Kitabı oku: «The Radical Right During Crisis», sayfa 7
Germany’s Terrorist Attack: Migrant Communities Have Lost Trust
Barbara Manthe
The racist attack in Hanau on 19 February 2020 has left Germany with the question of whether the problem of radical right terrorism has been wrongly addressed so far. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June 2019 and the anti-Semitic attack in Halle in October the same year, the Hanau attack was the third fatal crime in just nine months. The series of attacks seems to be an expression of a radicalised right-wing terrorist milieu that inspires perpetrators like the attacker of Hanau to their deeds.
Some observations
The assaults were very targeted and aimed to hit a specific target or victim group: A politician known for his pro refugee policy, such as Lübcke, the planned attack at the synagogue in Halle, and against shisha bars in Hanau, which are publicly identified as immigrant places. These targets are highly symbolic and are directed against very specific population groups. Thus, in most cases, right-wing terrorist attacks are by no means directed “against everyone” or committed randomly, but correspond to the specific radical right logic of the perpetrators. In all three cases there is no doubt about the mindset of the suspected perpetrators, which was, among others: racist, nationalist, anti-Semitic or misogynist.
The perpetrators in Halle and Hanau were obviously inspired by attacks in other countries. The use of social media, the writing of a legitimizing manifesto, and the modus operandi—to commit the act by shooting the victims in public—has been a recurrent practice over the last ten years, for example in Breivik's murders in Norway in 2011 or the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.
However, there have also been acts of radical right terrorism in German history that have great similarities with the crime in Hanau: in June 1982, for example, the neo-Nazi Helmut Oxner entered a Nuremberg discotheque, which was known for that many African Americans and other immigrants were regular guests. He shot two African Americans in the disco and then another Egyptian in the street. Three other people were injured.1 Similar to the killings in the shisha bars, Oxner specifically sought out a place where he knew his victims were.
The media debates about the attack in Hanau are politically charged. Radical right hatred, violence and terrorism are often addressed by many journalists and the attack is identified as a political crime. The fact that this is worth mentioning is shown by a look at other crimes, such as the massacre on the Olympia Shopping Centre in Munich in July 2016, when an 18-year-old murdered nine people for racist motives.2 This radical right terrorist attack gave rise to years of struggle over whether or not it should be considered politically motivated.
The reactions of high-ranking politicians, on the other hand, leave no concrete indications as to how the challenge of radical right terrorism can be addressed in the long term. On the one hand, action should be taken more consistently about toxic migration debates as well as radical right agitation on the Internet, on the streets and in parliaments. On the other hand, the covert structures of militant neo-Nazis, where strategies of armed struggle are discussed and weapons are procured, also pose a serious problem.
Whenever radical right terrorism was very strong in the Federal Republic of Germany, such hidden structures existed, even if not every perpetrator had direct contact with them. But they are one of the biggest nurse cells for radical right terrorism. The ban of Combat 18 in January 2020, for example, came years too late according to many observers.3
The debate also includes disturbing statements by decision-makers, which are unlikely to strengthen the confidence of those concerned in state and political institutions. Sigmar Gabriel, former SPD federal chairman and former vice-chancellor, served a clear whataboutism when he tweeted a few hours after the Hanau attack:
The enemy of #Democracy stands on the right: It cannot be denied that left-wing chaotic people are beating up policemen, setting cars and garbage cans on fire and repeatedly causing high property damage. All bad enough and not to be trivialized. #hanau4
Even though Sigmar pointed out the danger of radical right violence in the following tweet, the dominant reference to damage to property by leftists was enormously irritating.
However, the attitude of Hans-Georg Maaßen, who was president of the domestic intelligence service from 2012 to 2018, appears particularly problematic. Recently he has positioned himself clearly on the far right; after the crime in Hanau he tweeted:
Socialist logic: perpetrators are always on the right, victims always on the left. You don't have to deal with Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ulbricht... because they were Nazis. The catch is, in this thinking, they are themselves right-wing. Antifa=Nazis.
