutions since 9/11 found that the Justice Department has routinely declined to bring terrorism charges against right-wing extremists even when their alleged crimes meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism: ideologically motivated acts that are harmful to human life and intended to intimidate civilians, influence policy, or change government conduct.

If Fields had been a Muslim aligned with an international terrorist group, the Justice Department almost certainly would have handled his case differently. According to The Intercept's review, 268 right-wing extremists prosecuted in federal court since 9/11 were allegedly involved in crimes that appear to meet the legal definition of domestic terrorism. Yet the Justice Department applied anti-terrorism laws against only 34 of them, compared to more than 500 alleged international terrorists.

The FBI has acknowledged that federal prosecutors charge many violent domestic extremists with crimes other than terrorism, saying that simpler charges are often more effective in such cases. But the consequences of treating domestic and international terrorism differently are broad and deep. Terrorism charges carry stiffer penalties and often serve as an official statement about the severity of the offense.

"Terrorism is considered the most important kind of crime," said Jesse Norris, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia. "It's not a crime against some; it's a crime against all. When you put people and crimes in that category, it places more importance on them. People take these crimes more seriously. That's why it's a problem that we have this double standard in classifying international terrorism violence as terrorism and domestic terrorism violence as not terrorism."

Take the case of Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant, who drove a rented Home Depot truck through a bike lane in Lower Manhattan nearly three months after the Charlottesville attack, killing eight people. Saipov, who was injured in the assault, was so proud of his militant allegiances that he asked federal agents if he could display the Islamic State's black flag in his hospital room.

Saipov's crime was almost identical to Fields's, but Sessions called his attack "a calculated act of terrorism in the heart of one of our great cities." He was charged in federal court with murder and providing material support to ISIS.

Both Saipov and Fields grabbed the nation's attention. Both were extremists who allegedly turned vehicles into deadly weapons. But because one was motivated by a foreign extremist ideology and the other by a domestic one, federal prosecutors treated one as a terrorist and the other as a crazy white guy filled with rage.

As a string of deadly attacks and plots by alleged domestic terrorists have made headlines in recent months, there is some evidence that federal prosecutors and law enforcement may be changing their approach. Officials have repeatedly used the term "domestic terrorist" to describe Christopher Hasson, a Coast Guard lieutenant and self-described white nationalist arrested last month for allegedly plotting to kill politicians and journalists, though they have yet to charge him with a terrorism offense. And current and former Justice Department officials have begun talking more openly about domestic terrorism as a pressing concern.

Nevertheless, a significant disparity remains in how these two types of ideologically motivated violence are handled, one rooted in the highly politicized way that U.S. laws and Justice Department officials define acts of terrorism. Terrorism has always been a political construct - there's even a cliché for this - but its legal definition in the United States dates back only to 1986, when the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act made terrorist attacks against U.S. diplomats or citizens traveling abroad a crime.

In the 1990s, the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act made acts of terrorism committed within the United States, including those inspired by domestic ideologies, federal offenses. Before these laws, there was no crime of terrorism under the U.S. penal code, and it was only after the 9/11 attacks that anti-terrorism laws came to be widely used in federal criminal prosecutions. Such laws have raised critical questions among legal scholars and civil libertarians about whether the inherent difficulty in defining terrorism essentially guarantees prosecutorial abuse.

Domestic terrorism suspects enjoy basic legal protections denied to those accused of ties to international terrorism.

The U.S. State Department provides a broad framework - and the political cover that goes with it - for federal prosecutors to bring charges against alleged international terrorists. In those cases, charging someone with terrorism is relatively simple. The State Department administers a list of designated foreign terrorist organizations; anyone caught supporting one of these groups can be charged with terrorism-related crimes.

Domestic terrorism suspects enjoy basic legal protections denied to those accused of ties to international terrorism. Because of First Amendment concerns that a list of domestic terrorist groups would unconstitutionally criminalize unpopular ideas and ideologies, there is no such list, making the abusive types of prosecutions used to target alleged international terrorists more difficult to pursue against domestic actors. But prosecutors still have plenty of legal tools at their disposal to go after alleged domestic extremists.

Among them is an expansive law against providing material support to terrorists, which has two provisions. One outlaws nearly any kind of support to organizations on the list of State Department-designated foreign terrorist groups, and has been widely and controversially used by prosecutors to tar even nonviolent political or charitable activity with the international terrorism brush.

"The material support regime as a general matter is extremely broad, and we have concerns about its overbreadth and vagueness," said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project. "A disturbingly high number of material support prosecutions, including abusive sting operations, are against people who don't actually have a tie to a terrorist or extremist group or haven't actually committed a violent act or even attempted to commit a violent act."

But the other provision of the material support law allows the Justice Department to prosecute suspects for their role in supporting about 50 proscribed offenses, including bombing government buildings, murdering government employees, using weapons of mass destruction, and hostage taking. The material support law does have some practical limitations concerning domestic extremists. Attacks not involving a bomb or radiological device - such as Dylann Roof's mass shooting in South Carolina or Fields's car attack in Virginia - require the killing or attempted killing of a U.S. government employee or the destruction of U.S. government property for the material support law to be applicable. There are no such legal requirements under material support when the attacker is affiliated with or inspired by an international terrorist organization.

Terrorism by the Numbers

Hundreds of prosecutions of Muslims on terrorism charges in the wake of the 9/11 attacks have created the perception that international terrorism is a significantly graver and more persistent threat in the United States than right-wing domestic extremism. But whether one is more serious than the other is the subject of ongoing debate. Some studies by academics, think tanks, civil rights groups, and news organizations have suggested that right-wing terrorism poses the greater threat. A 2017 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office on terrorist violence from September 12, 2001 through December 31, 2016 found that while slightly more people have been killed by Muslim extremists than by their right-wing counterparts, right-wing extremists were responsible for three times as many violent acts. Research by the Anti-Defamation League on 573 "extremist-related fatalities" from 2002 to 2018 found that 80 percent of the victims were killed by right-wing extremists.

"It all depends on how you count," Norris said.

But one thing is clear: By almost exclusively charging international extremists as terrorists, the Justice Department inflates the perceived threat of those actors, compared to those with right-wing domestic ideologies. The press has reinforced this notion; a recent University of Alabama study found that terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists receive 357 percent more media coverage than attacks committed by non-Muslims.

The double standard has had powerful consequences for how the FBI allocates counterterrorism resources, leading invariably to international threats being prioritized over domestic ones.

This double standard has had powerful consequences for how the FBI and other law enforcement agencies allocate counterterrorism resources, leading invariably to international threats being prioritized over domestic ones. While no public government report quantifies the number of domestic extremists arrested by federal, state, and local authorities, Justice Department officials have fastidiously maintained a list of international terrorism prosecutions since 9/11. That list has been released periodically, in 2010, 2014, and 2015, and the data is often used to bolster political initiatives, as happened last year when the Trump administration apparently manipulated it in an attempt to justify its so-called Muslim ban.

So who are the right-wing domestic terrorists in the United States? The current system has left that to individual federal prosecutors to decide. After a Donald Trump supporter sent pipe bombs to Democratic Party leaders and critics of the president in October, and in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, these charging decisions seem more critical than ever.

"We clearly have domestic terrorist groups in the United States. We just don't call them terrorist groups," said Brendan R. McGuire, a former prosecutor who served as the terrorism chief for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. "Generally speaking, there continue to be challenges within the government to applying the terrorism label to purely domestic conduct. We're just much more experienced and comfortable with exporting that label, with seeing terrorism as something that comes only from the outside."

Vague Guidelines, Underused Laws

What makes a white supremacist's attack on a group of minorities terrorism, rather than, say, a hate crime? When an anti-abortion zealot plants a bomb at a women's clinic, should he be charged with using weapons of mass destruction or with a lesser explosives charge?

Terrorism is subjective. In the eyes of federal prosecutors, an American-born ISIS sympathizer who has never met another ISIS supporter, for example, is a terrorist as long as he commits an act of violence and credits the terrorist organization. A white supremacist who consorts with other white supremacists and bombs a mosque could be a terrorist, but more often is only charged with possessing and using explosives. That accusation may describe the facts of the alleged crime, but it doesn't instantly conjure the sense of collective peril implied by a charge of attempting to use weapons of mass destruction.

"Like so much of the counterterrorism discourse, it's based on these feelings that we have about how things happen, rather than data," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School. "Back in the '90s, terrorism was usually used as a rhetorical device. If I wanted to say this kind of violence was extremely bad, I'd say it's terrorism. But it had no meaning in the courtroom, where we're charging murder or conspiracy or whatever we're charging. By bringing a pejorative term like 'terrorism' into the court, you're politicizing the prosecution."

"By bringing a pejorative term like 'terrorism' into the court, you're politicizing the prosecution."

Internal Justice Department guidelines are so vague that prosecutors often come up with their own criteria to determine whether to file a terrorism-related charge in domestic extremism cases, former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. said. While Hockeimer was at the Justice Department, he and his colleagues developed their own set of rules to determine when to charge a suspect with a terrorism offense, basing decisions in part on who and how many people were targeted in an attack, even though the law doesn't contain specific references to either. "You have to ask yourself: Is the attack aimed at causing a high-volume loss of life? Or is it targeting a particular area in order to kill one or two people?" Hockeimer said. "You have to look at what the ultimate result of it was."

FBI and Justice Department officials have used the recent resurgence of far-right extremism to make the case for a new domestic terrorism law, in an echo of what occurred after the 9/11 attacks, when members of Congress demanded new laws to combat Al Qaeda and approved the Patriot Act, which created and expanded a host of anti-terrorism laws and government surveillance powers. But is an aggressive new law needed, when prosecutors already have powerful and controversial anti-terrorism laws at their disposal - laws that they have only rarely chosen to use against right-wing extremists?

