Alt-Right Social Media Woes

Modern conservatism has been pushing the American political agenda right of center since the Cold War, but in the last 13 years, there has been a group of far-right extremists building an ideological movement.

In 2008, shortly after the election of Democrat Barack Obama, far-right ideology began to spread throughout America. All it took was the election of the first African American candidate to launch the Alt-Right into the most talked-about, far-right extremist group since the height of the Ku Klux Klan.

For four years, the Alt-Rights’ presence was seemingly unknown to the majority of people in the United States. They were slowly gaining the trust of everyday conservatives, however, via the Tea Party and with the way they were able to appeal to those that felt oppressed due to the growing diversity in America.

Not until 2012 did Alt-Right groups entice major news publications to write pieces about their antics to further perpetuate a populist message. These stories shed light on these groups and allow them to draw the attention of white Americans who felt disenfranchised by the ever-growing diversity in American society.

When Donald Trump entered the primaries in 2015 as a Republican candidate for president, the Alt-Right and other extremist groups started garnering even more national attention. These extremists saw this as an opportunity to latch onto his campaign and spread their influence further than ever before. After his election in 2016, the populist and Alt-Right ideologies began to collide and persuade more conservatives into participating in right-wing extremism.

On August 11 and 12, 2017, Richard Spencer and a group of approximately 250 white nationalists, far-right extremists, banded together to hold a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. After clashing with counter-protesters, a member of the Unite the Right rally used his car as a battering ram and killed one of the counter-protesters, thus violently ending the rally.

Shortly after the crowds had dissipated, Trump was asked in a press conference to make comments on the events of that weekend.

“There were good people on both sides,” said Trump.

This is not the only instance of Trump refusing to condemn white supremacy.

Over the past four years, Americans have seen Trump use harmful rhetoric both on social media and in-person to provoke his camp to continue along the path of anti-immigration, white supremacy, and blatant racism. The Alt-Right has gained its base by circumventing a recruiting process and using Trump and his rhetoric to convince those that agree with his message to delve further into far-right ideology.

Dr. Robert Leonard is a freelance writer for the New York Times, TIME, and USA Today, and a local special news reporter in south-central Iowa.

“There are all these constant waves of little things that result in the butterfly effect,” Leonard said.

This explanation was in response to the use of the “China Virus” instead of COVID-19 or coronavirus.

“But it’s the same ripples again, and again,” Leonard said. “Each one of them may not be dangerous. But after a while, they’re cascading. That guy that shot all of the Asian women in Atlanta was influenced by this rhetoric.”

Harmful rhetoric has been normalized on conservative social media such as Parler, Gab, and Telegram. These apps and websites are used as safe spaces for far extremism to run rampant where anyone can share their radical, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and antisemitic takes without fear of other people telling them they are wrong, getting reporting, or being banned from the app.

Gab, for example, is a Twitter look-alike that is centered around free speech and has amassed users that subscribe to populist and far-right ideologies.

Tharpa Roberts is a user of Gab and self-ascribes to a populist, conservative ideology. He said that when he first joined the site a couple of years ago, he was met with “bonafide old fashioned racists and bonafide Nazis and other kinds of anti-semites there.”

Shortly after Roberts joined Gab, there was a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018. The person responsible for the attack was a verified Gab user by the name of Robert Gregory Bowers.

Pay-Pal and several other businesses stopped all affiliations with Gab and got the site removed from the cloud service provider Joyent as a result of the attack. Gab later returned after Epik allowed the site to return to the public.

Without a presence of opposition, these types of social media platforms provide a space for conservatives to let conspiracy and other harmful rhetoric run wild. The lack of diversity in opinions leads to the community fueling harmful rhetoric with no sense of accountability. This culture is only solidified considering the creators of these platforms are not in the public eye, such as Mark Zuckerburg with Facebook, and are not condemned for providing a space for this rhetoric to take place.

Parler is another free speech platform that has this same lack of accountability. During its early days of popularity, however, it was taken off both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. This aided Amazon in suspending Parler from using Amazon Web Services, much like the removal of Gab back in 2018. This censorship is important to distinguish from other harmful forms of censorship.

Censorship in itself is inherently wrong because, without the ability to exercise free speech, it allows governments and other hierarchical systems to do as they see fit without consequence. This can come in the form of banning free speech altogether and having government-sanctioned news media that report for the self-interests of the state. A more brutal approach to censorship is the murder, torture, and imprisonment of journalists and others that may leak information to the public or organizations that are able to intervene.

The censorship of Parler is different, however, since it was being used to incite violence and spread false information about the election. While this is happening on other sites, the endorsement of Trump made his followers flock to Parler and continue spreading violence and lies — virtually unchecked by the social media platform and its administration.

Parler’s removal struck conservatives as an attack on free speech from Amazon, Apple, and Google without realizing the hypocrisy in that argument considering Parler was used in organizing the attack on the Capitol earlier this year. When they removed Parler these companies did what was best for their reputation and to diminish the continuation of harmful rhetoric going unchecked on platforms provided by their services.

Nevertheless, Parler is still being used by many after the website opened back up, but the app owners have refused to open the platform to new users. Android users can sideload the app from a third-party app installer or the web and can access accounts made before the takedown.

Even without the support of large technology companies, Parler and other platforms are still able to foster a home for hate speech to continue without repercussions. The future policing of these apps is still up for contention, and with bigger issues to worry about, there is most likely no solution to come in the near future.