Social Networks for right-wing extremists?
Gross, Anna
Rafael, Simone
Sonderegger, Philipp
Huizing, Lennart
Right-wing extremism, islamophobia and populism is growing all over Europe. Right-wing extremists, racists and anti-Semites connect via social networks and blogs to build a Europe- and even worldwide network of anti-democratic hatred and of group focused emnity. This has not only effects in the virtual world, but ends brutally and deathly for real persons as in Norway 2011. What do the networks of right-wing extremists on the internet look like and what can we do against it? We discuss this on a panel with participants from Austria, the Netherlands and Germany.
 Hello again. Thank you for your introduction. I will make it short the start. Right wing extremism, right wing populism is not anything which is stick to national boundaries. We just recently saw how many votes Le Pen and Front National get in France. We had this terrorist group discovery here at the end of last year in Germany and we had mass killings of Braavik in Norway. We are entering now the stress zone. We are leaving the comfort zone of digital culture and we are entering the stress zone and partly it's also a war zone. I think as the mainstream left liberal culture also in the internet is not so aware as it should be probably of this phenomenon. What we are doing now in the first round I will also present you the speakers talk about the main characteristics of different approaches or actors of right wing populism and extremism in Europe. In the second round we will talk a little bit about counter tactics and strategies in civil societies in Europe. Then we open the floor for your questions and remarks. We start with Simone Raphael from Berlin. She will present us an overview about the situation of right wing extremism in the internet throughout Europe. Afterwards I will present the other speakers. Simone Raphael is an art historian and she is a journalist and she is very active in different websites dealing with right wing extremism in Germany. At the moment she is active for No Nazi Net and new website dealing with this phenomenon. Please Simone. Hello and I'm happy to see you all here. I have so many people in this room because we need a lot of people to work against right wing extremism on the internet and on the social media. I'm Simone Raphael. I'm here with my colleague Anna Gross. Together we make a project which is called No Nazi Net. You see this in the background. We both work for a foundation here in Germany in Berlin. The Amadeo Antonio Foundation who works for democratic culture and civil society. Offline but also online. That's what we are doing. That's why I'm here. I'm a journalist and I make a website which is called Nazi Net. This is a website which you can translate as network against Nazis where we just report what right wing extremists do in Germany and how they watch strategies they use to get in contact with people. And as we saw that they are very active on the internet and also in the social media we decided to make a special project on this theme. And this is quite shortly said the project No Nazi Net which works with young people from 13 to 19 for a democratic culture in the social networks. And as you see we try some different kind of information than just text. So we for example do some videos here. Try to reach young people through that. But the main work this is the block. You can all have a look at the block but the main work is in different social networks where we have groups and discuss with young people who come to us and want to discuss with discuss with us. These are of course democratic young people but also this one. So this is from a forum of Nazi Nazis. Here someone said 88 H H. These are both codes of the right wing extremist scene for Heil Hitler or example the and I don't know if you can read this. The second one says seek high white power. So we really easy get into contact with right wing extremist opinions and so we thought we can work about this. But beforehand we have to be monitor the scene and this is what we do in our project to we get in contact with persons like this one here. Nobody of you will surely get in contact if you don't want to with him because he's very explicit. His name is already a reference to the bear mark of the National Socialists. He says he works in a concentration camp and went to the Gestapo University. So this one is very explicit and is only directed at the scene of course. But what we deal more with are the more subtle ways how they try to address people. This one is of autonomous nationalists. This is a very young and brutal group of neo-Nazis in Germany. As you see they adopt another style. They adopt something which is more dealing or appealing on young people who are not yet right wing extremist. It's more left seemingly left optic and says autonome and militant national socialism now. So this is where you see that they are right wing and left wing. And if you look at the T-shirt but Simpson is wearing here fuck off Israel. So anti-Semite parole presented in a very youth cultural way. The same is something like that for example. Nice animals. Seems to be humor but of course has if right wing extremist uses to contact people in another dimension. What we deal with in Germany too is with the German right wing extremist party the NPD which is very very active in the social networks. As you see here is a Facebook page. They have very very technically very very organized and good people who do this website. So they're very professional. They use everything they can to connect with other people. And as you see they are also quite liked on Facebook. For example they have 21,000 likes. And to show how professional they are I brought another website with me. At the moment you have a discussion in Germany that if the NPD should be prohibited or not. And for example on this scene the NPD itself made this site on Facebook to say no you can't prohibit us. You just don't have any arguments but we feel we are you don't like us but we are legal and we are the honest party. So they really use everything they can to spread their opinions. What we also deal with is the fact that right wing extremists use themes and campaigns which are not usually connected to right wing extremism to spread their ideology. This is only one example what they're doing which is very successful at the moment. So right wing extremists pretend to be interested in the protection and the engagement against child abuse. And these are really very very successful groups because a lot of people at the first time do not see who is doing this. But the right wing extremists use these groups to promote NPD texts for example or right wing music to attract people to their ideology. And what they really mean if they say we are against child abuse is this. They mean kill all the people who did this and promote the death penalty again in Germany. So it's anti-democratic and very right wing extremist position. But today we're not here to talk about only Germany but Europe and if the right wing extremists and populists are also connected throughout Europe. And so I had a look also again at the social networks what I find there. Of course you don't only find the NPD. You find every big right wing extremist party from us in the iPhone France for example the British National Party. Also your big party from Hungary as you see there are there. Flams Belong from Belgium also got builders and the people from the Netherlands. What I really saw is they do things together in the real world but on the online world these parties are not really connected yet. What I found for example this is a German very small party. They are also more populist and as you see here they at least try to connect with. The Strache from Austria here or for example this is a Portuguese right wing extremist party and they are connected with some other ones too. So with National Democratic this is from Sweden or with Jovic again from Hungary British National Party from National so they try to make a network. But this is only likes as you see. So this is not very practical. Is there also practical side? Yes. So here what you find much more is from the younger activists as I said beforehand the autonomist nationalists. They are very international intended group. As you see for example here this is a block of an autonomist nationalists from Germany and I took this not only because they are promoting here an event in Italy. They also have a long list of other autonomist nationalist groups they are connected with and this is really not only over Europe but throughout the world. It goes to Australia. So you might say okay this are only links perhaps this are even dead links are they really existing. They are I have just chose some examples to show you that the style also is the same. So this is really a connected group of right wing extremists. From Italy for example this one is from the Netherlands. This is always the autonomist nationalists the young very very violent and brutal persons who are doing this. This is from Greece. This is from Poland for example you always see the same look it's always a very youth cultural one. This one is really really cool from the Czech Republic. And this is from the Ukraine. These are all some examples from the block I thought I showed you. But they don't only make links and connect through the Internet. You can see here this is also on the on the block in Germany. The report of a demonstration where they met in Lille in France and came together to demonstrate. So they are not only connecting and sharing the dates or something they really go there and connect with each other. And this is another example what I found quite interesting. This is a German block also but you have here. It's a right an advertisement or place for an advertisement which is in Spanish. So we think OK what's that. This really is a Spanish right wing extremist side who is who is searching support for a right wing extremist in Spain who is has been arrested because he violated another person. And so this is a German speaking supporter side. So they are really really seeking support from right wing extremists in Germany. Not only this right wing extremist connects with the Internet. Of course there's also a very big community of Islamophobic people who really use the Internet to connect. You surely know in Germany for the PI news for example and the blocks who are connected with this. So I thought I don't bring you this. You know this already. I thought I bring you this one. It's a European Defense League which is also very active in the social networks and in blocks. They try to defend Europe from from Islam. And as you see a little bit in this picture this is also members of all all countries of Europe. This is a symbol they like to use. They see themselves as crusaders against the Islam. And what is interesting is they are also using social media to connect. So this is a German defense league who made there an advertisement for a meeting in Argus in Denmark. You find similar ones for example here with the Guard Wider supporters in the Netherlands. And on the German block again of the German defense league you have then later on report how they met in Argus and how they were drinking together. And on the next day what Islamophobic demonstrations they did. And why are we talking about this? We are talking about this because it's not only a connection on the Internet where people are collecting radical and extreme extremism. And hateful thoughts. It really has a consequence and a very bitter one. You surely all realized the last year when Anders Berenbryvek in Norway shot 77 people. He collected beforehand a manifesto of 1300 and I don't know sites from very different blocks in the Internet of Islamophobes. And the like made videos which he posted on YouTube and really used all kinds of social media and web 2.0 possibilities to connect with other ones. And collect their thoughts to have his own ideas which he thought would give him the right to go and kill people. And this is what we always have to keep in mind because it's not only that someone is writing all the stuff on the Internet. But it has real consequences for real people. So one theme which we're close now is what can we do if you see all this? We work on this theme for quite a time now. So we have the feeling that there are different strategies who should be working together. Because you often deal not with things who have a problem with the laws or something like that. If things are forbidden in a country, the social networks usually react and it's no problem dealing with that. But we really deal with things who are not forbidden and who are not that explicit but none the less are very important to work with. So we try to connect and work with the social network companies to strengthen their policies on democratic values and responsibility for the society. Because we often talk about themes who are not clearly a threat or something like that but it's disguised in other words or something like that. And what is more important is we try to find a lot of people who have fun developing smart ideas for pro-democratic anti-racist campaigns or site or online actions. There are a lot of examples still existing fortunately but we could need some more. And what is perhaps the most important theme is that we are all users on the social networks and so we all can be active, we can be aware. And interfere if you see right wing extremist content or comments and we can make others aware of this too. And this would be our wish for all of us here to think about how this will be made in the best way. And so we all have to fight for the human rights and democratic values because it's not granted only because the internet is a medium where everyone can write something. As we see the other ones, the right wing extremist uses too. And so this is where I close this short introduction and we come to the round. Thank you very much. So what we saw is the great variety of right wing populism towards right wing terrorism. And what we also can see that the configuration of this extremism or populism is quite different throughout Europe. So one thing is if you are dealing with this field that you have to be prepared to be surprised and it's not always a lucky surprise, it's more unlucky probably. And therefore I would like to, a strange sound, introduce you to Leonard Housing from Amsterdam. He is a political scientist and advisor in digital policies. He is also a very active blogger and he was dealing with the right wing populism in the Netherlands which is quite different from other populism, political populisms in Europe. And probably you can give us some insights, some general insights, but also about the tactics in the internet. Thank you. Well, the Netherlands used to be a very tolerant country. We were known throughout Europe of course as a very liberal, tolerant country where you could smoke dope and do things that you couldn't do anywhere else. And very tolerant to the gay as well and things like that. I guess that was really deep rooted in Dutch society and