Among the relatively few right-wing defendants to face weapons of mass destruction charges since 9/11 was anti-government extremist Jerry Drake Varnell. An FBI agent posing as a fellow anti-government extremist provided Varnell with a van loaded with a fake bomb. Varnell then tried to detonate the bomb next to a bank in Oklahoma City. He was charged with and convicted of several offenses, including attempting to use weapons of mass destruction - a charge that is almost universally applied to Muslims caught in counterterrorism stings similar to his.

But Varnell is one of only 24 right-wing extremists since 9/11 to face a weapons of mass destruction charge. Prosecutors more often bring less serious charges against violent right-wing actors like Thaddeus Cheyenne Murphy, who bombed an NAACP office in Colorado and was charged with firearms violations and being a felon in possession of firearms, or, more recently, Paul M. Rosenfeld, who was convicted of an explosives charge for plotting to detonate a homemade bomb on the National Mall on Election Day 2018 to raise awareness about "sortition," a political theory that advocates the random selection of government officials over their election.

The infrequent and lower-profile use of anti-terrorism laws in right-wing cases has set the stage for claims that new laws are needed to combat domestic terrorists. Thomas E. Brzozowski, a former FBI official who is now the Justice Department's Domestic Terrorism Counsel, has argued that current laws limit prosecutors' ability to charge and describe domestic terrorists. "In many instances, the government is going to be constrained, to a certain degree, from stepping in front of a podium and saying, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we're revealing domestic terrorism here," Brzozowski said at an event hosted by George Washington University's Program on Extremism in January.

Brzozowski has been joined by a chorus of current and former Justice Department and FBI officials. Last month, Thomas T. Cullen, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia who is prosecuting Fields, the Charlottesville attacker, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times calling for a domestic terrorism law. In 2017, Thomas F. O'Connor, a counterterrorism agent in Washington, D.C., who is also the president of the FBI Agents Association, the union that represents the bureau's more than 13,000 agents, made a similar case in The Hill. Because there are no penalties attached to the legal definition of domestic terrorism, O'Connor reasoned, "'domestic terrorism' is not a crime in and of itself under federal law."

"The answer is that a new law is not necessary to take on the scourge of white supremacist violence. The government already has the tools necessary to take on this threat."

But Cullen's and O'Connor's arguments are flawed. The crime of "international terrorism" doesn't exist either, yet hundreds of people with alleged links to foreign groups have been charged under anti-terrorism laws. In addition to material support - which the Patriot Act expanded and for which it increased the maximum punishment from 10 years to 15 years, or life in prison if the crime results in death - statutes available to prosecute domestic and international terrorists include a law that prohibits the use of "weapons of mass destruction" - including everything from a nuclear weapon to a pressure-cooker explosive or a pipe bomb - and another that defines attacks on mass transit systems as terrorism.

Even when prosecutors decline to charge defendants with terrorism-related offenses, they have an opportunity to ask for a so-called terrorism adjustment at sentencing that results in longer prison terms if a judge agrees that the crime meets the definition of domestic terrorism. But prosecutors have only asked for such enhancements in a handful of right-wing cases, according to The Intercept's analysis. One was the case of Wayde Lynn Kurt, a white supremacist in Washington state who was convicted by a jury in 2011 of firearms violations. Recordings he had made indicated that he was planning a terrorist attack called the "final solution," which included a plot to kill then-President Barack Obama.

"It's important to emphasize that whenever you see a terrorism-related legislative proposal, you have to ask, 'Is it necessary? How will it be used against the very minority groups that we need and want to protect and who have historically and wrongly been FBI targets and still largely are?'" said Shamsi of the ACLU. "The answer is that a new law is not necessary to take on the scourge of white supremacist violence. The government already has the tools necessary to take on this threat."

Since stepping down shortly after Trump's inauguration, Mary B. McCord, a former top official in the Justice Department's National Security Division, has been making a public argument similar to those of Brzozowski, Cullen, and O'Connor. McCord has written that while state and federal laws can provide significant punishment for domestic terrorists - including life sentences and the death penalty - "they fail to equate it under federal law, as it deserves to be equated, with the actions of ISIS-inspired terrorists who engage in violence in pursuit of their equally insidious goals."

Asked why she supports the creation of a new domestic terrorism law when prosecutors could use laws already on the books, such as the one that prohibits providing material support to terrorists, McCord, who as head of the National Security Division was responsible for authorizing terrorism charges nationwide, told The Intercept during a phone interview that the material support law requires "an international component."

In fact, the material support provision that is focused on terrorists generally, and includes the approximately 50 proscribed offenses, has been used against domestic extremists - but only three times. In the only such case since 9/11, Eric J. Feight, a New York man, was charged with and convicted of material support for helping a white supremacist build a radiological "death ray" for use against Muslims.

The material support charge against Feight was approved when McCord was second-in-command at the National Security Division. When asked about it, she said the case "was tied to international terrorism." Told that this was untrue, McCord asked for 15 minutes to review Feight's prosecution, then called back to acknowledge that she had been mistaken. In hindsight, she said, maybe the Justice Department could use the material support law more aggressively against domestic extremists. "Certainly, if I were still at the Department of Justice, and I saw a person who was contributing material support to one of these enumerated offenses, I would definitely approve charging that," McCord said, "including in situations that have no nexus to international terrorism."

Although a small case history exists of prosecuting domestic extremists under material support and other anti-terrorism laws, officials at the Justice Department wring their hands over whether to use such laws in cases of domestic terrorism and generally avoid public discussions about the use of anti-terrorism laws against domestic extremists, more than a dozen current and former prosecutors told The Intercept. Instead, they suggest that new and even more powerful laws are needed to pursue right-wing extremists.

A Lack of Transparency

The U.S. government does not track acts of domestic terrorism or related federal prosecutions in any systematic way, leaving the Justice Department with few tools to determine whether domestic extremist threats are on the rise at a time when white supremacists have been emboldened by Trump's nationalistic, anti-immigrant rhetoric.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last October that "domestic extremist movements collectively pose a steady threat of violence and economic harm to the United States." A year earlier, before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wray described the threat of domestic terrorism as "very, very serious" and "something that we spend a lot of our time focused on." He has declined in congressional testimony to say how many agents are working on the problem but mentioned in 2017 that "about 1,000 open domestic terrorism investigations as we speak." The FBI also declined requests from The Intercept to provide the number of agents assigned to such cases, stating, "While we cannot comment specifically on this breakdown, the FBI's top priority remains protecting the United States from terrorist attacks - both international and domestic."

Yet in fiscal year 2009, the most recent year for which such data has been made public, just 335 of the bureau's more than 13,000 agents were assigned to domestic terrorism. By contrast, international terrorism is the FBI's top priority, with thousands of agents devoted to it.

False Positives

One man's nutjob can be a federal prosecutor's domestic terrorist. The Justice Department's internal case management system reveals how subjective, and sometimes ridiculous, it can be to try to define acts of terrorism.

Federal prosecutors nationwide use an internal system called the Legal Information Office Network System, or LIONS, which stores data about cases. The data is only released publicly in the aggregate, but as part of its review of federal prosecutions, The Intercept, working with another database maintained by federal court administrators, unmasked 752 cases that prosecutors have designated as involving an alleged domestic terrorist, accounting for approximately half the cases in LIONS that were coded as domestic terrorism.

The data suggests that, while the Justice Department follows a very narrow definition of domestic terrorism publicly and when bringing criminal charges, prosecutors take an expansive and at times comically inconsistent view of it internally, labeling hundreds of cases as involving domestic terrorism even when the facts do not support the designation.

While the Justice Department follows a very narrow definition of domestic terrorism publicly, prosecutors take an expansive and at times comically inconsistent view of it internally.

Of those cases, only 15 appeared to meet the federal statutory definition of domestic terrorism, which requires that violence be motivated by a domestic ideology. A handful of cases involved violent acts that may have met the definition of domestic terrorism, but nothing in the case files suggested an ideological motivation. Others related to international terrorism, involving defendants accused of supporting Hamas, the Colombian guerrilla group FARC, ISIS, and others.

But the vast majority - more than 700 cases - involved incidents that don't appear to match the legal definition of terrorism at all, such as a Connecticut man making menacing phone calls and sending a threatening letter to ESPN sportscasters over a personal grievance. Prosecutors designated an Alabama man's case as domestic terrorism after he fired rifle rounds into an energy facility, even though there was no indication that the shooting was ideologically motivated. In another case marked as domestic terrorism, a West Virginia man firebombed a mobile home using a Molotov cocktail in exchange for $400 and some Oxycontin.

The Growing Threat

The FBI logged 176 domestic terrorism arrests between September 2016 and September 2017, according to Wray's 2017 Senate testimony. That number is significantly higher than media reports and Justice Department and local police announcements during that period suggest. When The Intercept asked under the Freedom of Information Act for any documents or communications to support Wray's number, the FBI responded that it could find no records to support the director's statement. Then, earlier this month, law enforcement sources provided "approximate" numbers to the Washington Post, suggesting that in 2017 and 2018, the FBI conducted more investigations of domestic terrorists than international ones. The claim appeared to signal a reversal of priorities at the FBI, but could not be vetted, as the source material for the number wasn't provided to the Post.

It's impossible to know from publicly available information and the leaked aggregate numbers that the Post reported how effective the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been at thwarting right-wing extremists before they transform their hate into violence. But what is clear is that a significant number of violent extremists are slipping through the FBI's dragnet.

Among the domestic terrorists the FBI recently missed was a 56-year-old strip club DJ who wore a "Make America Great Again" hat and once posted a video selfie from a Trump rally in Florida. A prolific Twitter user, Cesar Sayoc posted far-right conspiracy theories and sent threatening messages to Trump's opponents, including one to former Vice President Joe Biden with a photo of an alligator that had eaten a man.