Even if Maaßen claimed that the tweet was not related to Hanau, the timing of the tweet alone, its polarizing language, and its openly political statement is unsettling.5
The confidence of German first-, second-, or third-generation immigrants in state institutions fighting radical right violence has been lastingly disrupted since the discovery of the NSU in 2011, not least because in recent years radical right networks in the police, the armed forces and intelligence services have repeatedly been exposed.6
What is clearly lacking here is a transparent and in-depth examination of these structures and the disclosure and criminal prosecution of the people behind them. Even though there is a lot of attention on the attack in Hanau, the reactions of many politicians seem quite distant and detached. Real sadness and consternation were more likely to be felt during the solidarity rallies that took place throughout Germany after the attack. Above all, the Kurdish community mourned, because many of the victims were of Kurdish origin or descent.7
In many statements people say they are stunned, angry and afraid, but also there is a feeling of insecurity and loss of confidence in state protection: who will protect us from the right-wing terrorists is a much-expressed question. And this is actually the central and most urgent question to which politics, security authorities, and society do not provide an answer.
Dr Barbara Manthe was a Senior Fellow at CARR and is research associate in history at the University of Bielefeld.
1 “Lebende Zeitbomben,” Der Spiegel, no. 27 (1982): 32-5.
2 “Munich Mourns Victims of Mass Shooting at Olympia Mall,” Deutsche Welle, July 23, 2016, https://www.dw.com/en/munich-mourns-victims-of-mass-shooting-at-olympia-mall/a-19423341.
3 “Germany Bans Combat 18 as Police Raid Neo-Nazi Group,” BBC News, January 23, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51219274.
4 Sigmar Gabriel (@sigmargabriel), Twitter, February 20, 2020, 11:27 a.m., https://twiter.com/sigmargabriel/status/1230438894174375937?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet.
5 “Ärger über Maaßen-Tweet - Maaßen: Keine Reaktion auf Hanau,” Die Welt, February 20, 2020, https://www.welt.de/regionales/hessen/article206008585/Aerger-ueber-Maassen-Tweet-Maassen-Keine-Reaktion-auf-Hanau.html.
6 “Hannibals Schattennetzwerk,” https://taz.de/Schwerpunkt-Hannibals-Schattennetzwerk/!t5549502/.
7 Juri Auel, “Die Opfer des rechten Terrors,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung, February 21, 2020, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/hanau-opfer-1.4807089.
Far-Right Terrorism is Global, But Coverage is Not: Hindu Nationalist Violence in India
Eviane Leidig
February 2020 brought news of a tragic event in Germany with a right-wing terrorist attack in the city of Hanau. Much media coverage and scholarly commentary has been devoted towards focusing on the motives of the perpetrator and in particular, highlighting that the shooter uploaded a video onto YouTube shortly before the incident took place.
The role of social media in furthering online radicalization has been heavily documented in the wake of a number of horrific right-wing extremist attacks, notably with the livestreamed Christchurch and El Paso terror attacks, as well as the Bærum mosque and Halle synagogue shootings last year. From mainstream websites to fringe forums such as the Chansphere, the Internet has played a significant role in the dissemination and mobilisation of far-right extremism.
Yet, there exists a stark double standard when it comes to media representation of far-right terror attacks.
Hindu nationalist terrorism
In early February 2020, there was a far-right terrorist shooting1 at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University in New Delhi, India. The perpetrator broadcast the attack live on Facebook, shouting Hindu nationalist slogans whilst opening fire. Significantly, the perpetrator targeted a crowd that had gathered to the mark the seventy-second anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination. Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu nationalist who believed Gandhi to be too “secular” and accommodating to India’s Muslims. Gandhi’s murderer was additionally a member of the paramilitary Hindu nationalist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which advocates for an ethno-nationalist Hindu state.
Today, the governing party of India is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political arm of the RSS. Prior to the attack at JMI, BJP politicians have incited violence towards Muslims at public election rallies, with phrases such as ‘Shoot the traitors of India’. Some BJP politicians have taken even more extreme stances, for instance Yogi Adityanath, whom Amnesty International has described2 as espousing ‘hateful rhetoric that incites discrimination and hostility against minority groups, particularly Muslims’.