it needed something very profound, something needed to happen for that to change. And I guess it came in three steps. First you had the 9-11 attacks in America that were of course a shock for everybody in the whole world. And then half a year later we had the assassination of Pimfertaun and 18 months later we had another political assassination. So we were talking about right wing extremist violence before. And in the Netherlands you could really point to the traumas that were caused by violence against right wing extremists. So that is quite a different place to start from. And in the Netherlands right now you have these fringe groups, these really neo-Nazi guys that like to wear their Hitler moustaches and have their hairs come to the sides. Those are really fringe groups. They are there and they are potentially pretty dangerous but they are quite small and not very well organized. And then you have Geert Wilders. And Geert Wilders is not a Nazi. I even would hesitate to call him a right wing extremist. And there are two things that definitely set him apart from Nazis. First of all he loves Israel, which is atypical for a Nazi I suppose. And also he loves, he will defend the gaze. His main point of course is he is against Islam, which is certainly fueled by the fact that he visited Israel and its youth and became a very staunch advocate. He also has Israeli flags waving in his offices and things like that. So quite a different person, quite a different movement, he came of course, he was already in parliament before he radicalized after the murder of Theo van Gogh. And it's really not a movement what he is. It's very unclear what he is, but I don't know if many people know that here in Germany. But Geert Wilders has a party and his party has members. Actually he has one member, he is the member. So there is no movement, there is no organization. And this is I think typical of his followers. They're not organized at all. They're a mob in a way. And you can see that very well on a number of right wing blogs or conservative blogs or even nationalistic blogs. Where you will see a lot of people reacting furiously on anything that is even tainted by a sort of a left wing message. And I think that is on the internet the thing that is most interesting that has happened is that really the discourse has changed. And where politically correct used to be left wing, politically correct in Netherlands, starting to become right wing statements. And if you say anything that is even slightly left wing, like if it's slightly pro non-discrimination or positive discrimination, you will be slammed and you will get a lot of reactions. And that includes threats, that threats to politicians a lot and things like that. Could you probably also touch a little bit on the shift? I don't know if it's a shift from anti-Islam as a topic towards the anti-EU as a topic. Is it a shift or is it just in complementation? I think it's probably, I mean he's not going to go. I think Gidwilders is very much the populist. He'll say what he knows is politically savvy to say. And he'll go for the statements that will make his party the biggest. Having said that, he has one passion and that's anti-Islamism or pro-Israelism, if you can say that, which amounts to the same thing I think from his perspective to quite a large degree. So his shift towards anti-EU and more nationalistic agenda, I think if it is a fundamental shift, it is mostly based on electoral considerations because he sees that the whole immigration discussion is becoming less interesting for the Dutch electorate. Probably one last question in this first round to you. You say Gidwilders is just one person party but he gains a lot of votes. And so who are the followers also in the net? Can you observe it and are there scenery behind that or movements probably also? I don't think that it's easy to point to any movements. It's really the group of people that became, that was very interested in Pimphrottin and became homeless, if you will, politically after the assassination of Pimphrottin. And that has been searching ever since and you see them moving. And it's always about 27 seats in the Dutch parliament which always has 550 seats. And they first, they all voted, that group voted for the Pimphrottin party. That was leaderless and completely fell apart within a couple of months. Then they moved to the woman called Rita Verdonk for a large part but she didn't really materialise in the elections and then Gidwilders came and he got the electorate. And now it seems that these people are moving away again after the recent fall of the government that Gidwilders was supporting and it seems that a large part of his electorate is going to the socialist party now. Which is the most left-wing extreme party, if it's extreme. That's a bit of a harsh word I suppose. Okay, thanks a lot. We are now shifting from a country where the right-wing populism is still on the rise or is still in a quite active part to a country in Austria where this movement has shaped the European consciousness and awareness some years ago with the Freie FPÖ and Haider. Philipp Sonderger is from Vienna. He is a human rights activist and political adviser and he is working about this issue. So please give us some insights about the situation, the current situation, but also maybe the general tradition about it and what is going on also in the internet with the right-wing populists and right extremists. Thank you. At first I want to lose a few words on the concept of extremism because in Austria we have a different usage of this concept than in Germany. In Germany you normally have the idea of a spectrum from left to right. In the middle is the center and extremism is that what happens on the left edge and on the right edge and danger comes from these edges and the center has to defend. This concept is criticized and maybe we can talk about it later. In Austria you have different concepts that dominate the discussion. The first is based on the usage of the police. We have a Verfassungsschutz in Austria that only works on police laws and it only acts against criminal offenders that are politically motivated. They do not look for dangers that are non-criminal offenders. This is the main understanding of right-wing extremism or left-wing extremism in Austria. You have another usage. This is the scientific idea of right-wing extremism and there is a concept by a guy called Willibald Holzer. He is working for the Documentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes and he did a concept of right-wing extremism that focuses on ideological criteria like racial, glamour-folkish thinking or being violence-prone, and so on. If you talk about right-wing extremism or populism, you have to have in mind that the usage of the concept is slightly different to Germany. If you look at right-wing extremists in Austria, you could talk about three phenomena. One is right-wing extremist or neo-Nazi groups that operate outside the law, that do things that are prohibited by revisionism and incitement I think is the English translation for Verhetzung. Is that true? Yeah. So they do like producing stickers and putting them to the walls, but also taking part in paramilitary manoeuvres. One famous leader of them is standing on trial in two weeks. His name is Gottfried Küssel. These groups are mainly reached with jurisdictional means. Gottfried Küssel is a very known person because he was prosecuted 10 years ago. He's, by his own words, a national socialist, and he was also sent to jail for 10 years because he wanted to re-establish national socialism. And he did paramilitary manoeuvres in the 90s. Wer hat sich Drache took part? So the opposition leader, I will refer to him in one minute, has connection to these very militant groups. The second phenomenon is a smaller group, right-wing groups, right-wing extremism groups with connections to neo-Nazi groups that try to operate inside the law. There are small parties that try to stay inside the law and use the internet, mainly social media, to gain support with very catchy topics like anti-Islamic campaigns. This is their main strategy. I forgot to say the main strategy of the groups outside the law is to make neo-Nazi propaganda and reporting their own activities. And the third group you have is the mainstream party, FBE. They are, you would say, right-wing populists with right-wing extremist edges. Some call it right-wing extremists because of the scientific concept. And this group is very strong in social media. Hatzisch Drache's website on Facebook has 114,000 supporters. You have seen the other groups before, they had about 20, 40, whatever, a thousand. The Chancellor in Austria, his name is Werner Feinmann. He has 2,500 fans. And the guy, the Vice Chancellor, has 400. So you can measure how much support they get with their policy in this particular group of society. Thanks. Thank you, Philipp. Now Anna Gross from Berlin. She is quite active in the neo-Nazi net. She is a linguist and a cultural scientist and engaged in civic education and empowerment strategies. Please give us your concrete insights about the situation in Germany, especially in the Internet and Web 2.0. Exactly. Since we are here at Republica, now it's my turn to bring us back to the Internet. Well, the Internet, the connection of red-wing extremists on the Internet, as you've seen Europe-wide, you could say, well, it seems to be an Internet phenomenon. Maybe it's on the Internet. What is going on in the offline world maybe doesn't matter. But it does matter in a really, really big scale. And that's why we need to talk about this and we need to talk about it here. And if you go out here from here today, please talk about it with everyone else, you know, who works online and offline, because the democratic culture doesn't stop when you turn on your computer. This is where it's really important. And we all need to still work on the fact, and we all will always have to work on the fact that democratic culture needs to be practiced and practiced and practiced every day. So what does that mean concretely for people with red-wing extremism in Germany? Well, red-wing extremists, for example, put up addresses of people who are against Nazis, whether they are working in unions, whether they are working in the so-called antifa, or whether they're just some regular people who have been seen on demonstrations. Their addresses, their phone numbers, their websites, their photos, their videos, and everything is put up online. And it's very difficult to take it down because most of the time it's on international servers. And then the result of that is people get visited. They get, their buildings get tagged, saying something like, kill communists, or people get attacked on the street because they're recognized by their Facebook pictures. So if you work online against red-wing extremism, one advice on the side now, please don't use your regular name, because it might be, and don't use your clear pictures, because it might be dangerous in the end, in the offline world that's on the side. So that's one thing where it gets really, really dangerous, and it's often, like I said, difficult to take down these websites. That's one thing. On the other side, which is even more important, as we talk about social media today and social networks, if you see mobbing in commons, for example, if you see that people get attacked in commons by racists, by a red-wing extremist or something, and in a topic that doesn't have anything to do with red-wing extremism, let's say they talk about how to save the environment, and very often use topic, or the topic of child abuse, or other topics that doesn't seem to have anything to do with red-wing extremism, or politics in general, people get attacked by them, verbally, aggressively attacked, and sometimes, and unfortunately, it happens more often than you even can think of, it happens in the offline world, and that's where the real dangers are. Could you please also give us, maybe, saw some slides from Alzimone before, but what are issues, topics, but also maybe some, some, you know, surfaces, which they are using music and fashion or whatever. You know, it's, I think, when I first deal with this issue after a long time, I was quite surprised how it, the red-wing extremism is reshaped, also in their surface, in their cultural surface, in their fashion and in their attitude, and probably you can give us some insights how to discover it. I mean, in the first glance, you won't see it, probably, as an un-experienced user. That's very true. Most of the time, they come as sort of underground. One of the things is that red-wing extremists have known, have learned the Internet, as all of us have, unfortunately. They are technically very advanced. They are very advanced in knowing how to design graphics, how to produce videos that look impressive. They really know how to react to Facebook, for example, as we've seen the National Party of Germany, for example. The spokesperson of that party has his own Internet company, so he knows how to produce a video that looks impressive and that catches people. One of the real dangers online that makes it so fashionable lately is that the Nazi is only two clicks away from all of you. It's actually your neighbor. For example, the youngsters in the red-wing scene, they also, as they've changed their clothing, I mean, this typical, you see the Nazi by the skinhead and the shoes, has never really been as it is, because most of the Nazis have it in their mind and not in their approach. But the same is online, as we've just seen. They use Bart Simpson and they use other pop culture topics or fashion, for example, they all like to wear typical, maybe if you want to call it, American fashion of hoodies or sneakers or things like that. So it's very difficult to differentiate that and to see the coats. So you should always take a closer look at what, when you see a video that tells you something about the so-called truth no one ever speaks about. It might be a so-called truther who is trying to promote his ideas. There is a whole movement behind that on the social media, on the social networks, who use the technique of very highly technical, improved video taping to impress people. Because you can only watch it for like a minute or two. A few facts are only mentioned, but a lot of youngsters especially catch up on that. So what we are seeing now quite briefly is that this is not just an argumentative, a rational discourse about some topics. So it's more a cultural fight for, or a fight for cultural hegemony to use Kramshi. So in the second round, we can share some examples of counter tactics and approaches, you started it already. You have some examples from the Dutch experience, how the civil society, the state or whatever, is acting in the net against this right wing populist or right wing extremist. What is your observation? Is this a case? I think I have a bit of a sad answer to that, that civil society has not managed to do much in the Netherlands. And I think that is because if you only... Well, the old reaction, before 9-11 there was a right wing