The FBI was unaware of Sayoc until October 2018, when more than a dozen pipe bombs began to arrive at the homes and offices of Democratic Party leaders and Trump critics. Two of the bombs, one addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan and the other to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were mailed to CNN. None detonated, though all contained explosive material and in some cases shards of glass to maximize injury. A fingerprint on an envelope matched one Sayoc had provided following an earlier arrest in Florida, where, over the previous two decades, he'd been charged with theft and threatening to bomb the local power company in an attack that he said would be "worse than September 11."

Sayoc was initially charged in U.S. District Court with mailing explosives, making threats, and assaulting federal officers. He was not charged as a terrorist, though his alleged crimes appeared to meet the U.S. statutory definition of domestic terrorism. Sessions, then the attorney general, instead referred to Sayoc as "a partisan" who had committed "political violence."

But soon after prosecutors filed the indictment, amid unprecedented media coverage and public debate about the scourge of right-wing domestic terrorism, the Justice Department's language began to change. In a filing supporting Sayoc's extradition from Florida to New York, where he faces criminal charges, federal prosecutors described his offenses as "a domestic terrorist attack targeting at least 15 victims" waged as part of a "terror campaign."

On November 9, 2018, two weeks after Sayoc's arrest and three days after an election gave Democrats, including some Sayoc had targeted, a majority in the House of Representatives, federal prosecutors in New York issued a new indictment, filing 30 charges against Sayoc, including five that alleged he used weapons of mass destruction - an anti-terrorism charge that has been applied against 79 international terrorists since 9/11 but just 23 other right-wing extremists during the same time period.

Sayoc pleaded guilty on Thursday to 65 charges, including 35 newly filed counts. He faces the possibility of life in prison - a harsh sentence that sends a message about how seriously our society takes the crime he committed. What's unusual is that this standard is being applied to someone who can't be cast as an agent of an international terrorist group.

So far, that isn't the case for Hasson, the Coast Guard lieutenant living in Maryland who put together a cache of firearms and steroids and a target list of journalists and prominent Democrats. A self-described white nationalist, Hasson allegedly plotted an attack that he hoped would spark a race war.

"The defendant is a domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect governmental conduct," federal prosecutors wrote in a court filing last month.

Although those prosecutors announced after Hasson's arrest that they were considering the addition of terrorism-related charges, they haven't filed any. Hasson faces charges of firearms and drug violations.

He's like many right-wing extremists in the United States: labeled a terrorist, but not prosecuted as one.

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Violent Far-Right Extremists Are Rarely Prosecuted as Terrorists

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O n a narrow street in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. pressed the accelerator of his gray Dodge Challenger. Dozens of people were walking in front of him. They had come to protest Fields and hundreds of other white supremacists who'd descended on this pleasant Southern college town for the "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017.

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Far-Rights colourful history in Australia and overseas

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Far-Rights colourful history in Australia and overseas

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The Far-Right in Australia has had many forms. In the 20's it was an anti-communist movement intimidating the working class to not join unions. In the 40's we saw groups crop up aligning themselves to the ideals spread by Mussolini and Hitler.  But these ideals weren't just niche occurrences that were stumbled upon; through out this time the White Australia Policy was in effect and denied entry into Australia for anyone that wasn't of European decent.
In modern times the Far-Right grew in response to the perceived threat of Jihadism infiltrating state borders. The imagined threat that immigration would pose against white culture was readily picked up by Far Right groups in Australia and pedaled as a cry to close Australian borders to anyone of the Muslim faith.
As discussed in the media section, social media has been the platform that Far-Right groups has recruited vulnerable members of the community and gathered support for their ideals.

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This is really the politics of feeling and fear, rather than the politics of fact.

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This is really the politics of feeling and fear, rather than the politics of fact.

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A look at some of the Far-Right groups in Australia. including an interview with one of the leaders of the United Patriots Front.

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In early April last year, 23-year-old Thomas Sewell headed along to a Reclaim Australia rally in Melbourne. It was one of 16 rallies attended by thousands of people across the country.

Thomas wasn't draped in an Australian flag or covering his mouth with a mask; he wasn't wielding placards; he didn't look like the guys who were splashed across newspapers the next day.

"I was just curious as to what was going on," Thomas told Hack.

"I rocked up with nice clothes, not looking for a punch-on. To hear people speak. All I wanted to do was hear people speak.

"It's the first time I'd heard of a public demonstration in this country, calling for the government to look at its immigration policy in regards to Islamic migration."

Thomas approached a group of protesters, not knowing they weren't on his "side".

"I was very naive of the situation, I was unaware there was any form of counter-protest."

Today, Thomas isn't naive to of the swell of counter-protesters who clashed with Reclaim Australia that day. He now calls them 'Communists', 'Trotskyites', 'Fabian socialists', 'cultural Marxists', 'lefties', or, sometimes, just 'thugs'.

Today, now on the leadership team of the United Patriots Front (UPF), a group that formed off the back of Reclaim Australia, Thomas calls himself a Patriot.

What is the far right?

Thomas Sewell says his politics sit further on the right than people like Donald Trump - the Republican Presidential candidate who vows to build a wall between Mexico and the United States.

So where do the politics of groups like Reclaim Australia and the UPF sit alongside the major parties in Australia?

If you think of political views as a line, you can roughly plot out the major parties from left (generally being more liberal or progressive) to right (generally being more conservative).

In Australia, the Greens would be the most-left of the three major parties; Labor is around the centre left, and the Liberal party is around the centre-right.

Keep in mind that individual politicians' own views - and other minor parties - are dotted more broadly along the spectrum.

The views of Reclaim Australia and the UPF sit on the far right.

Duncan McDonnell, from the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, explains what the far right typically stands for:

"The far right is a series of movements and political parties which tend to be extremely anti-immigration, and they tend to be very much against the elites - so political parties, media elites, banks, cultural elites - in society," Duncan McDonnell explains.

"They claim that the 'real' people in countries-the honest, hardworking silent majority of citizens-are not represented."

From rallies to the Senate

While Thomas Sewell was attending the rally in Melbourne, a similar one was taking place in Brisbane. Pauline Hanson addressed the crowd: "I am a proud Australian fighting for our democracy, culture, and way of life."

Seventeen months later, Pauline Hanson said a similar line: "I love my country, culture and way of life."

This time, her audience was the Australian Senate; three fellow One Nation Senators sitting by her side.

"We are in danger of being swamped by Muslims, who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own," Senator Pauline Hanson said in her maiden speech last week.

Meanwhile, Liberal backbencher George Christensen called for tighter restrictions on immigration from countries where there is a higher prevalence of "extremism" last week.

Duncan McDonnell says this kind of discourse we're hearing in Parliament is driven by fear.

This is really the politics of feeling and fear, rather than the politics of fact.

"In 2006, the population of Australia contained 1.7 per cent of people who had Islam as their religion. Five years later it was 2.2 per cent. Going on that basis, there's not going to be any danger of being 'swamped' by muslims."

How did we get here?

If you ask Thomas Sewell, the United Patriots Front played a big role in starting a conversation; getting politicians like Pauline Hanson elected; and having Sonia Kruger call for a ban on Muslim immigration on national television.

"We came into this saying we want to raise the awareness of the Islamic question. And put this question on the table - and we've very thoroughly slammed the question on the table, it's in the mantra of the mainstream media now.

"I think we've been very successful in bringing this question to the table."

The birth and splintering of Reclaim Australia

That 'question on the table' wasn't exactly brought to the fore by the UPF.

The history of the movement goes back further than that - with the lead up to the April 2015 rallies and the beginnings of Reclaim Australia.

The group's website - now shut down, but archived here - lists the group's nine motivations, including a ban of Sharia Law, the burqa and Halal certification.

The group also wrote that the rallies wouldn't tolerate Neo-Nazis or white supremacists.

This will be a peaceful rally, Neo-Nazi/White Supremacist Banners/Placards will not be tolerated. This is not a supremacist rally, it will simply be Patriotic Australians of all nationalities & beliefs standing united against radical extremism!"

Scott Moreland, a speaker and organiser for the Reclaim Australia rallies in Queensland, says the birth of the movement is directly tied to the December 2014 Lindt cafe siege in Sydney.

"One of the girls [who started Reclaim Australia] was on the channel 7's Sunday Night program last year. The country knows her as Catherine Brennan. She was actually supposed to [take her] daughter to Martin Place when that siege happened."

She started learning a little about Islam and said, 'oh this is ridiculous', and she got together with a few other people and they started the idea of Reclaim Australia and the rallies and all that."

When she appeared on Sunday Night in October last year, Brennan and fellow Reclaim Australia founders said they were motivated to protect the "Australian way of life."

"I'm just an everyday mum living in the suburbs doing the best job that I can for my family," Catherine Brennan said.

After the April 2015 rallies, Thomas Sewell met 26-year-old Blair Cottrell. Together they started the United Patriots Front to protect other protesters.

"The UPF formed, the best way to put it, is reactionary. As an anti-communist movement, in response to the violence we saw in Melbourne on the streets."

Thomas says violence at those rallies occurs as a form of defence and protection.

"We will protect the people that represent similar attitudes to us. Violence is always reasonable in defense.

You cannot defend yourself from violent acts without violence."

This year, activity from Reclaim Australia and the UPF has petered out. There are less rallies; the focus has been on raising awareness of their cause on Facebook.

"Will we keep rallying? Yes," Thomas Sewell told Hack. "Have we got a rally planned in the short term? Absolutely not.

"We're having a bit of a breather. The goal is to maintain the Facebook page and maintain the airwaves of the opinions of the leadership team to be aired to the general public.

Meanwhile, another far-right group, The True Blue Crew, has emerged. Their most recent rally was held in Victoria last month, where Blair Cottrell addressed the crowd.

Hack attended the rally ahead of Hack Live: Aussie Patriots, airing on ABC 2 and ABC iview this Thursday.

As for Reclaim Australia, organiser Scott Moreland says "infighting" within the group has slowed down their cause.

"It's tapered a lot off - we didn't have any rallies at all this year," Scott says.

"But we are going to kick back again next year, apparently."

