Research & Analysis

October 25, 2021 Unite the Right participants hold shields and a sign taken from counter protesters during the day's unrest. Photograph credit: John Penley, Facebook In the four years since the Unite the Right rally (“UTR”) in Charlottesville, Virginia, the major players and groups have undergone seismic change. This is certainly true for the defendants in the Integrity First for America lawsuit, which goes to trial this week. In stark contrast to the white supremacist…

June 29, 2021 In March 2021, Chet Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, published a series of social media posts critiquing white men’s attire and behavior, culminating a month later with the release of his song, “White Boy Summer.” A play on Megan Thee Stallion’s 2019 hit song, “Hot Girl Summer,” “White Boy Summer” has taken the internet and meme culture by storm.  And while “White Boy Summer” was not initially intended to be hateful,…

October 11, 2021 Since 2020, Twitter has taken steps to decrease hate and disinformation on its platform, officially banning some forms of Covid-19 misinformation or purging QAnon-related handles after the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. But while Twitter’s anti-extremist policies are more effective now than they were a year ago, the platform has not addressed the ease with which users are able to drive traffic to hate and misinformation hosted on outside sites. To examine how…

October 11, 2021 On September 27, 2021, the non-profit journalist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) uploaded a cache of data allegedly linked to the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia, that included logs from the group’s private chatroom on Rocketchat, its emails from January 13 to September 19, 2021, and alleged membership information for more than 38,000 individuals. A review of these membership rolls found that 133 people provided emails with the …

October 05, 2021 Screenshot from the Twitter page of the Riyadh International Book Fair. By David Andrew Weinberg On October 1st, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture kicked off the Riyadh International Book Fair under the official patronage of the country’s ruler, King Salman.  Billed this year as “the largest book fair in the history of the kingdom” and even “the region’s largest book fair,” the ten-day convention is one of the Arabian…

September 27, 2021 In the past eight months, at least nine Rise Above Movement (R.A.M.)-inspired “Active Clubs” have cropped up across the United States. This development signals a renewed effort from R.A.M. to rebrand and spread their influence with a focus on real-world white supremacist activism. The clubs are geographically dispersed, loosely connected and localized chapters spanning from Indiana, Wyoming, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. …

September 27, 2021 Right-wing media pundits and politicians continue to use the rhetoric of “The Great Replacement” theory, which claims that white Europeans and Americans are being replaced by non-white immigrants. Though the theory has been adopted and promoted by the white supremacist movement, it is rooted in a racist European philosophy and feeds off white people’s fear that they are being increasingly and intentionally oppressed and made to feel guilty for their…

September 27, 2021 The recent blockbuster series of five articles from The Wall Street Journal exposing Facebook’s complicity in spreading toxic content underscores that it is far past time to recognize the harm caused by Facebook. Yet the company and other social media platforms continue to enjoy free rein despite playing outsized and destabilizing roles in determining what content is served up to billions of individuals worldwide. The “Facebook Files” were based on…

September 05, 2021 The Proud Boys are a right-wing extremist group with a violent agenda. That has never been more evident than over the course of the summer of 2021, when the Proud Boys and their associates reportedly engaged in violence at eight separate events. That violence, often against counter-protesters, has included fighting with fists, as is traditional for the Proud Boys, but paintball guns have also become a popular weapon. Proud Boys have also allegedly attacked journalists in…

September 02, 2021 THE WEEK’S BIG 3 The number of hate crimes in the United States rose to the highest level in 12 years, propelled by increasing assaults targeting Black and Asian victims, the FBI reported Monday. White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for the Taliban, a worrying development for US officials grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism. More than 70 State Department officials sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of State…

September 01, 2021 Right wing extremists frequently use national and international conflicts as platforms for their bigoted narratives. Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the face of ongoing humanitarian and military crises, extremist online spaces have been rife with racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic tropes. The August 26, 2021, attack in Kabul by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), refugee and evacuation efforts and the growing mainstream criticism of President…

August 26, 2021 Thabat News Agency, an Al Qaeda-linked weekly publication, mocks Time Magazine's December 2001 cover which proclaimed that 2001 was "the last days of the Taliban." Days after the U.S. troops began withdrawing from Afghanistan, the resurgent Taliban claimed territory in provinces across the country. Hundreds of provincial governors surrendered without a fight after the Taliban assured them that they would not execute leaders in areas where they encountered no resistance. …

August 12, 2021 Members of the Proud Boys gather in Philadelphia The Proud Boys claim to “venerate the housewife.” And while the right-wing extremist group insists this is meant to convey respect for women who take on “traditional” gender roles, a closer look at the Proud Boys’ rhetoric and actions, especially in online spaces, reveals the troubling layers of this statement, and the group’s true attitude towards women – which closely parallels the…