This should all be understood in context of the fact that the shooter had developed an extensive social media network, primarily through Facebook and WhatsApp groups, with Hindu nationalist organisations and individuals. Such actors have openly advocated for violence, including through popular YouTube vlogs, against Muslims and the political left, which they deem as “anti-national”. Indeed, shortly before carrying out the attack, the shooter posted a series of messages on Facebook, including mention of ‘Shaheen Bagh, game over’ (Shaheen Bagh refers to a Muslim-inhabited neighbourhood in Delhi that is home to a sit-in protest against the government’s new citizenship law, i.e. Citizenship Amendment Act). The shooter was clearly inspired by gaming terminology, of which several researchers have noted the connection3 between gamification and the nature of right-wing extremist attacks.
Hindu nationalists, like their far-right contemporaries in the West, have been early adopters of the Internet. As early as the 1990s, Hindu nationalist organisations extensively used websites and chat forums4 to spread their ideology and recruit followers—including those in the diaspora living in Western countries and employed within the tech industry. Today, the BJP and its network of affiliates oversee an army of keyboard warriors, called “Internet Hindus”5 or “Cyber Hindus”, who promote Hindu nationalist ideology whilst distributing Islamophobic content online.
This can have deadly offline effects, as the rise of cow vigilante violence—or Hindu nationalists that target persons, mostly Muslims, who are cow traders—has steadily increased since the BJP took office in 2014. Perpetrators of “cow protection” vigilantism extensively rely on WhatsApp6 to communicate and spread rumours, a tool that is highly effective for its end-to-end encryption technology. Unfortunately, efforts to combat misinformation on WhatsApp groups have failed since most Indian users have dated hardware that does not support software updates, such as limits on forwarded messages.
A double standard in far-right extremism
So why are such incidents as the one above not covered in international media to the same extent as far-right terror attacks in Europe and North America?
Primarily, it is largely unknown that there is a Hindu nationalist government in India, let alone that Hindu nationalism is a far-right ideology. Yet, Hindu nationalism has its ideological origins with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which makes it especially well suited in the far-right family. The contemporary Indian and European far right have found common ground in their shared ideological agenda7 steeped in xenophobia and Islamophobia.
Further, far-right violence is largely confined to India’s borders, and as such, it is predominately seen as a domestic issue. Unlike Islamist terrorism, for example, it is not prioritised as a national security concern to Western countries. Relatedly, India is considered an ally to Western countries, and this provides immunity from criticism. Prime Minister Modi—who had joined the RSS at the age of nine and quickly rose through the ranks to become the face of the BJP in the 2014 election—is internationally recognised for his selfies with Mark Zuckerberg, not as the politician who until recently, was banned from the US, UK, and several European countries for his administration’s complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots.8
Overall, we need to recognize that right-wing extremism is a global phenomenon and that such ideas and narratives do not operate in isolation, but rather compose of expansive transnational activity. Importantly, this means that we must broaden our definition of the far right to include cases in the Global South, or else risk the growing threat of the far right worldwide.
This post was originally published on the Global Network on Extremism & Technology Insights blog.
Dr Eviane Leidig is Head of Policy at CARR and postdoctoral affiliate at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo.
1 Soma Basu, “Jamia Millia Shooting: Making of a Hindutva Terrorist,” The Diplomat, February 3, 2020, https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/jamia-millia-shootout-making-of-a-hindutva-terrorist/.
2 Sarah Wildman, “India’s Prime Minister Just Selected an Anti-Muslim Firebrand to Lead Its Largest State,” Vox, March 20, 2017, https://www.vox.com/world/2017/3/20/14982146/modi-india-muslim-yogi-adityanath-incitement.
3 Linda Schlegel, “Points, Rankings & Raiding the Sorcerer’s Dungeon: Top-down and Bottom-up Gamification of Radicalisation and Extremist Violence,” Global Network on Extremism & Technology Insights, February 17, 2020, https://gnet-research.org/2020/02/17/points-rankings-raiding-the-sorcerers-dungeon-top-down-and-bottom-up-gamification-of-radicalization-and-extremist-violence/.
4 Ingrid Therwath, “Cyber-Hindutva: Hindu Nationalism, the Diaspora and the Web,” Social Science Information 51 no. 4 (2012): 551-77.
5 Sriram Mohan, “Locating the ‘Internet Hindu’ Political Speech and Performance in Indian Cyberspace,” Television & New Media 16, no. 4 (2015): 339-45.