party, very even more extremist than... Much more extremist actually than Gerd Wilders has ever been. That was represented in parliament. And the reaction to this was to try to silence it and try to make it go away and try to make it irrelevant and keep it fringe. And that has certainly not worked. I think that what we have seen is very much an eruption of the fact that... Of suppressed ideologies that have been present in society and that have not been able to find a way out and that have materialized in Pimfertein at first. And when Pimfertein was murdered, the first thing that people started saying, and especially after Teo van Gogh was murdered actually, the things that people said to each other, apparently we cannot say what we think in this country. Apparently we do not have freedom of expression. And this has become really the one thing that Gerd Wilders has capitalized upon, that he has a right to say whatever he thinks and that has come to include any insult that comes out of his mouth, which happens frequently. Because he is very good at insulting people. So I think that we have not really managed to find an answer, apart from one answer that might have my proof to be very effective, which is to make him responsible for government. Whereas in Denmark this has completely failed, the economic crisis has come to our aid and he had to face the situation where he would have to take responsibility for large cuts in people's pensions, in people's whatever, kinds of incomes that government benefits they were receiving. And since the people that vote for him are mostly poorly educated and many unemployed among his voters and a lot of elderly, those people tend to lose a lot in an economic crisis, and especially by the right-wing government's ideas about how to solve the crisis through austerity. And I think that's where he panicked and had to face, he couldn't face the cutbacks. And now he's lost credibility among his electorate. That's interesting. But that's really the only thing that we have found to deal with this group, because one after the other, new people came and new leaders have been found and this group has not died away, it has not gone, managed to contain it. Maybe one more observation is also the structural ignorance within the fields of social media, cultures, probably. So you are in your friend's circle, so for me the question is, you observed a little bit Hans-Ymone, the European examples, and you showed some of it, and could you probably give us some insights, what are typical successful counter strategies, counter tactics towards that and overcome probably the ignorance of the different cultures, political cultures also. Have you some successful examples, because the first round was in parts quite scary, how successful this kind of political culture and extremism can be. This is Mikro? Yeah, it's working. What really must be said, I work on the scene on the internet for quite a time now, I think since ten years approximately, and the first thing we always did was setting on information and saying the person needs more information, they are not really knowing what they are doing, and as I said, I make a website, you write some beautiful texts with a lot of explanations, what is the problem about campaigns or anything, and you reach some people through that kind of work, but you don't reach all the people and perhaps not always the important ones. For example, we have a forum also where people can ask questions and we see we reach people who get in contact with right wing extremism because their parents and their children get in contact with the right wing extremist scene, or there are in sports or football clubs and have trainers who have contacts with the right wing scene and ask how to deal with it, so we can reach such persons over information, but what we also wanted to, the persons we also want to reach are young people, people who are for example not very highly educated because they are really also very open for prejudices or something like that, and our experience is that you need a lot of different forms and this is also why we are here and are talking to you because perhaps you are the ones who can make great videos, great graphics or something like that, and we try to do this too of course, to also reach the message to persons who do not like to read long texts, but that is very important to be aware that they are right wing extremists who are threatening democratic societies, and the good thing is when we started we felt quite alone with doing this and until now I must say this is a great development, there are a lot of individual activists but also groups who are doing constantly more things on the internet and in the social media and I am happy about everyone who is with us at this theme because for example if you use humor which is always working very well to deal with the themes, we are working for a foundation, we have to do some serious things of course and can't do everything, I am very happy if some other private activists do also things which are not always very politically correct or something like that, what we can't do, and there are a lot of examples of persons or groups who are doing very humorous and nice things and they are really also, if you have a nice video or something that recommended of course and shared and this is the best way to spread the news. So Philip, the Austrians are known at least in Germany for their humor as well. They really are. Some, yes, I think so, yeah. So, I mean the serious question is, are there successful tactics or examples that you can deal with this thriving populism in Austria for instance? I'd say we are ten years ahead but we are not successful yet but we have learned a lot. One thing we have learned is you cannot overcome right-wing extremism or populism in only fighting right-wing extremism and right-wing populism. This is the criticism on the concept I was referring to before, that the concept of the problem is on the right edge and on the left edge does not see the dangers that come from the center of society. It doesn't see the portion, it doesn't see racist concepts from the center, not to mention extremist financial products that endanger our social cohesion. So we have to also get into confrontation with the center of our society and we have to identify the problems by their political and by their ideological programs because the codes can change. The dangerous programs can come into different uniforms. They can come into Nazi uniforms, they can come into Bart Simpson hoodies and they can come also in suits and ties. So you have to identify the danger by the ideological substance. That's the main thing we learned in Austria the last ten years. Thank you. If you have some questions, remarks, we have a mic here there in the back. Does anybody want to ask something? What I'm really angry about is that we have, is that chasing of an enemy that is legal. It's really just that enemy but it's legal. We are living in a democratic world and the real problem are the people that are accepting that bullshit. It's not just the Nazis in themselves. I accept that they are idiots but I'm also really afraid about the people that are believing all that bullshit. So all the sensibilization is not chasing just an enemy but also talking to the people and the fact that people have to learn not to listen to such bullshit. Okay, this was more of a statement. Does anybody also have a question? At the moment? You can also ask later. Or any other statement? Maybe it's rather a stupid question but if I'm now want to be an activist and to start doing research on the net, I always would think, okay, now I'm researching on right wing extremism but who prevents me from the Faschungschutz who thinks that now I am a right wing extremist. So can I open every website without having to prove that I'm not a Nazi? Until now I must say yes, you can. I do this for a lot of years now and I was never really officially asked by the Faschungschutz what I'm doing there. Now it's really at the moment if you're doing research, for example, I want to have a look on the internet on right wing extremism, especially in social media, especially in international social media, as Facebook or YouTube, it's very easy to get in contact with it. You don't have to use a very popular code or something like that or a popular right wing extremist band, you will find in every social network a lot of entries and comments and things like that. So it's easy to have a look at it. So this is also a problem of course because everyone can get this easy in contact with this right wing extremist contents. But it's interesting if you like to engage again this to have a look what they are doing, of course, because we also do this as we said, because so then we know which are themes we have to work with. For example, we said we work with young people and for example the truces which were mentioned by my colleague, they really have anti-Semite thesis and something like that and they really confuse people who address and ask for example and say I do not want to believe it but this is a video, they are so convincing and how can I argue that this is not really true. So these are really difficult topics and you really can deal with this I think with argumentations and things like that. So it's also important to have a look at it. First of all that and then I would like to add also once you found the sites don't forget to report them because as soon as they reported, of course, it takes a while to take it down. We just learned that Facebook for example only has six people in Dublin to delete everything that is on German content of everything from pornography to right wing extremism and so of course it takes weeks for them to take down right wing extremist stuff. Unfortunately yet we are trying to still work with Facebook to talk about that topic but like I said report the sites, the more people report, the quicker they get taken down, the quicker the problem gets at least limited. I feel a little bit split about having whatever political propaganda on the web because of course on one side I think I don't want to see it there, I don't want people to be able to spread there in my opinion bullshit or whatever boring stuff, don't want to sound naive on the same time but at the same time I'm also quite glad to be able to recognize what they're doing, how many there are and I in that sense would want them to tell me more about them because I'd like to know what they're doing, where they show up, what people are behind it so I once stumbled about that web page from I think it was NPD, whatever Berlin Treptro, I don't know and I saw that on their website they had that area for their dates, for their activities and that was empty and I was really tempted to write them to like please fill up their dates and care for their website so that I'm able to be informed about their activities. I can comment this, I surely understand this because I'm also very interested in what they're doing of course but I think it's a difference where they're doing it. So I think it might be a thing we have to deal with in the democratic society that they have their own networks, that they have their own blogs or something like that but the question is do they have to connect in spaces where mostly non-rightwing extremist people are meeting and where they try to get into a connection and I think this is a quite important difference because I think it is a democratic value and something also companies can do that they don't spend their own space for those opinions. I'm a bit, from the Dutch perspective I think that it's also there is a danger in just removing things and trying to influence the debate from that side. I think we've lost the language in the Netherlands, the moral right if you will where we continue to be bashing right-wing extremist speech now we find ourselves in a position where we cannot do that anymore. We have lost the initiative on that and that is I think is very worrying and so I think that it's mostly not a good idea to just target the symptoms you have to dig deeper than that. I'd say it depends on how big the thing is. If it's very small it's good tactics to have an eye on it but if it's getting bigger you have to do something against it because if you have small publicity for some ideological programs then it will spread and it will find people who think this is a normal ideological program they can support however. If it's getting on a certain level and this is a tactical question not a principal question you should get rid of it from public space. I think of the FBE being a 7% party in Austria 15 years ago and today it's between 20 or 30. We will not have national socialism if they get into government again but they are really able to do very bad things there. I have a question on the intervention of third nations into these debates both in logistic and organizational support because for instance parts of the Islamophobic movement in Europe were partly supported by the public diplomacy program of the State Department or you have now, right now, this RT, the kind of Deutsche Welle of Russia supporting all these fringe groups with their social media and they are getting a lot of clicks for these extremist contents so how do you view the intervention of governmental actors for whatever agenda into building up these groups, supporting these groups, giving a larger audience to them and helping to professionalize these services? I have no idea. I don't quite understand. The question was that foreign governments or organizations, state organizations are funding extremist groups in the net, trans-nationally. Or promoting the agenda for whatever reasons. We know that this exists when we had the Cold War of course, say the German Communist Party was of course somehow supported by the East, we know that and vice versa, we had this ideological warfare between the two blocks and we always have interventions of professional actors who engineer these sort of groups even within certain societies. I think in the Netherlands it was recently disclosed that the Maoist Party was just part of the secret service in order to lobby the Chinese and to make sure that it also happened in Europe after 9-11 that the Americans tried to promote this Islamophobic thought and I noticed it back then, and I was very aware and very concerned about these very unsound sort of communications that were promoted. I really cannot comment on the Maoist Party which is very much a formerly Maoist Party in the Netherlands being sponsored by any foreign groups. I have no knowledge of that. I do know that Gid Wildus has been receiving large funds from undisclosed donors probably from foreign countries, probably from America. It's unclear what exactly that influences, but we have introduced new legislation that would force him to open up about that and he has announced he's going to refuse, so he'll be fined. So his funding is actually a big problem for him because of these kinds of measures. On the first hand I think it's pretty weird that there's a European movement of nationalistic parties. My question is, do