Don't miss Hack Live: Aussie Patriots on ABC 2 this Thursday at 9:30 PM.

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In early April last year, 23-year-old Thomas Sewell headed along to a Reclaim Australia rally in Melbourne. It was one of 16 rallies attended by thousands of people across the country. Thomas wasn't draped in an Australian flag or covering his mouth with a mask; he wasn't wielding placards; he didn't look like the guys who were splashed across newspapers the next day.

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This piece gives a brief overview of extremism in Australia throughout history

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The first step in coming to terms with the attack in Christchurch is to understand that it has been produced by right-wing extremism, both in Australia and internationally.

The problem does not lie with immigration policies. The problem does not lie with the so-called outsiders, such as Muslim communities, who are so often the targets of right-wing rage.

In this country, the problem lies with the broader Australian community that ignores or accepts the presence of right wing extremists in its midst, and tolerates the increasingly Islamophobic and anti-immigrant discourse in Australia.

Right-wing extremism generally starts with perception (or construction) of a threat that imperils the extremist's way of life.

Groups promoting this idea, like the Antipodean Resistance and the Lads Society, have dominated headlines in Australia in recent years. But they are far from the sum of the extreme right in Australia.

Instead, they are a recent manifestation of a recurring problem that can be traced back decades. Here's a primer on the history of right wing extremism in Australia.

What right-wing extremism is and what drives it

Right wing extremism is an umbrella term used to describe a complex array of ideologies. The core components are authoritarianism, anti-democracy and exclusionary nationalism.

Fascist, national socialist, white supremacist ideologies - especially those that advocate ethno-states and monocultures - sit firmly within the remit of right wing extremism.

Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and intolerance are fellow travellers: they are characteristics of the ideologies, without actually defining them.

In Australia, right-wing extremists tend to position themselves in response to an imagined or constructed threat.

Sympathisers believe that society is degenerating, or is at risk of degenerating. Then they externalise this to attribute blame to a target group, such as an ethnic or ideological community.

Right wing extremists foster feelings of peril, and exploit crises to drive narratives that society's problems are entirely the fault of a target group of outsiders.

They believe the only way to safeguard their society is to remove the threat - often through violence.

The roots of Australian right-wing extremism

Historians of the radical right have documented reactionary and radical groups, collectively referred to as the Old Guard, operating in Australia in the 1920s. These groups were concerned about the communist threat, and were driven by the Bolshevik-led Russian revolution in 1917.

Although they stockpiled arms, they did not appear to proactively engage in violence.

In the 1930s, members of the Old Guard splintered into a New Guard, and decided to take violent action against communism. They engaged in street fights with Australian communists and trade unionists, disrupted their meetings, and established an alternative employment bureau to try and deter workers from accessing unions.

There was also support for a formal fascist movement. Fascist circles arose in Melbourne in support of Benito Mussolini, and national socialist strongholds formed as early as 1932. Although established independently, they were soon directly administered by the Nazi Party through the Auslands Organisation.

Members were considered to be anti-Semitic, fascist and concerned with German/Aryan identity.

Johannes Frerck was a leader of the Sydney branch of the Nazi Party.(Supplied: National Archives of Australia)

Another prominent voice of the extreme right was Alexander Rud Mills. He believed that modern Christianity had degenerated into so-called "Jew-worship", and the only way to restore it was through a racial interpretation of Odinism (a form of Norse paganism), which he orientated towards Aryan ideals.

It is worth noting that the Christchurch perpetrator's manifesto referenced Valhalla, the hall of fallen heroes in Norse mythology.

Mills was a loud supporter of the Australia First Movement, which promoted the idea that Australia was - and should remain - a white country.

A publication of the composition White Australia, written as a song in support of the White Australia policy.(National Library of Australia/ A.M. Dinsdale/)

In 1941, members in Western Australia were found in possession of plans to assassinate prominent Australians, sabotage vulnerable areas, and drafts of speeches welcoming the Japanese in the event of an invasion.

After the war, these sentiments did not entirely disappear, but were relegated to the political fringe. The Australian League of Rights and its leader, Eric Butler, rose to prominence.

In 1946, Butler published The International Jew: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Butler argued that a Zionist Occupation Government existed, and used its wealth to control the governments of the world, including Nazi Germany, in order to enslave various races.

Attempts to infiltrate mainstream politics

Members of the Australian League of Rights adopted various strategies to subvert democracy. The most significant was "elite penetration", where members would join mainstream political parties, attempt to subvert their core values and ideas and attain leadership positions.

We saw echoes of this strategy by the Lads Society in 2018, when they infiltrated the Young Nationals conference. It was also supported by the Christchurch perpetrator in his manifesto, when he encouraged fellow travellers to "Lightning Blitz" dominant positions.

Right-wing extremism reduced in the '60s, but it nonetheless remained in subcultural networks.

In 1964, Nazi materials were still being imported to Australia - including Stormtrooper magazines, and stickers proclaiming "Hitler was right".

There was also the (albeit unsuccessful) formation of the Australia Nationalist Socialist Party - a neo-Nazi party which struggled to attract or retain recruits. Its leaders were found in possession of explosives, detonators, and other weapons, and jailed for unlawful possession in 1964.

In 1968, serious attempts were made to revitalise the radical right, but this time using the democratic process.

The National Socialist Party of Australia was reformed, and attempted to foster an Australian-centric style, orientating it away from typical Nazism.

The group, which adopted the Eureka flag and exploited Henry Lawson's writings, gained some support given their deliberate exploitation of white Australian symbols and anti-communist attitudes.

It was rumoured they had a "kill list" of 100 Australians.

Shootings and fire bombings

Towards 1976, there were other extreme right groups who did not engage with the democratic process, instead seeking to use violence to effect change. Among them, ASIO monitored Safari 8, the Legion of the Frontiersmen of the Commonwealth, and the Australian Youth Coalition.

Ultimately, they executed no attacks and swiftly disbanded.

The next prominent surge in activity came in the late 1980s from the National Action and the Australian Nationalist Movement. Both of these groups persecuted immigrants, homosexuals, and communists - all of whom they believed put white culture in peril.

National Action was involved in a number of attacks in Sydney, including a drive-by shooting; while Australian Nationalist Movement launched a prolonged firebombing campaign against Asian businesses in Perth.

While activity appeared to slump after law enforcement clamped down, it persisted in subcultural networks and "skinhead" counterculture.

The ideological foundations, especially around racialised identity, was kept alive by groups such as the Southern Cross Hammerskins, Combat 18/Blood and Honour, and the Women of the Southern Legion (a chapter of Women for Aryan Unity).

The international rise of right wing extremism

In 2009, right-wing extremism began to rise around the world, in response to a supposedly existential threat: jihadism, and the broader Muslim community in the West.

This was more a response to the threat supposedly posed by immigration to white culture, heritage, and values, than to an actual fear of jihadism.

The leader of the Victorian branch, Blair Cottrell, with protesters calling themselves patriots from the UPF and the True Blue Crew are blocked at the gate near where anti racism and facsism were gathered at Parliament House in Melbourne.(AAP: Tracey Nearmy)

Groups with international connections, such as the Australian Defence League and Right Wing Resistance, were formed. The rise of Reclaim Australia also saw extremist members of these groups splinter off to form new groups, such as the True Blue Crew and the United Patriots Front.

Phillip Galea, associated with both of these groups, was apprehended on terrorism charges in 2016. The United Patriots Front has given way to the Lads Society. They are joined in this by Antipodean Resistance - an outwardly nationalist socialist group which defines outsiders as left wing groups, Jews, and homosexuals, and condemns interracial couples and supposed sexual promiscuity.

But these groups barely touch the surface of this surge.

Australia has hosted a mix of groups on the extreme right in the last decade. This includes the Nationalist Australian Alternative, Proud Boys, Soldiers of Odin, Identity Australia, Australian Traditional, Australian Liberty Alliance, New National Action, the Patriotic Youth League, and more.

The fact that Christchurch attack has been shared and exploited by extreme right-wing elements in Australia shows we have a long way to go in confronting this threat.
Kristy Campion is a lecturer in Terrorism Studies at Charles Sturt University. This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

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Right-wing extremism has a long history in Australia, and support is surging

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The first step in coming to terms with the attack in Christchurch is to understand that it has been produced by right-wing extremism, both in Australia and internationally. The problem does not lie with immigration policies. The problem does not lie with the so-called outsiders, such as Muslim communities, who are so often the targets of right-wing rage.

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Does 'politics' and/or politicians affect the acts and impact of far-right extremism or is it the other way around?  

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Does 'politics' and/or politicians affect the acts and impact of far-right extremism or is it the other way around?  

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In our opinion, it is both. Politics and the policies that are in place now against right-wing extremism can impact greatly on how a nation combats this violence and deals with the threats, as they essentially have the power; the resources; and the ears, to influence these individuals and groups.
How this movement impacts politics, is similar as they also have power, and many values of politicians are closely related to those that these radicals are advocating and threatening for, thus influencing politicians and becoming a part of politics themselves; while also gathering and influencing people of the society that attach to their cause.

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This is a typical example of how extremist groups take advantage of dire circumstances and the frustration of the people. This manifests itself by that these white supremacist far-right groups get involved in protests that aren’t for the far-right agenda but in turn, they take over the spotlight to seem more mainstream then they actually are. They also try to seem to “speaking on behalf of the people”. As the article says they are “exploiting an opportunity.”

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A series of protests, primarily in state capitals, are demanding the end of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Among the protesters are people who express concern about their jobs or the economy as a whole.

But there are also far-right conspiracy theorists, white supremacists like Proud Boys and citizens' militia members at these protests. The exact number of each group that attends these protests is unknown, since police have not traditionally monitored these groups, but signs and symbols of far right groups have been seen at many of these protests across the country.

