Emboldened by ‘heroes’ and hate music, white extremists on the rise

PARIS: They may lack centralised organisation or even a common goal, but white supremacists encouraged by the exploits of extremist “heroes” canonised on social media pose an ever-growing security threat, analysts say.

After nine people in Germany were killed by a gunman with “a very deeply racist attitude,” the country´s interior minister on Friday warned that the far right still posed a “very high” security threat. The shootings on Wednesday at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau were the latest in a growing list of attacks in the West attributed to self-appointed defenders of a “white race” perceived to be under threat from migration, globalisation and Islam.

From Christchurch to Pittsburg, Halle to El Paso, militants have been emboldened by a narrative of hatred spread on the internet with an ease that observers find worrying. “This digital ecosystem is fuelling a cumulative momentum, which serves to lower ´thresholds´ to violence for those engaged in this space, both in the United States and elsewhere,” Graham Macklin, assistant professor at the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo, said in a recent article.

One attack “encourages and inspires another, creating a growing ´canon´ of ´saints´ and ´martyrs´ for others to emulate,” he wrote — noting that Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred 77 people in 2011, had become “an aspirational figure” for many. According to the Soufan Center, a global security think-tank, white supremacism has entered a phase of globalisation driven by niche websites popular among neo-Nazis, such as Gab and 8chan, and even the so-called “white power” music scene. “White supremacy extremists rely on a diverse set of techniques to radicalise potential recruits,” it said in a recent report, with attackers “lionised” on such platforms “as heroes, martyrs, ´saints,´ ´commanders´ and other honorifics. White extremists do not share a single, common goal — some seek self rule, others the expulsion of minorities — but all believe their “race” to be under threat.