you think that the topic of Islamophobic issue is a topic that unifies the Romanian, Italian, Spanish nationalists or not? It definitely unites them, but I think the nationalists' sites that we've just seen, their connection is they're all nationalists. So it's the paradox, but they're always paradox. There's nothing that has a straight line in their way of thinking, their views. So in that part where nationalists connect internationally, the paradox just comes out straight in your face. There's more examples for the weirdness that lies behind it, but that's one of them, thanks for pointing it out. And yes, it's definitely the topic of Islamophobia seems to connect. A lot of people who are also not really considered to be right-wing at the moment. So it definitely is a topic that needs to be focused on and needs to be addressed within... I mean now, yeah, it's definitely, right now it's a big topic. Okay, I think we are over time now or... Yeah, do you have something? We only have one final statement, or would you rather want to do a short round of... Let the audience speak. I have a short question, or maybe two. So when I come here to listen to you, I get the imagination of all the things I heard, I always heard that. I heard about the right-wing stuff on the Internet everywhere, and I hope I have to find a solution. So what can I do? And now I just think about it, and when I look back about 20 years, so maybe 20, 25 years ago it was quite easy. So on the street, there was these guys, or a skinhead, you know, a bomber jacket, and you know, okay, that's this. And I think in these last 20 years it changed a lot. So the people, so they see, or you can recognize me, or yeah, I'm a Nazi. So they change. If you go on the Internet, so today it's quite hard, or it's more difficult to recognize. So the science has changed. And I think if you make work, it would be quite harder anymore. So I'm not sure if it's the right way to block these websites, or fight against them. I think it should be more the way to inform all people about. Sorry. What's the way? What do you recommend? What to do? So I think it meant... Probably it's a good introduction to the final round. So probably some recommendations or observations. What is next, so to say, and out of your perspective? I'd say it's necessary to put stop signs. To say, this here is a stop. And to reject some positions and to delete them from the Internet and so on. But you shouldn't stop there. You should do it and then go away and look at the other things. Look how wealth is distributed, how chances is distributed in society. And also fight for a better world for all people. Not just... Occupy yourself with right-wing extremism, but go to a better living for all people and social justice and so on. So to find the right line, not to put too much energy on the stop signs, but also occupy yourself with a better future. This is the solution, I guess. I would say it's both. Totally agree to that. There are those people out there who are a threat to our democratic views. So we need to be informed about that and we need to be aware of that. While at the same time be a good example of how to do it better. So I think the social networks are the place to be using it in a very humoristic way. And to show how you live a democratic culture and how you want your life to be lived in a democratic way. So both at the same time. Put the stop sign, but also show where the stop sign ends and how you want it to be. I would really try to focus on what is causing all the discontent. I think there's a large group in society that has been getting the wrong end of the stick, if you will. They have been impoverished and see that their future is slipping away from them. Even if, whether that's accurate or not, that's what they're experiencing. And they feel that they're being replaced by a new class and they recognize them as being from different countries. And are unwilling or unable to integrate really well. And that really gets the anger going. I think that's why we need to focus our attention mostly. Yes, I was asked to do it short, so I will do it short. I think we will not in our lifetime overcome racism or antisemitism or something like that. So it's our aim always to strengthen the people who are not right wing extremists. And have a good feeling for all people living together and make these people more visible and make them more powerful. And this also makes much more fun than working with the right wing extremists themselves. We usually do not want really to argue and listen to arguments. So I wish that a lot of you will work with us together for society where we all can live. The next panel is waiting. She is quite nervous here. Just if you go on the stand from the BPB, we have a flu term magazine on Nazis. So you can read it and get some good examples as well. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
 Hello again. Thank you for your introduction.  I will make it short the start. Right wing extremism, right wing populism is not anything which is stick to national boundaries.  We just recently saw how many votes Le Pen and Front National get in France.  We had this terrorist group discovery here at the end of last year in Germany and we had mass killings of Braavik in Norway.  We are entering now the stress zone. We are leaving the comfort zone of digital culture and we are entering the stress zone and partly it's also a war zone.  I think as the mainstream left liberal culture also in the internet is not so aware as it should be probably of this phenomenon.  What we are doing now in the first round I will also present you the speakers talk about the main characteristics of different approaches or actors of right wing populism and extremism in Europe.  In the second round we will talk a little bit about counter tactics and strategies in civil societies in Europe.  Then we open the floor for your questions and remarks.  We start with Simone Raphael from Berlin. She will present us an overview about the situation of right wing extremism in the internet throughout Europe.  Afterwards I will present the other speakers. Simone Raphael is an art historian and she is a journalist and she is very active in different websites dealing with right wing extremism in Germany.  At the moment she is active for No Nazi Net and new website dealing with this phenomenon.  Please Simone. Hello and I'm happy to see you all here. I have so many people in this room because we need a lot of people to work against right wing extremism on the internet and on the social media.  I'm Simone Raphael. I'm here with my colleague Anna Gross. Together we make a project which is called No Nazi Net. You see this in the background.  We both work for a foundation here in Germany in Berlin. The Amadeo Antonio Foundation who works for democratic culture and civil society.  Offline but also online. That's what we are doing. That's why I'm here. I'm a journalist and I make a website which is called Nazi Net.  This is a website which you can translate as network against Nazis where we just report what right wing extremists do in Germany and how they watch strategies they use to get in contact with people.  And as we saw that they are very active on the internet and also in the social media we decided to make a special project on this theme.  And this is quite shortly said the project No Nazi Net which works with young people from 13 to 19 for a democratic culture in the social networks.  And as you see we try some different kind of information than just text. So we for example do some videos here. Try to reach young people through that.  But the main work this is the block. You can all have a look at the block but the main work is in different social networks where we have groups and discuss with young people who come to us and want to discuss with discuss with us.  These are of course democratic young people but also this one. So this is from a forum of Nazi Nazis.  Here someone said 88 H H. These are both codes of the right wing extremist scene for Heil Hitler or example the and I don't know if you can read this.  The second one says seek high white power. So we really easy get into contact with right wing extremist opinions and so we thought we can work about this.  But beforehand we have to be monitor the scene and this is what we do in our project to we get in contact with persons like this one here.  Nobody of you will surely get in contact if you don't want to with him because he's very explicit.  His name is already a reference to the bear mark of the National Socialists. He says he works in a concentration camp and went to the Gestapo University.  So this one is very explicit and is only directed at the scene of course.  But what we deal more with are the more subtle ways how they try to address people. This one is of autonomous nationalists.  This is a very young and brutal group of neo-Nazis in Germany. As you see they adopt another style.  They adopt something which is more dealing or appealing on young people who are not yet right wing extremist.  It's more left seemingly left optic and says autonome and militant national socialism now.  So this is where you see that they are right wing and left wing.  And if you look at the T-shirt but Simpson is wearing here fuck off Israel.  So anti-Semite parole presented in a very youth cultural way.  The same is something like that for example. Nice animals. Seems to be humor but of course has if right wing extremist uses to contact people in another dimension.  What we deal with in Germany too is with the German right wing extremist party the NPD which is very very active in the social networks.  As you see here is a Facebook page. They have very very technically very very organized and good people who do this website.  So they're very professional. They use everything they can to connect with other people.  And as you see they are also quite liked on Facebook. For example they have 21,000 likes.  And to show how professional they are I brought another website with me.  At the moment you have a discussion in Germany that if the NPD should be prohibited or not.  And for example on this scene the NPD itself made this site on Facebook to say no you can't prohibit us.  You just don't have any arguments but we feel we are you don't like us but we are legal and we are the honest party.  So they really use everything they can to spread their opinions.  What we also deal with is the fact that right wing extremists use themes and campaigns which are not usually connected to right wing extremism to spread their ideology.  This is only one example what they're doing which is very successful at the moment.  So right wing extremists pretend to be interested in the protection and the engagement against child abuse.  And these are really very very successful groups because a lot of people at the first time do not see who is doing this.  But the right wing extremists use these groups to promote NPD texts for example or right wing music to attract people to their ideology.  And what they really mean if they say we are against child abuse is this.  They mean kill all the people who did this and promote the death penalty again in Germany.  So it's anti-democratic and very right wing extremist position.  But today we're not here to talk about only Germany but Europe and if the right wing extremists and populists are also connected throughout Europe.  And so I had a look also again at the social networks what I find there.  Of course you don't only find the NPD.  You find every big right wing extremist party from us in the iPhone France for example the British National Party.  Also your big party from Hungary as you see there are there.  Flams Belong from Belgium also got builders and the people from the Netherlands.  What I really saw is they do things together in the real world but on the online world these parties are not really connected yet.  What I found for example this is a German very small party.  They are also more populist and as you see here they at least try to connect with.  The Strache from Austria here or for example this is a Portuguese right wing extremist party and they are connected with some other ones too.  So with National Democratic this is from Sweden or with Jovic again from Hungary British National Party from National so they try to make a network.  But this is only likes as you see.  So this is not very practical.  Is there also practical side?  Yes.  So here what you find much more is from the younger activists as I said beforehand the autonomist nationalists.  They are very international intended group.  As you see for example here this is a block of an autonomist nationalists from Germany and I took this not only because they are promoting here an event in Italy.  They also have a long list of other autonomist nationalist groups they are connected with and this is really not only over Europe but throughout the world.  It goes to Australia.  So you might say okay this are only links perhaps this are even dead links are they really existing.  They are I have just chose some examples to show you that the style also is the same.  So this is really a connected group of right wing extremists.  From Italy for example this one is from the Netherlands.  This is always the autonomist nationalists the young very very violent and brutal persons who are doing this.  This is from Greece.  This is from Poland for example you always see the same look it's always a very youth cultural one.  This one is really really cool from the Czech Republic.  And this is from the Ukraine.  These are all some examples from the block I thought I showed you.  But they don't only make links and connect through the Internet.  You can see here this is also on the on the block in Germany.  The report of a demonstration where they met in Lille in France and came together to demonstrate.  So they are not only connecting and sharing the dates or something they really go there and connect with each other.  And this is another example what I found quite interesting.  This is a German block also but you have here.  It's a right an advertisement or place for an advertisement which is in Spanish.  So we think OK what's that.  This really is a Spanish right wing extremist side who is who is searching support for a right wing extremist in Spain who is has been arrested because he violated another person.  And so this is a German speaking supporter side.  So they are really really seeking support from right wing extremists in Germany.  Not only this right wing extremist connects with the Internet.  Of course there's also a very big community of Islamophobic people who really use the Internet to connect.  You surely know in Germany for the PI news for example and the blocks who are connected with this.  So I thought I don't bring you this.  You know this already.  I thought I bring you this one.  It's a European Defense League which is also very active in the social networks and in blocks.  They try to defend Europe from from Islam.  And as you see a little bit in this picture this is also members of all all countries of Europe.  This is a symbol they like to use.  