These protests risk spreading the virus and have disrupted traffic, potentially delaying ambulances. But as researchers of street gangs' and far-right groups' violence and recruitment, we believe these protests may become a way right-wingers expand the spread of anti-Semitic rhetoric and militant racism.

Proud Boys, and many other far-right activists, don't typically focus their concern on whether stores and businesses are open. They're usually more concerned about pro-white, pro-male rhetoric. They're attending these rallies as part of their longstanding search for any opportunity to make extremist groups look mainstream - and because they are always looking for potential recruits to further their cause.

Adam DelGuidice/AFP via Getty Images

Exploiting an opportunity

While not all far-right groups agree on everything, many of them now subscribe to the idea that Western government is corrupt and its demise needs to be accelerated through a race war.

For far-right groups, almost any interaction is an opportunity to connect with people with social or economic insecurities or their children. Even if some of the protesters have genuine concerns, they're in protest lines near people looking to offer them targets to blame for society's problems.

Once they're standing side by side at a protest, members of far-right hate groups begin to share their ideas. That lures some people deeper into online groups and forums where they can be radicalized against immigrants, Jews or other stereotypical scapegoats.

It's true that only a few will go to that extreme - but they represent potential sparks for future far-right violence.

Ryan M. Kelly/AFP via Getty Images

Official responses

President Donald Trump, a favorite of far-right activists, has tweeted encouragement to the protesters. Police responses have been uneven. Some protesters have been charged with violating emergency government orders against public gatherings.

Other events, however, have gone undisturbed by officials - similar to how far-right "free speech" rallies in 2018 often were treated gently by police.

Police have tended to be hesitant to deal with far-right groups at these protests. As a result, the risk is growing of right-wing militants spreading the coronavirus, either unintentionally at rallies or in intentional efforts: Federal authorities have warned that some right-wingers are talking about specifically sending infected people to target communities of color.

One thing police could do - which they often do when facing criminal groups - is to track the level of coordination between different protests. Identifying far-right activists who attend multiple events or travel across state borders to attend a rally may indicate that they are using these events as part of a connected public relations campaign.

[ You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversation's newsletter.]

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Why are white supremacists protesting to 'reopen' the US economy?

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A series of protests, primarily in state capitals, are demanding the end of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Among the protesters are people who express concern about their jobs or the economy as a whole. But there are also far-right conspiracy theorists, white supremacists like Proud Boys and citizens' militia members at these protests.

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The same strategy of using lockdown protests as a platform is happening here too, this time with guns.

The difference, in this case, is that according to experts who study extremist groups, anti-lockdown demonstrations, fit perfectly into the ideology of white supremacists and other far-right groups, such as sovereignty, rejecting the legitimacy of government, and anti-immigration sentiment.

"The anti-lockdown protests are a magnet because they represent so many different things that dovetail so nicely with the pre-existing trends of right-wing and white supremacist extremism," Dr. Peter Simi told Business Insider.

This can be implications on how the frustration over the current situation begins to merge more and more with far-right agendas as the situation continues.

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Protests over state-mandated social distancing and business closures weren't started by extremist groups - but white supremacists and those with similar ideologies have seized upon them across the US.

According to experts who study extremist groups, anti-lockdown demonstrations fit perfectly into the ideology of white supremacists and other far-right groups, such as sovereignty, rejecting the legitimacy of government, and anti-immigration sentiment.

"The anti-lockdown protests are a magnet because they represent so many different things that dovetail so nicely with the pre-existing trends of right-wing and white supremacist extremism," Dr. Peter Simi told Business Insider.

One protest organizer, Michigan United for Liberty, told Business Insider it did not "agree with violent or hateful remarks or threatening rhetoric" expressed at rallies while noting that they "cannot control what people bring, do, or say."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

At the beginning of May, states across the country began to relax stay-at-home orders that closed non-essential businesses and ordered residents to practice social distancing. But while the majority of Americans supported the continuation of social distancing measures meant to prevent spikes in coronavirus cases that would overwhelm local medical systems, including lockdown and stay-at-home orders, state leaders across the country faced mounting pressure from protesters to reopen - even if doing so didn't coincide with the advice of health experts.

Texas, which saw anti-lockdown protests at its state capitol throughout April, began to relax its stay-at-home at the beginning of May, and since then, infections have spiked as nail salons, restaurants, movie theaters, and even gyms reopened to the public. On Saturday, state officials reported 1,801 new cases of COVID-19 - the highest the state had so far seen in a single day.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott attributed the increase in testing in the state - particularly in hardest-hit areas like meatpacking plants - and continued to push ahead with Texas' plan to reopen. As of Wednesday, all 50 states have at least partially reopened.

Far-right groups, including some with white supremacist ties, have flocked to these protests around the US arguing against the state orders meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.

In April, protesters Michigan carried signs that compared Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, to Hitler, flashed Trump 2020 signs, and even waved Confederate flags - a symbol of modern-day white supremacists. Some of the protesters were armed. On April 30, armed protesters marched into the state capitol while the legislature was meeting.

"The majority of the protesters were white," Michigan State Rep. Sarah Anthony Anthony told Michigan newspaper City Pulse. "I'm still not exactly sure about the connection between confederate flags and Nazi symbolism. They just had no connection to the stay-at-home orders. The fact they were carrying guns openly while we voted was unnerving."

Michigan United for Liberty, which has organized protests in the sate, told Business Insider it did not "agree with violent or hateful remarks or threatening rhetoric" and believed the "majority of our members would agree with us on this matter."

"While we respect everyone's constitutional rights to bear arms and we know Michigan is an open carry state, we do ask those who wish to carry to do so in a respectful and lawful manner," a spokesperson for the organization said. "We cannot control what people bring, do, or say, but we have made several statements in regards to keeping our events peaceful."

On May 1, a woman at a "Re-Open Illinois" demonstration held a sign that read, "Arbeit Macht Frei, JB," targeting Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is of Jewish descent.

The phrase, which is German and means "work sets you free," is famous for being placed above the gates of Auschwitz - the largest Nazi extermination camp during the Holocaust, as Business Insider previously reported. A group that has organized protests to reopen Illinois did not immediately return a request for comment.

As the Washington Post noted on May 1, protests across the US, which have been backed by "conservative megadonors," have had ties to a range of unlikely causes: the anti-vaccination movement, the Proud Boys, anti-government conspiracy theorists called QAnon, and a group that advocates for a second civil war called the Boogaloo Boys.

Anti-lockdown protests are a "magnet" for white supremacist and far-right agenda, according to experts

Dr. Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University who studies political extremist groups, told Business Insider that joining these protests is a logical step for extremists, even if their concerns about the economy play a backseat to their true intentions.

"They're looking for ways to latch on to any kind of mainstream elements that can help further their narratives about racism, xenophobia, and immigration," Simi said.

"COVID-19 and the crisis surrounding it is custom-built for far-right extremist ideology and white supremacist ideology in particular," he continued. "The anti-lockdown protests are a magnet because they represent so many different things that dovetail so nicely with the pre-existing trends of right-wing and white supremacist extremism."

Simi said white supremacists and members of far-right organizations typically find the government to be "intrusive" and depriving them of liberty and their sovereignty.

"These are long tropes within right-wing extremists that have been around for a long long time," he said. Thus state leaders' decisions to close non-essential businesses and order residents to stay at home laid bare an opportunity for these groups to "further their narrative about excessive government, about government overreach, and about the government being completely corrupt and illegitimate," Simi said.

Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who conducts research on radical groups, also said far-right extremists and those with white supremacist ideology have found a home with these lockdown protests.

"It's not the first time," she said of radical groups latching on to more mainstream news and causes. "When there are uprisings of political frustration on the right it's something that extremists are always paying attention to and trying to harness their own ends."

Miller said white supremacists and far-right groups similarly co-opted movements related to the Tea Party around the time of the 2008 economic recession and more recently after the 2015 shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine Black churchgoers dead.

"Riots broke out all over the country where people were arguing that the confederate flag should stay up at statehouses and other public places," Miller said. "There were hundreds of these rallies, and the extremists were there on the ground with them because they felt these were people who were kind of primed to accept their perspective."

She added: "I think this is a similar thing - they're seeing this outbreak of frustration and they want to harness it for their own ends."

And there is cause for frustration - more than 36 million people have applied for unemployment benefits over the past eight weeks - an all-time high. And those who can work amid the ongoing pandemic are fearful they're risking their health.

"I'm sure there are some [protesters] who sincerely fear for their livelihood and are essentially mobilizing to open up the economy," Simi told Business Insider. "As far as the extremists - that element is really the side issue," he argued.

"Their concern is really much more about mobilization, getting their message out, expanding their narrative, and using crisis situations to spread fear and to spread anxiety."

Miller pointed toward the Boogaloo Boys - known both for their Hawaiian shirts and belief of an impending civil war known as the Boogaloo - who have appeared at anti-stay-at-home protests. While not all of those who believe in the Boogaloo identify as white supremacists, some " conceive of the boogaloo as a race war or a white revolution," according to the Anti-Defamation League.

According to the Associated Press, armed demonstrators in April passed out fliers that read "Liberty or Boogaloo" at an anti-lockdown protest at the New Hampshire State House. A leader of the Three Percenters militia movement at a Washington state protest encouraged protesters to wear Hawaiian shirts, the group's de facto uniform.

On May 9, police in a Raleigh, North Carolina investigated a confrontation between a couple and an armed protester at a rally that had been publicized on Facebook by a group called "Blue Igloo" - a derivation of "Boogaloo," according to the report.

White supremacists and other radicals feel emboldened by local and national leadership

Simi said rhetoric from the top has further emboldened white nationalists looking to foster negative sentiment toward non-white people and immigrants.

President Trump and Republicans have blamed the spread of the virus, which is believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan toward the end of 2019, on the Chinese government - often calling the virus the "Chinese virus" even though that moniker is largely considered racist.

"The idea is that viruses are somehow connected to immigrants and foreigners," Simi said. "That becomes a key element for them to try to latch on to. When you have the president and other political leaders kind of espousing these ideas it makes it that much easier to spread their rhetoric as well."