6 Nadim Asrar, “In India, WhatsApp Stirs Up Deadly Rumours,” Al Jazeera, July 17, 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/7/17/in-india-whatsapp-stirs-up-deadly-rumours.
7 Eviane Leidig, “The Far-Right is Going Global,” Foreign Policy, January 21, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/21/india-kashmir-modi-eu-hindu-nationalists-rss-the-far-right-is-going-global/
8 “Timeline of the Riots in Modi’s Gujarat,” New York Times, August 19, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/world/asia/modi-gujarat-riots-timeline.html#/#time287_8514
In Germany, Anti-semitism on Social Media Can Be Linked to Offline Violence
Monika Hübscher
On 8 September 2020, the tenth day of the Halle trial, several Jewish survivors gave their remarkable testimonies of the horrific crime.1 The crime took place on 9 October 2019 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Stephan B. killed two people and injured many more in a terror attack targeting the Jewish community in Halle, Germany.2 Among the testimonies, one survivor pointed out German domestic intelligence and police’s inability to deal with social media and the gaming community that surrounded the attack.3
Stephan B., so it appears, had radicalized himself online and had published several files that included a live stream on Twitch, and on the imageboard Meguca shortly before his attack. The documents that he uploaded demonstrate a worldview of ‘extermination antisemitism’ (Vernichtungsantisemitismus) interconnected with misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and incitement. ‘Go in and kill everything’, he wrote in bold letters.
Even though Stephan B. is a native German, he spoke mostly English during the live stream. He also wrote his documents in English. This attests to his connections to global radical online communities and the alt-right, with a particular receptiveness to the gaming and manga community, rather than to traditional German right-wing extremist networks.
The global dissemination of hate by malicious actors with the help of social networks and its potential effects offline are issues that antisemitism scholars have begun to pay attention to, but research remains insufficient. Current examples from Germany show how urgently policymakers, practitioners, and other pertinent actors depend on such research to find appropriate restrictions and create mechanisms to combat antisemitism on networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
Already in 2008, Andre Oboler noted that, with the support of social media, antisemitism had reached a new quality.4 Today, antisemitism on social media can be found in all languages, is algorithm-driven, and can be weaponized in troll attacks or through social bots, for example. Indeed, antisemitic content can be disseminated on an unprecedented scale, cost-free, and in fun shapes like GIFs and memes or social media posts.
In his 2013 report, Oboler contrasts the different forms in which antisemitism appears on the platform with Facebook’s insufficient strategies to combat it.5 Recently, Facebook made headlines for having failed to take down profiles and groups of the radical right-wing conspiracy,6 QAnon,7 on which viral antisemitic content had been posted frequently for years. Still, relatively new platforms like the video-sharing social network TikTok also have rampant antisemitism issues.
A recent study by Gabriel Weiman and Natali Masri focuses on TikTok, whose main audience is children and youth.8 The study identifies how radical right-wing extremists use social platforms to disseminate and normalize their ideologies—including antisemitism, Holocaust denial, xenophobia, homophobia, and misogyny—on a large scale, specifically tailored towards youth.9
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has also become a conduit of antisemitic expression. Examples include memes that show the anti-Jewish “The Happy Merchant” as a virus; posts that refer to the coronavirus as the ‘Jew flu’; or QAnon’s conspiracy myth that Bill Gates is a Jew who secretly wants to implant microchips in people receiving a COVID-19 vaccination.
In Germany, the antisemitic content from social media platforms has informed the protests on the streets in which COVID-19 deniers and protestors against COVID-19 restrictions merged with right-wing extremists.10 The demonstrators not only walked towards the German Reichstag with Reichsbürger (Reich citizen) and Imperial flags, both symbols of the German radical right, but also trivialized the Holocaust by wearing the yellow star badge from the Nazi era, in protest against the restrictions. Connections to global right-wing extremist ideology such as QAnon was visible among the demonstrators in Berlin.
In Germany, antisemitism even on social media can be prosecuted as a hate crime. To avoid detection, whether by AI or content moderation, users employ simple techniques: instead of writing Rothschild or Rubinstein, names linked to the stereotype of the rich and powerful Jews, they just write “-schild” or “-stein”. The insinuation is subtle but still understandable.
