Social media companies such as Facebook must help tackle online radicalisation to combat the threat of far-right terrorism, a Home Office minister has said.

Security Minister James Brokenshire said the Government should work with tech firms to slow the spread of misinformation online with the upcoming Online Harms legislation aiming to put a duty of care into law.

He told an online RUSI event “twisted perversions of the truth” can take young people vulnerable to radicalisation down a “potential pathway to violence”.

He said: “Of course, investigations by the police and security services are central to their counterterrorism efforts, but a friend or relative or a colleague will often be best placed to spot some of these warning signs and vulnerabilities, at an early stage.

“We also expect social media companies to play a role in identifying and flagging both illegal glorification content, and the potential terrorist grooming of vulnerable individuals.

“That is why we are so concerned when companies like Facebook, take a unilateral decision to apply end-to-end encryption, in a way that wholly precludes any access to the content of users messages.

“These companies must continue to take responsibility in tackling illegal behaviour.

“And we remain committed to working with them to ensure we continue to protect the public, without compromising user privacy.

“And the threat from the far right provides further significance to the need to be vigilant to the ways in which the online space can be misused for radicalisation.”

Facebook has previously announced plans to fully encrypt communications in its Messenger app, as well as its Instagram Direct service, on top of WhatsApp, which is already encrypted, meaning no-one apart from the sender and recipient can read or modify messages.

The social network has said the changes are designed to improve user privacy on all of its platforms, but law enforcement agencies fear the move will have a devastating impact on their ability to target paedophiles and protect children online.

Mr Brokenshire’s speech on Thursday came as official figures revealed there were a total of 6,287 referrals to the Government’s Prevent anti-radicalisation programme between April 2019 and March 2020, up 10% from a record low of 5,737 the previous year.

He said, along with Prevent referrals, authorities must also look at “external factors… that we can and will influence to be able to challenge those false and fake news stories that some will use to justify some sort of narrative, or ideology”.

Earlier this month, the head of UK counter terrorism policing Neil Basu said right-wing extremism is the fastest growing threat, with younger people particularly vulnerable to the ideology.

Ten out of the 12 under-18s who were arrested for terrorism last year were linked to extreme right-wing beliefs, police figures show, with around 20% of all terrorism arrests in the year to June 30 2020 linked to the ideology.

Mr Basu said Islamist terrorism remains the greatest threat, accounting for up to 80% of his workload, while right-wing extremism has grown from 6% to 10% in the past few years

Read More: Younger teenagers being drawn in by right wing extremism

Far-right groups spread “fake news” on social media to mobilise their supporters for violent protests targeting migrants after the fatal stabbing of a German man, said officials in the eastern German state of Saxony where they took place.

German police have arrested a 22-year-old Syrian man and a 21-year-old Iraqi man over Sunday’s stabbing in the town of Chemnitz, which provoked two days of protests, including clashes between far-right and leftist demonstrators.

The stabbing and the protests have exposed deep divisions in German society over the influx of more than one million migrants, mostly Muslims fleeing Middle East conflicts, after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let them in.

On Tuesday Merkel repeated her condemnation of both the stabbing and the protests, saying scenes – depicted in amateur video clips – of migrants being chased through the streets were completely unacceptable in a state based on the rule of law.

Michael Kretschmer, the premier of Saxony and a close Merkel ally, vowed to deal firmly with extremists in his state, long a hotbed of support for far-right parties.

“We believe that at least some of the calls that were circulated online (to join the protests) were based on false information, on fake news,” he told a news conference in the state capital Dresden.

For example, a report circulated widely on social media that the 35-year-old man who was stabbed had been defending a woman from migrants, adding that there was no evidence to support the claim, Kretschmer said.

Local authorities were bracing for further demonstrations in Dresden and Chemnitz on Tuesday, and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said federal police stood ready to provide additional assistance if needed in Saxony.

HITLER SALUTES

Saxony’s interior minister, Roland Woeller, said the protests had drawn far-right supporters and anarchist groups from Berlin, nearby states of Brandenburg and Thuringia and as far away as North-Rhine Westphalia in northwestern Germany.

“We saw a significant mobilisation effect – that means that anarchists travelled from far beyond the region and state borders, especially right-wing violent actors … from the hooligan scene and from the football scene,” he told reporters.

At least five people are facing charges for performing the ‘Hitler salute’, which is banned in Germany, and a comprehensive investigation is continuing, police officials said.

They also said nearly 20 people had been injured in Monday’s demonstrations, where fireworks were thrown.

German security officials are monitoring the situation in close consultation with state officials at a special command centre for combating far-right activism in Cologne, security sources told Reuters.

Many far-right supporters in Chemnitz joined a small but growing party called “Third Way” after a Nazi-inspired group was banned about four years ago. The new party is also under observation by intelligence agencies, according to the latest report by the BfV domestic intelligence agency.

“The fact that we have a Syrian and an Iraqi suspect is no reason – no reason at all – for a general suspicion of all foreign residents,” said Kretschmer.

“We need a jolt in Germany and Saxony. We need broad public support to win this fight.”

We have previously written about Janusz Korwin-Mikke, someone who has previously stated that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust. His comments have previously targeted Jews, Muslims and Black communities.