In April, amid ongoing protests over lockdown measures, the president in a tweet called to " LIBERATE" states - Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota. In May, Trump tweeted that the armed protesters in Michigan were "very good people" and urged the state's governor to "make a deal" with them.

"Liberation is a very evocative and important term from [the far-right] perspective," Simi said. "They see themselves as a liberation movement that's all about liberty and justice they're being denied and being victimized. President Trump has consistently since his candidacy spoken the language of far-right extremists and white supremacy in particular."

He added that extremists groups are using familiar tactics in their fight against lockdown orders - such as de-legitimizing science and the news media.

"They are the groups that already spreading conspiracy theories, spreading disinformation, and spreading misinformation," Miller said, echoing Simi's remarks. "They already fit into that ecosystem quite well."

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Why anti-lockdown protests are a 'magnet' for white supremacists and far-right extremists

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Protests over state-mandated social distancing and business closures weren't started by extremist groups - but white supremacists and those with similar ideologies have seized upon them across the US. According to experts who study extremist groups, anti-lockdown demonstrations fit perfectly into the ideology of white supremacists and other far-right groups, such as sovereignty, rejecting the legitimacy of government, and anti-immigration sentiment.

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"politics is activity in relation to power" - Francis Parker Yorkey

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"politics is activity in relation to power" - Francis Parker Yorkey

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This quote is particularly significant when speaking of far-right extremism as, while most think that politics is the government, the countries leaders and the social elite, politics is also the exercise of power in a society and in this case these particular groups of people have the power to recruit their followers or supporters and grow their political and

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This term highlights the insurgence of far-right ideals into the policies of Australia, gathering a considerable amount of support through movements such as, 'Australia First Movement' in 1941; and societies and 'resistance' parties such as, True Blue Crew in 2015, and the United Patriots Front in 2015. These introduced acts of right-wing terrorism, with Nazi, fascist and anti-sematic movements, morphing what people conceive of their 'new-world' ideals, thus becoming not only a social movement, but a very political call to action.

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This term, being precisely what the words suggest, is the violence brought on by people, groups, or governments with the goal to create political uproar by resisting a country's political system, or parts of it. Examples of this can span from riots to violent protests revolutions, terrorism and guerrilla warfare. Political violence is considered a unique and fierce form of far right extremism.

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This article identifies that when politics or a government is vulnerable and open to parties and movements that foster right-wing ideals, essentially allowing racism.

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As Federal election day approaches, a Murdoch University criminologist has said more needs to be done in politics and policing to deal with right wing extremism.

Dr Mark Briskey, who is an expert in terrorism and criminal intelligence, says Australian white extremism should be accorded equal attention and resources as many other threats to the state.

In a presentation at the recent Radicalisation, De-radicalisation and Counter-Radicalisation conference at UWA, Dr Briskey highlighted that a litany of racist, Islamophobic, intolerant and misogynist views had been exposed in the Federal election campaign.

"Candidates for some of the far right political parties like One Nation and Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party have expressed racist views openly on campaign materials and in social media," Dr Briskey said.

"Victorian Liberals were forced to dump a candidate over a conspiracy-laden anti-Muslim rant. And earlier this week, anonymous racist flyers targeting WA MP Anne Aly were circulated in her electorate.

"We've even seen the National Party in Queensland make a preference deal with One Nation, a party which has vilified Asians, Indigenous Australians, Muslims and asylum seekers. Nationals leader Michael McCormack claims One Nation are more closely aligned to his party than Greens or Labor."

Far right threat

Dr Briskey said the far right threat in the election campaign was both subtle and explicit, and raised concerns that such relationships between parties fostered and allowed racism and intolerance to be sanitised and legitimised.

"This is the kind of environment in which extremist racism can ignite," Dr Briskey said.

"There has been a marked decline in civilised ethical debate in the rhetoric of the right in this election campaign."

Dr Briskey said there were lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions who are responding to the multifaceted threats of extremism.

"New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is speaking to digital leaders in Paris to promote a way forward that does not restrict the free use of the net but seeks a consistent global approach to addressing right wing extremism," Dr Briskey said.

"The United Kingdom has sobering lessons from their ongoing responses to bigoted white extremism. White extremist Jack Renshaw was arrested for plotting to assassinate a British MP after his group was infiltrated by police.

"This is an important tactical reminder for Australian policing and intelligence."

Dr Briskey said Australian society led by its politicians needed to be attuned to and vigilant of the extremist views of people elected to government.
He also urged the creation of policies to help educators foster greater cultural understanding and acceptance in schools.

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The rise of far right extremism in Australian politics

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As Federal election day approaches, a Murdoch University criminologist has said more needs to be done in politics and policing to deal with right wing extremism. Dr Mark Briskey, who is an expert in terrorism and criminal intelligence, says Australian white extremism should be accorded equal attention and resources as many other threats to the state.

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Australia's domestic spy agency says there has been a marked increase in far right wing extremism in Australia in recent years.

However Australian Security intelligence Organisation director-general Mike Burgess said it was unclear what is driving that growth.

"We do not fully understand why we're seeing a growth. This is a matter that ASIO has been looking at for a good number of years," Mr Burgess told Senate estimates on Monday.

"In the last three years, we've seen a rise in activity and strengthening and there's a few trends there but we do not fully understand why this is occurring."

"We expect such groups will remain an enduring threat, making use of online propaganda to spread their messages of hate," he said at the time.

However Mr Burgess dismissed the need for a centralised office to investigate right wing extremism.

Germany recently announced it would set up a central office to tackle far right extremist activities.

But Mr Burgess said Germany also had a "history in this space" - a reference to Nazism - which had informed its response to right-wing extremism.

"This one is growing concern for us, but it ... is not yet currently my principal concern," Mr Burgess said.

Australia also has no right wing groups listed as terrorist organisations.

Mr Burgess said ASIO constantly reviewed the prescription of certain groups.

"Whilst it's under constant review, I can't go into full details of those particular matters," he said.

Islamic extremism remained ASIO's primary concern, Mr Burgess said.

Meanwhile senators have complained about the use of the term "right wing" to describe extremism.

Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells said "there are many people of conservative background who take exception to being charred (sic) with that brush".

"Right is associated with conservatism in this country. And I think that you do understand that your comments, particularly when you refer to them solely as right wing, has the potential to offend a lot of Australians," Senator Fierravanti-Wells said.

Mr Burgess said he did not intend to offend anyone but Neo Nazi and similar groups had "long been given the label of right wing, not by ASIO".

"It's unfortunate that we refer to it as right wing extremism, but in the absence of something else, which maybe we should look at a different label," Mr Burgess said.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts suggested left and right wing be replaced with "control versus freedom."

"It seems to me that while ever the terminology is confused, your job will be more difficult in communicating to the Australian people," Senator Roberts said.

Mr Burgess said he was "not sure I quite go for freedom versus control."

"This is about individuals or groups that promote communal violence or politically motivated violence," Mr Burgess said.

"I agree it's unhelpful to assign them to a part of the political spectrum because actually you know being on the political spectrum is a great part of our democracy."

However he told Insiders on Sunday the point he was making was he was "completely blind to somebody's religious beliefs".

"I don't believe we should tolerate people acting outside of the law wherever they are on the spectrum," Mr Dutton said.

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Far right wing extremism is growing in Australia. ASIO doesn't know why

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Australia's domestic spy agency says there has been a marked increase in far right wing extremism in Australia in recent years. However Australian Security intelligence Organisation director-general Mike Burgess said it was unclear what is driving that growth. "We do not fully understand why we're seeing a growth.

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Far-right politics News, Research and Analysis - The Conversation

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Browse Far-right politics news, research and analysis from The Conversation

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This article shows the increase of far-right extremist movements and attacks from the vulnerability that the Coronavirus has brought upon world. Mainly they are targeting the political agenda, and also talks on Trumps agenda with his paramilitary troops.

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The U.S. government has the official public policy of never negotiating with terrorists, paying them ransom or otherwise surrendering to their demands. The logic is simple: to give in to terrorists is to encourage more violence and other attacks.

It would appear that the state of Michigan does not follow the same policy.

Last Thursday, the Michigan state legislature announced it would not convene because of threats of violence and chaos by armed right-wing militias and other paramilitaries, as previously seen during the recent anti-lockdown protests.

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In what could be construed as an act of treason, President Trump recently ordered such paramilitary groups and right-wing thugs to take up arms and to threaten Democratic-led state governments such as Michigan's in order to force them to "reopen" their state. Such behavior is part of a broader pattern of right-wing terrorism and violence in the United States where armed militias and paramilitaries have allied with the Republican Party in its effort to delegitimize and undermine democracy. Such an alliance is common to failing democracies and rising fascist movements. The example offered by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in the 1930s is perhaps the most ominous.

Right-wing terrorism is and will be a future template for Trump and his movement against their perceived or real enemies. White neo-fascist violence, and the threat of such violence have consistently escalated during the Age of Trump.

Matters are now so dire that even The New York Times, which views itself as a neutral "journal of record," is sounding the alarm about Trump's armed paramilitary groups. Last Friday, columnist Roger Cohen published an op-ed entitled "The Masked versus the Unmasked" in which he issued this warning:

So much for those resilient checks and balances I lauded to my Colorado neighbor.

Back then, in the bygone era, he wrote to me: "No wonder Republicans are laughing at us. The billionaire politicians have complete control (besides the military at this point), no oversight, and most of their constituents are armed, some heavily, and ready to defend them. Roll over and die? What the hell? Time to even things up. To save this country. Hopefully, guns will always be a deterrent, but they may be our last hope to save this country. Time to gun up, liberals!"

If you prefer, think of "gun up" as get real, get tough, get registered, get mobilized, get implacable and vote Trump out. Or you may just want to go down to the range.