They see themselves as crusaders against the Islam.  And what is interesting is they are also using social media to connect.  So this is a German defense league who made there an advertisement for a meeting in Argus in Denmark.  You find similar ones for example here with the Guard Wider supporters in the Netherlands.  And on the German block again of the German defense league you have then later on report how they met in Argus and how they were drinking together.  And on the next day what Islamophobic demonstrations they did.  And why are we talking about this?  We are talking about this because it's not only a connection on the Internet where people are collecting radical and extreme extremism.  And hateful thoughts.  It really has a consequence and a very bitter one.  You surely all realized the last year when Anders Berenbryvek in Norway shot 77 people.  He collected beforehand a manifesto of 1300 and I don't know sites from very different blocks in the Internet of Islamophobes.  And the like made videos which he posted on YouTube and really used all kinds of social media and web 2.0 possibilities to connect with other ones.  And collect their thoughts to have his own ideas which he thought would give him the right to go and kill people.  And this is what we always have to keep in mind because it's not only that someone is writing all the stuff on the Internet.  But it has real consequences for real people.  So one theme which we're close now is what can we do if you see all this?  We work on this theme for quite a time now.  So we have the feeling that there are different strategies who should be working together.  Because you often deal not with things who have a problem with the laws or something like that.  If things are forbidden in a country, the social networks usually react and it's no problem dealing with that.  But we really deal with things who are not forbidden and who are not that explicit but none the less are very important to work with.  So we try to connect and work with the social network companies to strengthen their policies on democratic values and responsibility for the society.  Because we often talk about themes who are not clearly a threat or something like that but it's disguised in other words or something like that.  And what is more important is we try to find a lot of people who have fun developing smart ideas for pro-democratic anti-racist campaigns or site or online actions.  There are a lot of examples still existing fortunately but we could need some more.  And what is perhaps the most important theme is that we are all users on the social networks and so we all can be active, we can be aware.  And interfere if you see right wing extremist content or comments and we can make others aware of this too.  And this would be our wish for all of us here to think about how this will be made in the best way.  And so we all have to fight for the human rights and democratic values because it's not granted only because the internet is a medium where everyone can write something.  As we see the other ones, the right wing extremist uses too.  And so this is where I close this short introduction and we come to the round.  Thank you very much.  So what we saw is the great variety of right wing populism towards right wing terrorism.  And what we also can see that the configuration of this extremism or populism is quite different throughout Europe.  So one thing is if you are dealing with this field that you have to be prepared to be surprised and it's not always a lucky surprise, it's more unlucky probably.  And therefore I would like to, a strange sound, introduce you to Leonard Housing from Amsterdam.  He is a political scientist and advisor in digital policies.  He is also a very active blogger and he was dealing with the right wing populism in the Netherlands which is quite different from other populism, political populisms in Europe.  And probably you can give us some insights, some general insights, but also about the tactics in the internet.  Thank you.  Well, the Netherlands used to be a very tolerant country.  We were known throughout Europe of course as a very liberal, tolerant country where you could smoke dope and do things that you couldn't do anywhere else.  And very tolerant to the gay as well and things like that.  I guess that was really deep rooted in Dutch society and it needed something very profound, something needed to happen for that to change.  And I guess it came in three steps.  First you had the 9-11 attacks in America that were of course a shock for everybody in the whole world.  And then half a year later we had the assassination of Pimfertaun and 18 months later we had another political assassination.  So we were talking about right wing extremist violence before.  And in the Netherlands you could really point to the traumas that were caused by violence against right wing extremists.  So that is quite a different place to start from.  And in the Netherlands right now you have these fringe groups, these really neo-Nazi guys that like to wear their Hitler moustaches and have their hairs come to the sides.  Those are really fringe groups.  They are there and they are potentially pretty dangerous but they are quite small and not very well organized.  And then you have Geert Wilders.  And Geert Wilders is not a Nazi.  I even would hesitate to call him a right wing extremist.  And there are two things that definitely set him apart from Nazis.  First of all he loves Israel, which is atypical for a Nazi I suppose.  And also he loves, he will defend the gaze.  His main point of course is he is against Islam, which is certainly fueled by the fact that he visited Israel and its youth and became a very staunch advocate.  He also has Israeli flags waving in his offices and things like that.  So quite a different person, quite a different movement, he came of course, he was already in parliament before he radicalized after the murder of Theo van Gogh.  And it's really not a movement what he is.  It's very unclear what he is, but I don't know if many people know that here in Germany.  But Geert Wilders has a party and his party has members.  Actually he has one member, he is the member.  So there is no movement, there is no organization.  And this is I think typical of his followers.  They're not organized at all.  They're a mob in a way.  And you can see that very well on a number of right wing blogs or conservative blogs or even nationalistic blogs.  Where you will see a lot of people reacting furiously on anything that is even tainted by a sort of a left wing message.  And I think that is on the internet the thing that is most interesting that has happened is that really the discourse has changed.  And where politically correct used to be left wing, politically correct in Netherlands, starting to become right wing statements.  And if you say anything that is even slightly left wing, like if it's slightly pro non-discrimination or positive discrimination,  you will be slammed and you will get a lot of reactions.  And that includes threats, that threats to politicians a lot and things like that.  Could you probably also touch a little bit on the shift?  I don't know if it's a shift from anti-Islam as a topic towards the anti-EU as a topic.  Is it a shift or is it just in complementation?  I think it's probably, I mean he's not going to go.  I think Gidwilders is very much the populist.  He'll say what he knows is politically savvy to say.  And he'll go for the statements that will make his party the biggest.  Having said that, he has one passion and that's anti-Islamism or pro-Israelism, if you can say that,  which amounts to the same thing I think from his perspective to quite a large degree.  So his shift towards anti-EU and more nationalistic agenda, I think if it is a fundamental shift,  it is mostly based on electoral considerations because he sees that the whole immigration discussion  is becoming less interesting for the Dutch electorate.  Probably one last question in this first round to you.  You say Gidwilders is just one person party but he gains a lot of votes.  And so who are the followers also in the net?  Can you observe it and are there scenery behind that or movements probably also?  I don't think that it's easy to point to any movements.  It's really the group of people that became, that was very interested in Pimphrottin  and became homeless, if you will, politically after the assassination of Pimphrottin.  And that has been searching ever since and you see them moving.  And it's always about 27 seats in the Dutch parliament which always has 550 seats.  And they first, they all voted, that group voted for the Pimphrottin party.  That was leaderless and completely fell apart within a couple of months.  Then they moved to the woman called Rita Verdonk for a large part  but she didn't really materialise in the elections and then Gidwilders came and he got the electorate.  And now it seems that these people are moving away again after the recent fall of the government  that Gidwilders was supporting and it seems that a large part of his electorate is going to the socialist party now.  Which is the most left-wing extreme party, if it's extreme.  That's a bit of a harsh word I suppose.  Okay, thanks a lot. We are now shifting from a country where the right-wing populism is still on the rise  or is still in a quite active part to a country in Austria  where this movement has shaped the European consciousness and awareness some years ago with the Freie FPÖ and Haider.  Philipp Sonderger is from Vienna. He is a human rights activist and political adviser and he is working about this issue.  So please give us some insights about the situation, the current situation, but also maybe the general tradition about it  and what is going on also in the internet with the right-wing populists and right extremists.  Thank you. At first I want to lose a few words on the concept of extremism  because in Austria we have a different usage of this concept than in Germany.  In Germany you normally have the idea of a spectrum from left to right.  In the middle is the center and extremism is that what happens on the left edge and on the right edge  and danger comes from these edges and the center has to defend.  This concept is criticized and maybe we can talk about it later.  In Austria you have different concepts that dominate the discussion.  The first is based on the usage of the police.  We have a Verfassungsschutz in Austria that only works on police laws  and it only acts against criminal offenders that are politically motivated.  They do not look for dangers that are non-criminal offenders.  This is the main understanding of right-wing extremism or left-wing extremism in Austria.  You have another usage. This is the scientific idea of right-wing extremism  and there is a concept by a guy called Willibald Holzer.  He is working for the Documentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes  and he did a concept of right-wing extremism that focuses on ideological criteria  like racial, glamour-folkish thinking or being violence-prone,  and so on.  If you talk about right-wing extremism or populism,  you have to have in mind that the usage of the concept is slightly different to Germany.  If you look at right-wing extremists in Austria, you could talk about three phenomena.  One is right-wing extremist or neo-Nazi groups that operate outside the law,  that do things that are prohibited by revisionism  and incitement I think is the English translation for Verhetzung.  Is that true? Yeah.  So they do like producing stickers and putting them to the walls,  but also taking part in paramilitary manoeuvres.  One famous leader of them is standing on trial in two weeks.  His name is Gottfried Küssel.  These groups are mainly reached with jurisdictional means.  Gottfried Küssel is a very known person because he was prosecuted 10 years ago.  He's, by his own words, a national socialist, and he was also sent to jail for 10 years  because he wanted to re-establish national socialism.  And he did paramilitary manoeuvres in the 90s.  Wer hat sich Drache took part?  So the opposition leader, I will refer to him in one minute,  has connection to these very militant groups.  The second phenomenon is a smaller group, right-wing groups, right-wing extremism groups  with connections to neo-Nazi groups that try to operate inside the law.  There are small parties that try to stay inside the law  and use the internet, mainly social media, to gain support  with very catchy topics like anti-Islamic campaigns.  This is their main strategy.  I forgot to say the main strategy of the groups outside the law  is to make neo-Nazi propaganda and reporting their own activities.  And the third group you have is the mainstream party, FBE.  They are, you would say, right-wing populists with right-wing extremist edges.  Some call it right-wing extremists because of the scientific concept.  And this group is very strong in social media.  Hatzisch Drache's website on Facebook has 114,000 supporters.  You have seen the other groups before, they had about 20, 40, whatever, a thousand.  The Chancellor in Austria, his name is Werner Feinmann.  He has 2,500 fans.  And the guy, the Vice Chancellor, has 400.  So you can measure how much support they get with their policy  in this particular group of society.  Thanks.  Thank you, Philipp.  Now Anna Gross from Berlin.  She is quite active in the neo-Nazi net.  She is a linguist and a cultural scientist  and engaged in civic education and empowerment strategies.  Please give us your concrete insights about the situation in Germany,  especially in the Internet and Web 2.0.  Exactly. Since we are here at Republica, now it's my turn  to bring us back to the Internet.  Well, the Internet, the connection of red-wing extremists on the Internet,  as you've seen Europe-wide, you could say,  well, it seems to be an Internet phenomenon.  Maybe it's on the Internet.  What is going on in the offline world maybe doesn't matter.  But it does matter in a really, really big scale.  And that's why we need to talk about this and we need to talk about it here.  And if you go out here from here today, please talk about it with everyone else,  you know, who works online and offline,  because the democratic culture doesn't stop when you turn on your computer.  This is where it's really important.  And we all need to still work on the fact,  and we all will always have to work on the fact that democratic culture  needs to be practiced and practiced and practiced every day.  So what does that mean concretely for people with red-wing extremism in Germany?  Well, red-wing extremists, for example, put up addresses of people who are against Nazis,  whether they are working in unions, whether they are working in the so-called antifa,  or whether they're just some regular people who have been seen on demonstrations.  Their addresses, their phone numbers, their websites, their photos, their videos,  and everything is put up online.  And it's very difficult to take it down because most of the time it's on international servers.  