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in total I spent two years on the cover
in the range of different movements from
jihadist groups Isis hacking groups for
example of one she had as bribe groups
to conspiracy theory networks to
misogynist groups and also white
nationalists and neo-nazi groups where I
could really see a pattern across all of
these movements when joining them both
online and offline was that they use a
very strategically formulated script
almost of radicalizing new members so
usually it follows enough six stages
across the radicalization process so
that started with obviously with
recruiting new members then a huge part
of that radicalization process was not
really the ideological indoctrination
but really the socialization the
creation of of counter cultures of
almost of Ingram references in genocidal
jokes they almost create their own
language in each of those groups that I
joined networking we of course seen an
increasingly global community of people
from fringe communities on a local level
joining forces on a global scale to have
an influence on politics or plan
intimidation campaigns this leads to the
next stage they run very sophisticated
kind of slick communication campaigns
across the entire spectrum of online
platforms that we're seeing from the
bigger platforms to the more fringe they
also often then mobilized to real world
protests or to two bigger campaigns that
they've run online unfortunately we've
seen a range of also violent protests
happening in the last few years from the
Charlottesville rally which led to the
death of a counter protester and then in
the end there's unfortunately also often
in the last stage which is
attacks that can come either in the form
of hacking attacks again using online
tools and exploiting the vulnerabilities
that new technology have given rise to
or actually inspiring real-world attacks
and one of the first groups that I
joined and where the recruiting process
was actually quite interesting is the
white nationalist pan-european
generation identity that spreads
especially the conspiracy theory of the
great replacement they are a very young
movement so they are also very selected
with the recruitment it was interesting
that they had very standardized
procedures for everything of course with
all of these kind of online identities
that I built up there was a big question
around how do I create a credible
profile that also allows me to then
potentially join these movements and for
for this particular movement I knew that
they were setting up their UK and
Ireland branch in London and I wanted to
know what the next steps would be what
kind of campaigns they were planning to
do so I I reached out to them after
already having joined various online
groups having had conversations with
members purely online so then I also
meet them offline and I went through
several interviews and with their the
recruiters and their their leading
members from Austria and also the UK
branch and then they invited me to the
strategy meeting and what I found really
quite shocking was the degree of kind of
standardized branding that they had
adopted to all of their outlets across
Europe and how strategic they were about
tapping into into local grievances with
this Universal branding strategy highly
professional sometimes even using
marketing studies or even academic
studies on how to best communicate their
extreme ideologies to bigger audiences
but then also tapping into different
subcultures and tailor their
communication campaigns to really reach
out to new audiences and this was
something they talked about in the
strategy meeting were one of their most
influential figures in Europe Martin
Salah was also present he's the one in
the picture he even gave us a briefing
on how to essentially how to respond for
example to tricky questions from
journalists for example are you
anti-semitic or are you racist and also
how to run these slick online offline
campaigns another example of a group
that is very skillful in also running
really slick online campaign
and influencing even the political
discourse is the neonate trolling army
like acoustic harmonica it's a German
neo-nazi group on the gaming application
discord and it's only one out of many
they're also British trolling armies
they're pretty much trolling armies and
sometimes ideologically influenced
far-right or of other ideological
backgrounds groups that try to either
launch big harassment campaigns hate
campaigns against their political
enemies or launch political influence or
disinformation campaigns they at a
certain stage had 10,000 of members who
were coordinating in this closed gaming
checked application to then attack
political accounts on Twitter or to run
bigger campaigns to have hijack hashtags
for example they hold the whole process
of setting up a kind of structure that
would be appealing to new members who
might not even have an interest in the
political side of it but really by by
for example giving them incentive
structures they almost had a military
like system where you could be promoted
to a higher rank if you did a good job
in in carrying out for example a
campaign against against the politician
or against the journalists reported
critically about the far-right party in
Germany about the AFD and the whole goal
was to influence the political discourse
which they managed to do in the run-up
to the last German elections their
hashtags were in the top 10 Twitter
trends in Germany for two weeks and that
was quite telling of how much influence
they can have another and in case of
quite an organized kind of communication
campaign again with the goal of
intimidating journalists was one that I
faced myself when Tommy Robinson the
founder of the English Defence League
came to my previous office I was working
at Quilliam back then and had published
an article in The Guardian that
explicitly mentioned Tommy Robinson and
he then stormed the office and
live-streamed everything to me respect
then 300,000 followers on Twitter which
kicked off a big hate campaign against
me and the organization and if ventually
also that to me being dismissed by the
organisation so you can see
what kind of power individuals can have
over an entire organization and that was
quite yeah quite shocking as an
experience to see how much leverage they
can have
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