Ultimately, the upcoming presidential election in November will be a test of the United States' ability to have a peaceful transfer of power - assuming the election take place, and assuming Trump is somehow defeated, an outcome that seems increasingly unlikely.

How are the anti-lockdown protests in Michigan and elsewhere connected to the history of the Tea Party movement and its network of right-wing plutocrats and other backers? What is the role of white supremacists and other right-wing extremists in Trump's coronavirus "protests"? How are right-wing militias and other paramilitary groups trying to plan for and incite a second American civil war and armed insurrection - which they call "the boogaloo"? If Donald Trump loses in November, how will these armed militias likely react?

Is Trump actively encouraging right-wing violence through stochastic terrorism? And if so, why aren't the American people mobilizing against such anti-democratic behavior?

In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with investigative journalist David Neiwert, a contributing writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Neiwert is also the author of several books, including the recent Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right and the forthcoming Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us.
Chauncey DeVega: The anti-lockdown "protests" in Michigan and elsewhere appear to be staged events. In essence they are fake protests which are sponsored and created - just like the Tea Party "movement" from several years ago - by rich conservatives or corporate oligarchs. In a series of recent essays, you have suggested that these events are more complicated than that. Can you explain?
David Neiwert: They are astroturf protests in the same way that the Tea Party movement was put in place by people who have corporate right-wing money as well as the monetary support of very rich families such as that of Betsy DeVos [Trump's education secretary]. But the "lockdown" protests are a movement that has taken on a life of its own. This has a great deal to do with structure and organization.

The Tea Party initially was backed by right-wing corporations, interest groups and private money, which is why it had so much support from Fox News. But within about six to eight months the Tea Party had its ranks swell with far-right extremists from the Patriot movement. Over the next few years the Tea Party became a conduit for the revival of the Patriot movement, where right-wing extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters became closely associated with the later iterations of the Tea Party.

The full integration of these right-wing extremist militia groups and the Tea Party took some time to happen, but with Trump it is complete. With individuals and groups such as the DeVos family having set up the structure, it is easy for these anti-public health "protests" to spread across the country. The right-wing backers of the Tea Party created their astroturf machine and now it is a type of Frankenstein monster that rampages across the country.
Who are the various elements at these coronavirus rallies? What should the public and the news media really be focusing on?
Nothing about this is that invisible. So much of it is visible. It is a matter of understanding its context.

Men wearing camouflage and carrying guns are not there for the purpose of defending "gun rights." They are at protests in Michigan and other states to threaten the legislators and the governor. These men with guns are at these protests to threaten anybody who tries to stop them when they go marching into the state house in Michigan. What we saw in Michigan was seditious. If black people had behaved the same way with these guns, wearing camouflage and threatening legislators and the governor, they would have been shot dead by law enforcement.
How do you interpreting the symbols and codes being displayed and shared at these rallies?
Confederate flags were ubiquitous. There was also the Gadsden flag. The latter is now associated with the Tea Party. The Gadsden flag was associated with the right-wing extremist militants in the Patriot movement in the 1990s, and now they are present at these coronavirus protests and gatherings. The anti-vaxxers have now joined up with these right-wing extremists at the anti-lockdown rallies. It is a natural alliance of sorts because they are all obsessed with conspiracy theories. One of the defining features of the Patriot movement is conspiracism.
You have talked to people involved in these various right-wing extremist and paramilitary groups and broader movements. How do the people at these rallies make sense of their claims that they are not "racist" or "violent" while they are carrying guns, waving Confederate flags, wearing other fascist insignia and in several cases displaying signs with Nazi slogans?
There is a great amount of cognitive dissonance among these people at the coronavirus rallies. One of my favorite images was that man with the Confederate flag who was wearing a T-shirt that says, "America, love it or leave it!" So many of the people at the Michigan rally and elsewhere are enormously confused. But there are also people at these events who are bloodthirsty for the opportunity to use the pandemic to advance their goals. They see the pandemic as societal breakdown and therefore an opportunity to get out their guns and finally shoot all those liberals that they have wanted to kill for a very long time.

Now, along with the Confederate flags and Nazi regalia and language there is a hidden symbol operating in plain sight for those who understand its meaning and power. Notice the Hawaiian shirts and the references to something called the "boogaloo." Also notice the "boogaloo" flag, which is blue and has an igloo and a palm tree on it.

These are references to the "boogaloo," a term meaning the second civil war that the right-wing paramilitaries and other extremists are hoping for and lusting after right now. These right-wing extremists want to replace America's constitutional democracy with authoritarian right-wing rule. Online, these right-wing extremists spend a great deal of time talking about the "boogaloo" and killing federal law enforcement agents. They also fantasize about societal breakdown and killing their neighbors for supplies. These people are very serious about their violence.

This organizing is being done online on Facebook and elsewhere. Facebook thinks this is fine and has not taken it down. There are not that many members in these right-wing militias and other extremist groups, but they can create a lot of havoc and hurt and kill many people. Their "boogaloo" fantasy of a second civil war and mass violence has no chance of succeeding, in my opinion. But their shared fantasies of violence have the potential to cause great harm if acted upon even by a small number of its adherents.
What would the "boogaloo" or other acts of right-wing civil war and insurrection look like, if it actually took place? "Anti-government" is usually code for white supremacy and racism against nonwhites, especially black people.
Obviously the first targets are going to be people of color and LGBT folks. In this "boogaloo" and other right-wing civil war fantasies, those groups would be rounded up and put in concentration camps or otherwise disposed of. Jews would probably all be assassinated or otherwise killed. The way that these right-wing extremists talk among themselves is very graphic in terms of the violence.
How are these individuals and groups using the pandemic for their recruitment efforts?
They have been intensely recruiting among their usual demographic. They radicalize disaffected young white people - mostly men but not exclusively, of course - by infiltrating every online platform, including the various message boards and forums to YouTube. They want to radicalize impressionable young people between the ages of 13 and 30. The result is that we are seeing a wave of very young Nazis.
How is the pandemic specifically being used in the recruitment and radicalization process?
It usually consists of some story about "white genocide" and apocalypse. They say that there is a plot to commit genocide against white people, white males in particular, and to destroy "Western civilization." This is a plot led by Jewish people who are manipulating immigrants and people of color. This conspiracy is not really much different from what Nazis and other white supremacists were preaching in the 1920s. It has just been updated for the social media age with the use of memes, ironic humor and the like. That makes it attractive to young people.

Another way that the pandemic is being used by these bad actors is through eco-fascism, where the recruiting is done by talking about how the virus has created cleaner air and animals are taking back the planet from human beings and that nature is healing. Many of these "nature is healing" posts are being spread by some of the most dangerous fascists who believe that human beings have contaminated the Earth and need to be eliminated. These fascists are pro-genocide and they have been trying to co-opt the logos of legitimate environmental groups such as Extinction Rebellion.
What are these right-wing terrorists waiting for, in terms of beginning their "boogaloo" attacks? What will the signal be?
They're waiting for a spark. It would be something such as an incident where law enforcement decides to finally crack down on right-wing militia, paramilitaries and those in league with them. In the 1990s these right-wing groups retaliated with truck bombs.
If Donald Trump loses the 2020 presidential election, will that be a signal for right-wing militias and paramilitaries to launch attacks against their enemies?
It is possible that these right-wing extremists and other boogaloo types will attack locations that they believe are vulnerable and will make a difference in their "civil war." One of the wildcards to consider is the ominous presence of Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater, who is also Betsy DeVos' brother, and his private army of mercenaries. Prince commands a very skilled group of commandos and other ex-military and paramilitary operatives. Such a group of people could cause great harm to the country if so ordered.
Donald Trump and the right-wing media have been using stochastic terrorism to encourage violence against Democrats, liberals, progressives, journalists and anyone he or they deem to be an "enemy." On Twitter, Trump actually told the pandemic "protesters" to take up arms and force the Michigan state government and others to cease public health measures designed to slow down the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has been threatening to put Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats in prison for participating in a "conspiracy" to overthrow him. He continues to call Democrats and journalists "human scum." Where is the outrage from the American people at this vile behavior? Are they just numb to it?
The American people have been conditioned to such language by decades of relentless propaganda from Fox News, the other parts of the right-wing machine, and now Russian bots on social media. The right-wing echo chamber propaganda machine has normalized that violent language and authoritarianism. The right-wing media machine is so powerful it has intimidated and cowed networks such as CNN and MSNBC. The latter are afraid to tell the truth about Trump and the far right's threats of violence.

I have been writing about these dangers for more than 10 years. People said I was "alarmist" back then. I don't think they would say that about me anymore. Everything that I have warned about has exactly come true. In fact, under Trump things are worse than I predicted. America is at a key turning point right now in terms of surrendering to fascism. America must decide if it is going to become a damned and foul demon of a country by fully surrendering to fascism and Donald Trump in the upcoming election.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

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Far Right Extremists Hope to Incite New Civil War Amid Political Chaos of COVID

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The U.S. government has the official public policy of never negotiating with terrorists, paying them ransom or otherwise surrendering to their demands. The logic is simple: to give in to terrorists is to encourage more violence and other attacks. It would appear that the state of Michigan does not follow the same policy.

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Taking a look from the perspectives of people that are the targets of Far-Right Groups

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Taking a look from the perspectives of people that are the targets of Far-Right Groups

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This piece investigates a number of occurrences that have taken place in Canada (Edmonton) where the offending parties often have not been convicted of any crime in some cases they weren't even charged.

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As the holy month of Ramadan began, the bearded man in reflector sunglasses and a maple leaf-embroidered baseball cap recorded himself in a series of videos staking out Edmonton's largest mosque.

"So it's April 24th - the start of the Ramadan 'bombathon' and I'm just performing my civic duty to make sure that no one's actually showing up at the Al Rashid mosque," said the man, who had taken it upon himself to make sure worshippers were following a health order to contain the coronavirus.