And then the result of that is people get visited.  They get, their buildings get tagged, saying something like, kill communists,  or people get attacked on the street because they're recognized by their Facebook pictures.  So if you work online against red-wing extremism, one advice on the side now,  please don't use your regular name, because it might be,  and don't use your clear pictures, because it might be dangerous in the end,  in the offline world that's on the side.  So that's one thing where it gets really, really dangerous,  and it's often, like I said, difficult to take down these websites.  That's one thing. On the other side, which is even more important,  as we talk about social media today and social networks,  if you see mobbing in commons, for example,  if you see that people get attacked in commons by racists, by a red-wing extremist or something,  and in a topic that doesn't have anything to do with red-wing extremism,  let's say they talk about how to save the environment,  and very often use topic, or the topic of child abuse,  or other topics that doesn't seem to have anything to do with red-wing extremism,  or politics in general, people get attacked by them,  verbally, aggressively attacked, and sometimes, and unfortunately,  it happens more often than you even can think of,  it happens in the offline world, and that's where the real dangers are.  Could you please also give us, maybe,  saw some slides from Alzimone before,  but what are issues, topics, but also maybe some, some, you know, surfaces,  which they are using music and fashion or whatever.  You know, it's, I think, when I first deal with this issue after a long time,  I was quite surprised how it, the red-wing extremism is reshaped,  also in their surface, in their cultural surface, in their fashion and in their attitude,  and probably you can give us some insights how to discover it.  I mean, in the first glance, you won't see it, probably, as an un-experienced user.  That's very true. Most of the time, they come as sort of underground.  One of the things is that red-wing extremists have known,  have learned the Internet, as all of us have, unfortunately.  They are technically very advanced.  They are very advanced in knowing how to design graphics,  how to produce videos that look impressive.  They really know how to react to Facebook, for example,  as we've seen the National Party of Germany, for example.  The spokesperson of that party has his own Internet company,  so he knows how to produce a video that looks impressive and that catches people.  One of the real dangers online that makes it so fashionable lately  is that the Nazi is only two clicks away from all of you.  It's actually your neighbor.  For example, the youngsters in the red-wing scene,  they also, as they've changed their clothing, I mean, this typical,  you see the Nazi by the skinhead and the shoes, has never really been as it is,  because most of the Nazis have it in their mind and not in their approach.  But the same is online, as we've just seen.  They use Bart Simpson and they use other pop culture topics or fashion,  for example, they all like to wear typical, maybe if you want to call it,  American fashion of hoodies or sneakers or things like that.  So it's very difficult to differentiate that and to see the coats.  So you should always take a closer look at what, when you see a video  that tells you something about the so-called truth no one ever speaks about.  It might be a so-called truther who is trying to promote his ideas.  There is a whole movement behind that on the social media, on the social networks,  who use the technique of very highly technical, improved video taping to impress people.  Because you can only watch it for like a minute or two.  A few facts are only mentioned, but a lot of youngsters especially catch up on that.  So what we are seeing now quite briefly is that this is not just an argumentative,  a rational discourse about some topics.  So it's more a cultural fight for, or a fight for cultural hegemony to use Kramshi.  So in the second round, we can share some examples of counter tactics  and approaches, you started it already.  You have some examples from the Dutch experience,  how the civil society, the state or whatever, is acting in the net against this right wing populist  or right wing extremist.  What is your observation? Is this a case?  I think I have a bit of a sad answer to that,  that civil society has not managed to do much in the Netherlands.  And I think that is because if you only...  Well, the old reaction, before 9-11 there was a right wing party,  very even more extremist than...  Much more extremist actually than Gerd Wilders has ever been.  That was represented in parliament.  And the reaction to this was to try to silence it and try to make it go away  and try to make it irrelevant and keep it fringe.  And that has certainly not worked.  I think that what we have seen is very much an eruption of the fact that...  Of suppressed ideologies that have been present in society  and that have not been able to find a way out  and that have materialized in Pimfertein at first.  And when Pimfertein was murdered, the first thing that people started saying,  and especially after Teo van Gogh was murdered actually,  the things that people said to each other,  apparently we cannot say what we think in this country.  Apparently we do not have freedom of expression.  And this has become really the one thing that Gerd Wilders has capitalized upon,  that he has a right to say whatever he thinks  and that has come to include any insult that comes out of his mouth,  which happens frequently.  Because he is very good at insulting people.  So I think that we have not really managed to find an answer,  apart from one answer that might have my proof to be very effective,  which is to make him responsible for government.  Whereas in Denmark this has completely failed,  the economic crisis has come to our aid  and he had to face the situation where he would have to take responsibility  for large cuts in people's pensions, in people's whatever,  kinds of incomes that government benefits they were receiving.  And since the people that vote for him are mostly poorly educated  and many unemployed among his voters and a lot of elderly,  those people tend to lose a lot in an economic crisis,  and especially by the right-wing government's ideas about how to solve the crisis  through austerity.  And I think that's where he panicked and had to face,  he couldn't face the cutbacks.  And now he's lost credibility among his electorate.  That's interesting.  But that's really the only thing that we have found to deal with this group,  because one after the other, new people came and new leaders have been found  and this group has not died away, it has not gone, managed to contain it.  Maybe one more observation is also the structural ignorance within the fields of social media, cultures, probably.  So you are in your friend's circle, so for me the question is,  you observed a little bit Hans-Ymone, the European examples,  and you showed some of it, and could you probably give us some insights,  what are typical successful counter strategies, counter tactics towards that  and overcome probably the ignorance of the different cultures, political cultures also.  Have you some successful examples, because the first round was in parts quite scary,  how successful this kind of political culture and extremism can be.  This is Mikro? Yeah, it's working.  What really must be said, I work on the scene on the internet for quite a time now,  I think since ten years approximately,  and the first thing we always did was setting on information  and saying the person needs more information, they are not really knowing what they are doing,  and as I said, I make a website, you write some beautiful texts with a lot of explanations,  what is the problem about campaigns or anything,  and you reach some people through that kind of work,  but you don't reach all the people and perhaps not always the important ones.  For example, we have a forum also where people can ask questions  and we see we reach people who get in contact with right wing extremism  because their parents and their children get in contact with the right wing extremist scene,  or there are in sports or football clubs and have trainers who have contacts with the right wing scene  and ask how to deal with it, so we can reach such persons over information,  but what we also wanted to, the persons we also want to reach are young people,  people who are for example not very highly educated  because they are really also very open for prejudices or something like that,  and our experience is that you need a lot of different forms  and this is also why we are here and are talking to you  because perhaps you are the ones who can make great videos, great graphics or something like that,  and we try to do this too of course, to also reach the message to persons who do not like to read long texts,  but that is very important to be aware that they are right wing extremists  who are threatening democratic societies, and the good thing is when we started  we felt quite alone with doing this and until now I must say this is a great development,  there are a lot of individual activists but also groups who are doing constantly more things  on the internet and in the social media and I am happy about everyone who is with us at this theme  because for example if you use humor which is always working very well to deal with the themes,  we are working for a foundation, we have to do some serious things of course and can't do everything,  I am very happy if some other private activists do also things which are not always very politically correct  or something like that, what we can't do, and there are a lot of examples of persons or groups  who are doing very humorous and nice things and they are really also,  if you have a nice video or something that recommended of course and shared  and this is the best way to spread the news.  So Philip, the Austrians are known at least in Germany for their humor as well.  They really are.  Some, yes, I think so, yeah.  So, I mean the serious question is, are there successful tactics or examples  that you can deal with this thriving populism in Austria for instance?  I'd say we are ten years ahead but we are not successful yet but we have learned a lot.  One thing we have learned is you cannot overcome right-wing extremism or populism  in only fighting right-wing extremism and right-wing populism.  This is the criticism on the concept I was referring to before,  that the concept of the problem is on the right edge and on the left edge  does not see the dangers that come from the center of society.  It doesn't see the portion, it doesn't see racist concepts from the center,  not to mention extremist financial products that endanger our social cohesion.  So we have to also get into confrontation with the center of our society  and we have to identify the problems by their political and by their ideological programs  because the codes can change.  The dangerous programs can come into different uniforms.  They can come into Nazi uniforms, they can come into Bart Simpson hoodies  and they can come also in suits and ties.  So you have to identify the danger by the ideological substance.  That's the main thing we learned in Austria the last ten years.  Thank you.  If you have some questions, remarks, we have a mic here there in the back.  Does anybody want to ask something?  What I'm really angry about is that we have, is that chasing of an enemy that is legal.  It's really just that enemy but it's legal.  We are living in a democratic world and the real problem are the people that are accepting that bullshit.  It's not just the Nazis in themselves.  I accept that they are idiots but I'm also really afraid about the people that are believing all that bullshit.  So all the sensibilization is not chasing just an enemy but also talking to the people  and the fact that people have to learn not to listen to such bullshit.  Okay, this was more of a statement. Does anybody also have a question?  At the moment? You can also ask later.  Or any other statement?  Maybe it's rather a stupid question but if I'm now want to be an activist and to start doing research on the net,  I always would think, okay, now I'm researching on right wing extremism  but who prevents me from the Faschungschutz who thinks that now I am a right wing extremist.  So can I open every website without having to prove that I'm not a Nazi?  Until now I must say yes, you can. I do this for a lot of years now  and I was never really officially asked by the Faschungschutz what I'm doing there.  Now it's really at the moment if you're doing research, for example,  I want to have a look on the internet on right wing extremism,  especially in social media, especially in international social media,  as Facebook or YouTube, it's very easy to get in contact with it.  You don't have to use a very popular code or something like that  or a popular right wing extremist band, you will find in every social network  a lot of entries and comments and things like that.  So it's easy to have a look at it.  So this is also a problem of course because everyone can get this easy in contact  with this right wing extremist contents.  But it's interesting if you like to engage again this to have a look what they are doing,  of course, because we also do this as we said,  because so then we know which are themes we have to work with.  For example, we said we work with young people and for example the truces  which were mentioned by my colleague, they really have anti-Semite thesis  and something like that and they really confuse people who address and ask for example  and say I do not want to believe it but this is a video, they are so convincing  and how can I argue that this is not really true.  So these are really difficult topics and you really can deal with this  I think with argumentations and things like that.  So it's also important to have a look at it.  First of all that and then I would like to add also once you found the sites  don't forget to report them because as soon as they reported, of course,  it takes a while to take it down.  We just learned that Facebook for example only has six people in Dublin  to delete everything that is on German content of everything from pornography  to right wing extremism and so of course it takes weeks for them to take down  right wing extremist stuff.  Unfortunately yet we are trying to still work with Facebook to talk about that topic  but like I said report the sites, the more people report, the quicker they get taken down,  the quicker the problem gets at least limited.  