Faith Matters highlighted his impending arrival in late May 2018, about a week before he arrived. Having informed the Home Office about his visit to speak in the UK, no action was taken and Korwin-Mikke was allowed in the country. According to this flyer, he is supposed to be speaking in London on Sunday the 8th of July.

Sharing a Platform

Korwin-Mikke spoke at the far-right ‘free speech’ rally in London on May 27th alongside Anne-Marie Waters,(ex-UKIP), and now with the ‘For Britain’ party. The speech was also highlighted by Independent anti-Islam councillor, Ryan MacPherson and was streamed through the ”Pro Great Britain’ Facebook page. Macpherson is a councillor in Ashford, Kent, and has previously called Islam ‘Earth’s most lethal killing machine’.

A day later after the event, MacPherson wrote:

“With Janusz Korwin-Mikke in London yesterday talking about democracy and why the United Kingdom desperately needs electoral reform in order to break the two-party state.”

Visible at the time of Mikke’s speech in May is a person flying a ‘Kekistan’ flag. The ‘Kekistan’ flag is modelled on the Nazi’s Reichskriegsflagge.

The question we therefore pose to the Home Office and the UK Border Agency is, will Korwin-Mikke be allowed in again?

For years, Faith Matters has been working to ensure that people and communities in our country, have a stake in their future and in decision making. We know full well, that disaffection and alienation are avenues by which extremists can manipulate young men and women in these vulnerable positions.

Both far right and Islamist extremists have been working for years to foment hatred and division in our communities. Yet, it is also clear that both have been feeding off each other and squeezing the middle ground of balanced opinion that is so much part of our country.

Take for example, the fact that the UK took in so many Islamist extremists who came from countries where torture and persecution were part of the norm, in places like Algeria, Libya and Syria. Whilst many fled because of persecution, by taking them into the UK, we effectively stored up problems for the future. Which leads to this question. Whilst we value the position of human rights, which is a fundamental part of the values of our country, did we truly believe that incoming Islamist extremists would be model citizens, given that many of them had bought into violent Jihad as a means of implementing their views? Did we think that they would stop their activities in the UK? Did we even consider that they would try and access Muslim communities in order to promote their sectarian, Jew-hatred and violent Jihad in our country? By allowing active Salafist Jihadists into our country, we let down the vast majority of British Muslims who were not part of this extremism and who wanted to simply practice and get on with their lives. 

We also let Islamist extremist proselytise and foment their hatred in Muslim communities and within time, their message and narrative overlaid any sense of attachment to the State within some sections of Muslim communities. It was a failed and disastrous policy that has led to social problems which many of us have had to tackle.

Muscular Liberalism

On the other side, the State has only started to use its ‘muscular liberalism’ against far right activists and groups. The Home Secretary has banned National Action and a handful of far right groups. Yet, the fact is that far right groups have splintered and are well organised and entrenched online. Their hatred of Muslims is spawning plots to harm Muslims and Muslim institutions and the State’s actions against these groups has been slow off the mark. This allied to the ‘anything goes’ attitude of social media companies, who held this position for years, meant that the hatred from far right groups consolidated the reciprocal hatred towards western values and society emanating from Islamist extremist groups. 

Faith Matters has been working to tackle both ends of the extremist spectrum for over a decade now. Yet, we cannot continue to push ahead if there is no real stomach by this and future governments who sit inactively whilst civil society groups are harassed, targeted and undermined in this battle against extremism. There comes a time when we must disengage and step out for the sake of our resources and frankly, our security. That time is coming close, unless this Government can clearly show that it is committed and has the stomach to push back in a concerted way against such groups. 

There is still a small window of hope. However, that hope is fading fast.

by Dr Matthew Feldman, on behalf of Faith Matters

This paper provides an overview of anti-Muslim ‘cultural racism’, which has arisen fervently this century – particularly amongst far-right activists and movements. Feldman attempts to map the way in which the far-right has converged upon anti-Muslim prejudice as a strategy for populist mobilization.

In this environment of demonising all Muslims in ‘the West’ as potential extremists, the far right are attempting to make a self-fulfilling prophecy out of the notion of a ‘clash of civilisations’. Yet as Feldman shows, this is hardly a recent idea; even if past usage of this term is far more nuanced than in recent times. In reality, Feldman argues, the only ‘clash’ is between extremists on both sides – in this case jihadi Islamists and far-right movements equally illiberal in their prescriptions for British society – which has contributed toward a ‘cumulative extremism’, whereby both sides are feed off each the extremism of other.

This short study then turns to a short case study on the way in which ‘Islamophobic’ discourse acts as a lowest-common denominator for the various far-right factions in Britain today. This is undertaken by recourse to a lecture delivered by Paul Weston, chairman of the British Freedom Party, in early 2012 yet circulated widely online in notably different far-right contexts. Weston’s rhetoric of impending civilizational war – shared across the spectrum of far-right activism – may be fairly dubbed crusading ‘Christianism’; that is, an inverse of jihadi ‘Islamism’. Despite their many differences, the scapegoating of entire societies by illiberal extremists by both Islamist and Christian extremists shares the notion of an unavoidable ‘clash of civilisations’ – revealed here as scare-mongering that should be rejected by all citizens of goodwill.