After announcing plans to eat a bacon sandwich as Sweet Home Alabama played on the radio, another segment appeared to show the man driving into the mosque's parking lot while he counted vehicles. He recorded a woman with her baby and toddler, commenting: "Social distancing apparently."

More than two weeks after the videos were posted to social media, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) is among those questioning why charges have not been laid in this case, as well as in previous incidents.

"This is not the first time that white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the city of Edmonton have operated brazenly and have faced zero consequences," said Mustafa Farooq, lawyer and CEO of NCCM.

"It means allowing those folks to feel that if they walk on the streets and they intimidate people, they're free to do so because they're not going to face charges," he said in a Friday interview with CBC.

The council is warning Edmonton police that far-right extremists are getting bolder as Islamophobic behaviour goes unchecked.

Edmonton police say its Hate Crimes and Violent Extremism Unit (HCEVU) is working closely with Al Rashid Mosque leadership on the investigation.

"While police cannot always share their investigative process and updates with the public, the HCVEU fully investigates these events," police spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout said in an email.

"Evidence is gathered, assessed and reviewed with the crown. Unless the criminal threshold for a hate crime is met and charges can be laid, there is, unfortunately, very little police can say publicly about a file."

A noose and hateful flyers

Farooq noted that no charges were laid following a January 2019 incident, in which security video recorded two men -both with ties to far-right Islamophobic hate groups - enter Al Rashid mosque as worshippers arrived for Friday prayers. The men later got into a confrontation with community members outside and streamed it on social media, the mosque says.

The hate crimes unit investigated but did not lay charges after a 2016 incident in which man reportedly approached two young women wearing hijabs, tied a rope into a noose and said 'This is for you,' before singing O Canada.

Investigations into the distribution of Islamophobic flyers have not resulted in charges either.

While the threshold to lay hate charges is higher, some lawyers - including Farooq, who has practiced criminal law in Alberta - suggest pressing easier-to-lay charges such as uttering threats, criminal harassment, trespassing or mischief relating to religious property.

"These are things that never seem to cross the Edmonton Police Service playbook as long as racialized communities are the ones in the cross-hairs," Farooq said.

The call for greater action comes alongside a rise in far-right nationalist groups as police-reported hate crimes soar. In 2017, Statistics Canada reported a 151 per cent spike in police-reported anti-Muslim hate crimes across Canada, NCCM says.

That same year, Canada saw the largest attack at a religious institution when Alexandre Bissonnette gunned down and murdered six people at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City. Terrorist charges were never laid. Bissonette allegedly visited the mosque beforehand.

"So when you have an individual in that context, lurking around a place of worship, making and uttering these words of 'bombathon', I think any reasonable person would be very concerned with that," said Edmonton lawyer Janan Jarrah in an interview Sunday.

"As a defence lawyer, I've seen people charged for saying and doing things far less concerning."

Jarrah said members of the Muslim community are genuinely fearful, pointing out that many children pray or attend community events at Al Rashid.

And like Farooq, Jarrah suggested a similar incident involving a non-Muslim faith group might be treated differently.

"The fact that criminal charges weren't laid seems to suggest that there may be a double standard at play here," Jarrah said. "It definitely makes you question why in this particular scenario the Muslim community isn't as deserving of a sanction against someone who does something like that."

Voordenhout said members of the police hate crimes unit pride themselves on having a great working relationship with Edmonton's Muslim community.

"HCVEU members work closely with leadership at Edmonton mosques, AMPAC [Alberta Muslim Public Affairs Council], and the community at large to identify threats and respond accordingly," she wrote.

A spokesperson for the Al Rashid mosque could not be reached for comment.

The NCCM is set to launch a campaign on Monday asking Canadians to join the call for action on the latest incident by writing to Edmonton police Chief Dale McFee and the Edmonton police commission.

Consistent with equality?

If a Muslim was the main person in an incident like the April video, police and the public would be more likely to view it as a criminal activity rather than an exercise in freedom of speech, said Faisal Bhabha, a professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

"It's easier to explain away when the person looks like the individual that is depicted in those videos," said Bhabha, who specializes in constitutional law and national security.

"He's clearly a white guy. He's wearing a maple leaf hat. He's listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, classic rock. And he's eating a bacon sandwich. And those are all characteristics that align with a particular identity ... And they're meant to signal a kind of 'I'm with you, I'm with the majority'."

In contrast, said Bhabha, someone who appeared as a minority would likely attract greater scrutiny, less understanding and more racism leading to law enforcement action, social repudiation or political intervention.

Bhabha said there may be other factors at play in police exercising their discretion to press charges, such as political considerations or an attempt to influence future behaviour by issuing a warning.

"But that kind of thing is more likely to happen if you're white and the police officer making the decision can relate to you," Bhabha said. "Whenever police exercise their discretion in a way that appears to be hypocritical ... it's worth asking whether this is the kind of exercise of discretion that is consistent with equality and anti-discrimination."

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Far-right extremists getting bolder as threatening behaviour goes unchecked, police warned | CBC News

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As the holy month of Ramadan began, the bearded man in reflector sunglasses and a maple leaf-embroidered baseball cap recorded himself in a series of videos staking out Edmonton's largest mosque.

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"The far-right in Germany, then, is not only a threat to the physical safety of minority groups in the country, but also the nation’s entire political system."

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Germany just had one of its most devastating mass shootings in years - and it looks like the alleged culprit held far-right, anti-immigrant views, underscoring the growing threat of the rising far-right extremist movement in the country and beyond.

At around 10 pm local time on Wednesday in Hanau, a city roughly 16 miles east of Frankfurt, a gunman killed nine people at two shisha bars. The suspect, said to be 43 years old, then went home after the assault and killed himself and his mother. One person remains seriously injured.

The choice of targets - the Midnight shisha bar and the Arena Bar and Cafe - lend credence to the far-right motivation theory. The establishments are located in areas of the city mainly inhabited by immigrants, and shisha bars - where patrons can smoke flavored tobacco - were first popularized by Hanau's Turkish community.

Local reports say the first victims in the attack were of Kurdish origin. Peter Beuth, the interior minister for the state of Hesse, where Hanau is, said: "Our current insights give enough ground for a xenophobic motive."

Those insights are also based on a 24-page manifesto the alleged shooter left behind in which he espouses far-right and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at King's College in London, got a look at the document and provided analysis of it on Twitter.

"He hates foreigners and non-whites," Neumann tweeted in a thread early Thursday morning. "Although he doesn't emphasise Islam, he calls for the extermination of various countries in North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia (which all happen to be majority Muslim)."

"He justifies his call for killing the populations of entire countries in explicitly eugenicist terms," Neumann added.

That tracks with what the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, a German foundation that combats far-right extremism, found in the shooter's manifesto. "He feels a great threat to himself and his people and believes that he is chosen to defend them by force against enemies from outside," Robert Lüdecke, the head of public relations for the organization, told me. "He believes that he is chosen and therefore feels legitimized to carry out his violent acts."

Vox has not independently confirmed the entire contents of the manifesto.

It's important not to extrapolate too much from this assault. This was one person on one night doing a horrendous thing. But it's also important to note that Germany is seeing a rise in far-right violence and crime, and a surging far-right party in the country's politics.

It's a growing problem that has many concerned, including the country's current leader.

"Racism is a poison; hate is a poison," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a televised address on Thursday in response to the shooting. "This poison exists in our society, and it's to blame for too many tragic events."

There's an overall rise in far-right crime in Germany, but not violence - yet

There is no question that far-right extremists are becoming a problem in Germany.

Neo-Nazis and other groups committed 8,605 crimes nationwide in the first half of 2019, according to Germany's interior ministry, which is 900 more offenses than during the same period in 2018.

About 180 people have been injured during these crimes, and many culprits remain at large: Just 23 people out of 2,625 suspects have been arrested. Importantly, only a small number of these offenses have been violent.

The problem, though, is that it looks like those numbers may soon tick upward.

"There are not necessarily more incidents overall, but the severity has increased," Neumann told me in an interview, adding that German officials "generally judge that more people that are considered far right contemplate violence."

"The figures," he made sure to note, "don't fully reflect this - yet." Sadly, they soon might.

According to a report released by German authorities last year, local police took away 1,091 weapons from right-wing extremists in 2018. In 2017, police only grabbed 676 - which means there was a 61 percent increase in weapons seizures from far-right groups.

It seems some of those organizations want to commit major acts of violence. Earlier this month, 12 men were detained for plotting an attack similar to the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, last year in which a shooter filmed himself killing Muslims in their mosque. Authorities believe the 12 men were planning to carry out simultaneous attacks on Muslims during prayers all throughout the country.

Officials have started to crack down harder on these extremists. In December, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said the government would create 600 new intelligence positions for identifying, tracking, and rooting out violent right-wing networks.

Many saw that announcement as a response to two major attacks in Germany last year: the killing of politician Walter Lübcke by a far-right extremist in June, and the shooting at a synagogue on Yom Kippur that left two dead.

None of this has stopped the growth in popularity of Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), a far-right political party that is gaining in both local and federal elections. They have ridden the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment since Germany let in over 1 million people in 2015, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

The party's strength is one of the reasons Merkel chose to no longer lead her own center-right party since she couldn't find a way to curb AfD's rise.

The far-right in Germany, then, is not only a threat to the physical safety of minority groups in the country, but also the nation's entire political system.

But at least there are some in power looking to face this problem head on.

"We in Germany are confronted with virulent right-wing radicals that have and still are trivialized by parts of the state authorities and underestimated by some politicians," Franziska Brantner, a Green Party member of Germany's parliament, told me. "We need to fight racism and the language of hate in our society and demand the authorities to pursue and condemn right-wing terror unconditionally."

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What the mass shooting in Germany tells us about its far-right extremism problem

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Germany just had one of its most devastating mass shootings in years - and it looks like the alleged culprit held far-right, anti-immigrant views, underscoring the growing threat of the rising far-right extremist movement in the country and beyond.