Screenshot from Twitter by the author
Translation:
A: Whose bread I eat whose song I sing. These people get donations from companies. Or as is the Arabic proverb: Do not spit into the fountain from which you drink.
B: Thank you for this informative insight. Are they coincidentally donors whose names end with -schild or -stein?
Another form of transformation of antisemitism on social media is by its deplatforming. A study by Richard Rogers shows how social media networks are deplatforming malicious actors in their effort to combat hate speech.11 An infamous example of deplatforming is the former vegan chef and social media personality Attila Hildmann from Germany.
Hildmann used social media, such as Instagram and Facebook, extensively before being banned due to his increased radical right content. From social media, Hildmann has moved to the instant messenger Telegram, where he has over 84,000 followers. He frequently posts antisemitic content referencing QAnon. He also posted that the German chancellor Angela Merkel is the leader of a Zionist regime that aims to destroy the German race, that the Holocaust didn’t happen, and that Jews and Zionists are parasites and subhuman.12
Hildmann was also one of the main actors at the above mentioned demonstration in Berlin. He was arrested at the Russian embassy, where he asked Putin through loudspeakers to liberate the Germans from what he perceived as the current German dictatorship.13
These examples offer a glimpse into the issue of antisemitism at a time when digital communication seems to be exploding and social media has a particularly large influence on societal discourse. Since the emergence of social media, antisemitic incidents and radical right-wing actors using the platforms to advance their agendas have been a growing concern. Until now, scholarly attention to the problem has been surprisingly sparse, however. The danger that antisemitic hate speech poses and the numerous violent offline incidents that have been linked to antisemitic content on social media platforms beg for a comprehensive academic and political intervention.
Monika Hübscher is a Doctoral Fellow at CARR and doctoral candidate in German and European studies at Haifa University.
1 Ben Night, “German Synagogue Attacker Trial Reveals Police Failure,” Deutsche Welle, September 9, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/german-synagogue-attack-trial-reveals-police-failures/a-54870086.
2 “Germany: Halle Suspect Confesses to Yom Kippur Shooting,” Deutsche Welle, October 11, 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/germany-halle-suspect-confesses-to-yom-kippur-shooting/a-50791324.
3 Valentin Hacken (@valentinhacken_), Twitter, September 8, 2020, 11:36 a.m., https://twitter.com/valentinhacken_/status/1303266013551767553.
4 Andre Oboler, “Online Antisemitism 2.0. ‘Social Antisemitism’ on the ‘Social Web’,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs no. 67 (2008), https://jcpa.org/article/online-antisemitism-2-0-social-antisemitism-on-the-social-web/.
5 Andre Oboler, “Recognizing Hate Speech: Antisemitism on Facebook,” Andre Oboler, March 21, 2013, http://www.oboler.com/?p=1557.
6 Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin, “As QAnon Grew, Facebook and Twitter Missed Years of Warning Signs About the Conspiracy Theory’s Violent Nature,” The Washington Post, October 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/01/facebook-qanon-conspiracies-trump/.
7 Julia DeCook, “QAnon Has Gone from Fringe Conspiracy to Full-Blown Cult,” CARR Insight Blog, September 14, 2020, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2020/09/14/1-3-2/.
8 ILTV—Israel News, “Anti-Semitism on Social Media—Professor Gabi Weimann,” YouTube video, posted July 23, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kv91AgQWY.
9 Gabriel Weimann and Natalie Masri, “Research Note: Spreading Hate on TikTok,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020): 1-14.
10 Pascale Davies, “Germany Slams Attempt to Storm Reichstag After COVID-19 Protest,” Euronews, August 30, 2020, https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/29/thousands-of-anti-corona-protesters-flood-berlin.
11 Richard Rogers, “Deplatforming: Following Extreme Internet Celebrities to Telegram and Alternative Social Media,” European Journal of Communication 35, no. 3 (2020): 213–29.
12 Celia Jean, “Germany’s Antisemitism Czar Calls to Investigate German Celebrity Chef,” Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2020, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/germanys-antisemitism-czar-calls-to-investigate-german-celebrity-chef-636301.
13 Davies, “Germany Slams Attempt to Storm Reichstag after COVID-19 protest”.
