Patrick Tucker
Technology Editor
Defense One
August 24, 2020
Right-wing American extremists and white supremacist groups are adopting the same ISIS-favored ways to attract and radicalize their members online, according to a new study.
Under Trump, extreme right-wing and white nationalist groups have grown and felt emboldened to emerge from their historic shadows into public fora. But online, in the past year their methods appear to have been borrowed, or at least mimic, how violent jihadists around the world recruit and reach their own members.
Different as these groups are, after a year of reviewing content posted across pages, forums, and inside the channels belonging to the groups, Babel Street found significant overlap between members and a common set of tactics, techniques, and procedures for sharing content and drawing members and potential members closer together within the group or subgroup. Many of these techniques were pioneered by ISIS, which began its recruitment surge by putting violent imagery online via conventional social media and, from there, creating smaller and more active groups and networks. As ISIS was increasingly pushed off of platforms like Facebook, they pushed group members to encrypted channels on apps like Telegram.
While the content that right-wing groups share is very different than ISIS content and much less likely to be obviously violent (more likely to be meme-based, especially in the case of the Boogaloo Bois) that process of reaching members via popular open sites and forums and then pushing them into smaller, more intimate digital groups comes from the ISIS playbook, said Tucker Holmes, a senior solutions specialist with Babel Street.
“They create these memes, spread them across social media, and then these memes lead people who are sharing them to find groups who are sharing similar content. From there, they might find another small outlet or group where people are more openly talking. They’re slowly pulled into the community, that way.”
That process of herding members from large groups to smaller ones achieves several things. Perhaps most importantly, it helps the group continue to survive as platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seek to block them.
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Bugs Marlowe