I feel a little bit split about having whatever political propaganda on the web  because of course on one side I think I don't want to see it there,  I don't want people to be able to spread there in my opinion bullshit  or whatever boring stuff, don't want to sound naive on the same time  but at the same time I'm also quite glad to be able to recognize what they're doing,  how many there are and I in that sense would want them to tell me more about them  because I'd like to know what they're doing, where they show up, what people are behind it  so I once stumbled about that web page from I think it was NPD,  whatever Berlin Treptro, I don't know and I saw that on their website they had that area  for their dates, for their activities and that was empty  and I was really tempted to write them to like please fill up their dates  and care for their website so that I'm able to be informed about their activities.  I can comment this, I surely understand this because I'm also very interested  in what they're doing of course but I think it's a difference where they're doing it.  So I think it might be a thing we have to deal with in the democratic society  that they have their own networks, that they have their own blogs or something like that  but the question is do they have to connect in spaces where mostly non-rightwing extremist people  are meeting and where they try to get into a connection  and I think this is a quite important difference because I think it is a democratic value  and something also companies can do  that they don't spend their own space for those opinions.  I'm a bit, from the Dutch perspective I think that it's also there is a danger  in just removing things and trying to influence the debate from that side.  I think we've lost the language in the Netherlands, the moral right if you will  where we continue to be bashing right-wing extremist speech now we find ourselves  in a position where we cannot do that anymore.  We have lost the initiative on that and that is I think is very worrying  and so I think that it's mostly not a good idea to just target the symptoms  you have to dig deeper than that.  I'd say it depends on how big the thing is.  If it's very small it's good tactics to have an eye on it  but if it's getting bigger you have to do something against it  because if you have small publicity for some ideological programs  then it will spread and it will find people who think this is a normal ideological program  they can support however.  If it's getting on a certain level and this is a tactical question not a principal question  you should get rid of it from public space.  I think of the FBE being a 7% party in Austria 15 years ago  and today it's between 20 or 30.  We will not have national socialism if they get into government again  but they are really able to do very bad things there.  I have a question on the intervention of third nations into these debates  both in logistic and organizational support  because for instance parts of the Islamophobic movement in Europe  were partly supported by the public diplomacy program of the State Department  or you have now, right now, this RT, the kind of Deutsche Welle of Russia  supporting all these fringe groups with their social media  and they are getting a lot of clicks for these extremist contents  so how do you view the intervention of governmental actors  for whatever agenda into building up these groups,  supporting these groups, giving a larger audience to them  and helping to professionalize these services?  I have no idea.  I don't quite understand.  The question was that foreign governments or organizations,  state organizations are funding extremist groups in the net, trans-nationally.  Or promoting the agenda for whatever reasons.  We know that this exists when we had the Cold War of course,  say the German Communist Party was of course somehow supported by the East,  we know that and vice versa, we had this ideological warfare between the two blocks  and we always have interventions of professional actors  who engineer these sort of groups even within certain societies.  I think in the Netherlands it was recently disclosed that the Maoist Party  was just part of the secret service in order to lobby the Chinese  and to make sure that it also happened in Europe after 9-11  that the Americans tried to promote this Islamophobic thought  and I noticed it back then, and I was very aware and very concerned about  these very unsound sort of communications that were promoted.  I really cannot comment on the Maoist Party  which is very much a formerly Maoist Party in the Netherlands  being sponsored by any foreign groups.  I have no knowledge of that.  I do know that Gid Wildus has been receiving large funds from undisclosed donors  probably from foreign countries, probably from America.  It's unclear what exactly that influences,  but we have introduced new legislation that would force him to open up about that  and he has announced he's going to refuse, so he'll be fined.  So his funding is actually a big problem for him because of these kinds of measures.  On the first hand I think it's pretty weird that there's a European movement  of nationalistic parties.  My question is, do you think that the topic of Islamophobic issue  is a topic that unifies the Romanian, Italian, Spanish nationalists or not?  It definitely unites them, but I think the nationalists' sites that we've just seen,  their connection is they're all nationalists.  So it's the paradox, but they're always paradox.  There's nothing that has a straight line in their way of thinking, their views.  So in that part where nationalists connect internationally,  the paradox just comes out straight in your face.  There's more examples for the weirdness that lies behind it,  but that's one of them, thanks for pointing it out.  And yes, it's definitely the topic of Islamophobia seems to connect.  A lot of people who are also not really considered to be right-wing at the moment.  So it definitely is a topic that needs to be focused on and needs to be addressed within...  I mean now, yeah, it's definitely, right now it's a big topic.  Okay, I think we are over time now or...  Yeah, do you have something?  We only have one final statement, or would you rather want to do a short round of...  Let the audience speak.  I have a short question, or maybe two.  So when I come here to listen to you, I get the imagination  of all the things I heard, I always heard that.  I heard about the right-wing stuff on the Internet everywhere,  and I hope I have to find a solution.  So what can I do?  And now I just think about it, and when I look back about 20 years,  so maybe 20, 25 years ago it was quite easy.  So on the street, there was these guys, or a skinhead, you know, a bomber jacket,  and you know, okay, that's this.  And I think in these last 20 years it changed a lot.  So the people, so they see, or you can recognize me, or yeah, I'm a Nazi.  So they change.  If you go on the Internet, so today it's quite hard, or it's more difficult to recognize.  So the science has changed.  And I think if you make work, it would be quite harder anymore.  So I'm not sure if it's the right way to block these websites, or fight against them.  I think it should be more the way to inform all people about.  Sorry.  What's the way? What do you recommend? What to do?  So I think it meant...  Probably it's a good introduction to the final round.  So probably some recommendations or observations.  What is next, so to say, and out of your perspective?  I'd say it's necessary to put stop signs.  To say, this here is a stop.  And to reject some positions and to delete them from the Internet and so on.  But you shouldn't stop there.  You should do it and then go away and look at the other things.  Look how wealth is distributed, how chances is distributed in society.  And also fight for a better world for all people.  Not just...  Occupy yourself with right-wing extremism, but go to a better living for all people and social justice and so on.  So to find the right line, not to put too much energy on the stop signs,  but also occupy yourself with a better future.  This is the solution, I guess.  I would say it's both.  Totally agree to that.  There are those people out there who are a threat to our democratic views.  So we need to be informed about that and we need to be aware of that.  While at the same time be a good example of how to do it better.  So I think the social networks are the place to be using it in a very humoristic way.  And to show how you live a democratic culture and how you want your life to be lived in a democratic way.  So both at the same time.  Put the stop sign, but also show where the stop sign ends and how you want it to be.  I would really try to focus on what is causing all the discontent.  I think there's a large group in society that has been getting the wrong end of the stick, if you will.  They have been impoverished and see that their future is slipping away from them.  Even if, whether that's accurate or not, that's what they're experiencing.  And they feel that they're being replaced by a new class and they recognize them as being from different countries.  And are unwilling or unable to integrate really well.  And that really gets the anger going.  I think that's why we need to focus our attention mostly.  Yes, I was asked to do it short, so I will do it short.  I think we will not in our lifetime overcome racism or antisemitism or something like that.  So it's our aim always to strengthen the people who are not right wing extremists.  And have a good feeling for all people living together and make these people more visible and make them more powerful.  And this also makes much more fun than working with the right wing extremists themselves.  We usually do not want really to argue and listen to arguments.  So I wish that a lot of you will work with us together for society where we all can live.  The next panel is waiting. She is quite nervous here.  Just if you go on the stand from the BPB, we have a flu term magazine on Nazis.  So you can read it and get some good examples as well.  Thank you very much for your questions.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.
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Hello again. Thank you for your introduction. I will make it short the start. Right wing extremism, right wing populism is not anything which is stick to national boundaries. We just recently saw how many votes Le Pen and Front National get in France. We had this terrorist group discovery here at the end of last year in Germany and we had mass killings of Braavik in Norway. We are entering now the stress zone. We are leaving the comfort zone of digital culture and we are entering the stress zone and partly it's also a war zone. I think as the mainstream left liberal culture also in the internet is not so aware as it should be probably of this phenomenon. What we are doing now in the first round I will also present you the speakers talk about the main characteristics of different approaches or actors of right wing populism and extremism in Europe. In the second round we will talk a little bit about counter tactics and strategies in civil societies in Europe. Then we open the floor for your questions and remarks. We start with Simone Raphael from Berlin. She will present us an overview about the situation of right wing extremism in the internet throughout Europe. Afterwards I will present the other speakers. Simone Raphael is an art historian and she is a journalist and she is very active in different websites dealing with right wing extremism in Germany. At the moment she is active for No Nazi Net and new website dealing with this phenomenon. Please Simone. Hello and I'm happy to see you all here. I have so many people in this room because we need a lot of people to work against right wing extremism on the internet and on the social media. I'm Simone Raphael. I'm here with my colleague Anna Gross. Together we make a project which is called No Nazi Net. You see this in the background. We both work for a foundation here in Germany in Berlin. The Amadeo Antonio Foundation who works for democratic culture and civil society. Offline but also online. That's what we are doing. That's why I'm here. I'm a journalist and I make a website which is called Nazi Net. This is a website which you can translate as network against Nazis where we just report what right wing extremists do in Germany and how they watch strategies they use to get in contact with people. And as we saw that they are very active on the internet and also in the social media we decided to make a special project on this theme. And this is quite shortly said the project No Nazi Net which works with young people from 13 to 19 for a democratic culture in the social networks. And as you see we try some different kind of information than just text. So we for example do some videos here. Try to reach young people through that. But the main work this is the block. You can all have a look at the block but the main work is in different social networks where we have groups and discuss with young people who come to us and want to discuss with discuss with us. These are of course democratic young people but also this one. So this is from a forum of Nazi Nazis. Here someone said 88 H H. These are both codes of the right wing extremist scene for Heil Hitler or example the and I don't know if you can read this. The second one says seek high white power. So we really easy get into contact with right wing extremist opinions and so we thought we can work about this. But beforehand we have to be monitor the scene and this is what we do in our project to we get in contact with persons like this one here. Nobody of you will surely get in contact if you don't want to with him because he's very explicit. His name is already a reference to the bear mark of the National Socialists. He says he works in a concentration camp and went to the Gestapo University. So this one is very explicit and is only directed at the scene of course. But what we deal more with are the more subtle ways how they try to address people. This one is of autonomous nationalists. This is a very young and brutal group of neo-Nazis in Germany. As you see they adopt another style. They adopt something which is more dealing or appealing on young people who are not yet right wing extremist. It's more left seemingly left optic and says autonome and militant national socialism now. So this is where you see that they are right wing and left wing. And if you look at the T-shirt but Simpson is wearing here fuck off Israel. So anti-Semite parole presented in a very youth cultural way. The same is something like that for example. Nice animals. Seems to be humor but of course has if right wing extremist uses to contact people in another dimension. What we deal with in Germany too is with the German right wing extremist party the NPD which is very very active in the social networks. As you see here is a Facebook page. They have very very technically very very organized and good people who do this website. So they're very professional. They use everything they can to connect with other people. And as you see they are also quite liked on Facebook. For example they have 21,000 likes. And to show how professional they are I brought another website with me. At the moment you have a discussion in Germany that if the NPD should be prohibited or not. And for example on this scene the NPD itself made this site on Facebook to say no you can't prohibit us. You just don't have any arguments but we feel we are you don't like us but we are legal and we are the honest party. So they really use everything they can to spread their opinions. What we also deal with is the fact that right wing extremists use themes and campaigns which are not usually connected to right wing extremism to spread their ideology. This is only one example what they're doing which is very successful at the moment. So right wing extremists pretend to be interested in the protection and the engagement against child abuse. And these are really very very successful groups because a lot of people at the first time do not see who is doing this. But the right wing extremists use these groups to promote NPD texts for example or right wing music to attract people to their ideology. And what they really mean if they say we are against child abuse is this. They mean kill all the people who did this and promote the death penalty again in Germany. So it's anti-democratic and very right wing extremist position. But today we're not here to talk about only Germany but Europe and if the right wing extremists and populists are also connected throughout Europe. And so I had a look also again at the social networks what I find there. Of course you don't only find the NPD. You find every big right wing extremist party from us in the iPhone France for example the British National Party. Also your big party from Hungary as you see there are there. Flams Belong from Belgium also got builders and the people from the Netherlands. What I really saw is they do things together in the real world but on the online world these parties are not really connected yet. What I found for example this is a German very small party. They are also more populist and as you see here they at least try to connect with. The Strache from Austria here or for example this is a Portuguese right wing extremist party and they are connected with some other ones too. So with National Democratic this is from Sweden or with Jovic again from Hungary British National Party from National so they try to make a network. But this is only likes as you see. So this is not very practical. Is there also practical side? Yes. So here what you find much more is from the younger activists as I said beforehand the autonomist nationalists. They are very international intended group. As you see for example here this is a block of an autonomist nationalists from Germany and I took this not only because they are promoting here an event in Italy. They also have a long list of other autonomist nationalist groups they are connected with and this is really not only over Europe but throughout the world. It goes to Australia. So you might say okay this are only links perhaps this are even dead links are they really existing. They are I have just chose some examples to show you that the style also is the same. So this is really a connected group of right wing extremists. From Italy for example this one is from the Netherlands. This is always the autonomist nationalists the young very very violent and brutal persons who are doing this. This is from Greece. This is from Poland for example you always see the same look it's always a very youth cultural one. This one is really really cool from the Czech Republic. And this is from the Ukraine. These are all some examples from the block I thought I showed you. But they don't only make links and connect through the Internet. You can see here this is also on the on the block in Germany. The report of a demonstration where they met in Lille in France and came together to demonstrate. So they are not only connecting and sharing the dates or something they really go there and connect with each other. And this is another example what I found quite interesting. This is a German block also but you have here. It's a right an advertisement or place for an advertisement which is in Spanish. So we think OK what's that. This really is a Spanish right wing extremist side who is who is searching support for a right wing extremist in Spain who is has been arrested because he violated another person. And so this is a German speaking supporter side. So they are really really seeking support from right wing extremists in Germany. Not only this right wing extremist connects with the Internet. Of course there's also a very big community of Islamophobic people who really use the Internet to connect. You surely know in Germany for the PI news for example and the blocks who are connected with this. So I thought I don't bring you this. You know this already. I thought I bring you this one. It's a European Defense League which is also very active in the social networks and in blocks. They try to defend Europe from from Islam. And as you see a little bit in this picture this is also members of all all countries of Europe. This is a symbol they like to use. They see themselves as crusaders against the Islam. And what is interesting is they are also using social media to connect. So this is a German defense league who made there an advertisement for a meeting in Argus in Denmark. You find similar ones for example here with the Guard Wider supporters in the Netherlands. And on the German block again of the German defense league you have then later on report how they met in Argus and how they were drinking together. And on the next day what Islamophobic demonstrations they did. And why are we talking about this? We are talking about this because it's not only a connection on the Internet where people are collecting radical and extreme extremism. And hateful thoughts. It really has a consequence and a very bitter one. You surely all realized the last year when Anders Berenbryvek in Norway shot 77 people. He collected beforehand a manifesto of 1300 and I don't know sites from very different blocks in the Internet of Islamophobes. And the like made videos which he posted on YouTube and really used all kinds of social media and web 2.0 possibilities to connect with other ones. And collect their thoughts to have his own ideas which he thought would give him the right to go and kill people. And this is what we always have to keep in mind because it's not only that someone is writing all the stuff on the Internet. But it has real consequences for real people. So one theme which we're close now is what can we do if you see all this? We work on this theme for quite a time now. So we have the feeling that there are different strategies who should be working together. Because you often deal not with things who have a problem with the laws or something like that. If things are forbidden in a country, the social networks usually react and it's no problem dealing with that. But we really deal with things who are not forbidden and who are not that explicit but none the less are very important to work with. So we try to connect and work with the social network companies to strengthen their policies on democratic values and responsibility for the society. Because we often talk about themes who are not clearly a threat or something like that but it's disguised in other words or something like that. And what is more important is we try to find a lot of people who have fun developing smart ideas for pro-democratic anti-racist campaigns or site or online actions. There are a lot of examples still existing fortunately but we could need some more. And what is perhaps the most important theme is that we are all users on the social networks and so we all can be active, we can be aware. And interfere if you see right wing extremist content or comments and we can make others aware of this too. And this would be our wish for all of us here to think about how this will be made in the best way. And so we all have to fight for the human rights and democratic values because it's not granted only because the internet is a medium where everyone can write something. As we see the other ones, the right wing extremist uses too. And so this is where I close this short introduction and we come to the round. Thank you very much. So what we saw is the great variety of right wing populism towards right wing terrorism. And what we also can see that the configuration of this extremism or populism is quite different throughout Europe. So one thing is if you are dealing with this field that you have to be prepared to be surprised and it's not always a lucky surprise, it's more unlucky probably. And therefore I would like to, a strange sound, introduce you to Leonard Housing from Amsterdam. He is a political scientist and advisor in digital policies. He is also a very active blogger and he was dealing with the right wing populism in the Netherlands which is quite different from other populism, political populisms in Europe. And probably you can give us some insights, some general insights, but also about the tactics in the internet. Thank you. Well, the Netherlands used to be a very tolerant country. We were known throughout Europe of course as a very liberal, tolerant country where you could smoke dope and do things that you couldn't do anywhere else. And very tolerant to the gay as well and things like that. I guess that was really deep rooted in Dutch society and it needed something very profound, something needed to happen for that to change. And I guess it came in three steps. First you had the 9-11 attacks in America that were of course a shock for everybody in the whole world. And then half a year later we had the assassination of Pimfertaun and 18 months later we had another political assassination. So we were talking about right wing extremist violence before. And in the Netherlands you could really point to the traumas that were caused by violence against right wing extremists. So that is quite a different place to start from. And in the Netherlands right now you have these fringe groups, these really neo-Nazi guys that like to wear their Hitler moustaches and have their hairs come to the sides. Those are really fringe groups. They are there and they are potentially pretty dangerous but they are quite small and not very well organized. And then you have Geert Wilders. And Geert Wilders is not a Nazi. I even would hesitate to call him a right wing extremist. And there are two things that definitely set him apart from Nazis. First of all he loves Israel, which is atypical for a Nazi I suppose. And also he loves, he will defend the gaze. His main point of course is he is against Islam, which is certainly fueled by the fact that he visited Israel and its youth and became a very staunch advocate. He also has Israeli flags waving in his offices and things like that. So quite a different person, quite a different movement, he came of course, he was already in parliament before he radicalized after the murder of Theo van Gogh. And it's really not a movement what he is. It's very unclear what he is, but I don't know if many people know that here in Germany. But Geert Wilders has a party and his party has members. Actually he has one member, he is the member. So there is no movement, there is no organization. And this is I think typical of his followers. They're not organized at all. They're a mob in a way. And you can see that very well on a number of right wing blogs or conservative blogs or even nationalistic blogs. Where you will see a lot of people reacting furiously on anything that is even tainted by a sort of a left wing message. And I think that is on the internet the thing that is most interesting that has happened is that really the discourse has changed. And where politically correct used to be left wing, politically correct in Netherlands, starting to become right wing statements. And if you say anything that is even slightly left wing, like if it's slightly pro non-discrimination or positive discrimination, you will be slammed and you will get a lot of reactions. And that includes threats, that threats to politicians a lot and things like that. Could you probably also touch a little bit on the shift? I don't know if it's a shift from anti-Islam as a topic towards the anti-EU as a topic. Is it a shift or is it just in complementation? I think it's probably, I mean he's not going to go. I think Gidwilders is very much the populist. He'll say what he knows is politically savvy to say. And he'll go for the statements that will make his party the biggest. Having said that, he has one passion and that's anti-Islamism or pro-Israelism, if you can say that, which amounts to the same thing I think from his perspective to quite a large degree. So his shift towards anti-EU and more nationalistic agenda, I think if it is a fundamental shift, it is mostly based on electoral considerations because he sees that the whole immigration discussion is becoming less interesting for the Dutch electorate. Probably one last question in this first round to you. You say Gidwilders is just one person party but he gains a lot of votes. And so who are the followers also in the net? Can you observe it and are there scenery behind that or movements probably also? I don't think that it's easy to point to any movements. It's really the group of people that became, that was very interested in Pimphrottin and became homeless, if you will, politically after the assassination of Pimphrottin. And that has been searching ever since and you see them moving. And it's always about 27 seats in the Dutch parliament which always has 550 seats. And they first, they all voted, that group voted for the Pimphrottin party. That was leaderless and completely fell apart within a couple of months. Then they moved to the woman called Rita Verdonk for a large part but she didn't really materialise in the elections and then Gidwilders came and he got the electorate. And now it seems that these people are moving away again after the recent fall of the government that Gidwilders was supporting and it seems that a large part of his electorate is going to the socialist party now. Which is the most left-wing extreme party, if it's extreme. That's a bit of a harsh word I suppose. Okay, thanks a lot. We are now shifting from a country where the right-wing populism is still on the rise or is still in a quite active part to a country in Austria where this movement has shaped the European consciousness and awareness some years ago with the Freie FPÖ and Haider. Philipp Sonderger is from Vienna. He is a human rights activist and political adviser and he is working about this issue. So please give us some insights about the situation, the current situation, but also maybe the general tradition about it and what is going on also in the internet with the right-wing populists and right extremists. Thank you. At first I want to lose a few words on the concept of extremism because in Austria we have a different usage of this concept than in Germany. In Germany you normally have the idea of a spectrum from left to right. In the middle is the center and extremism is that what happens on the left edge and on the right edge and danger comes from these edges and the center has to defend. This concept is criticized and maybe we can talk about it later. In Austria you have different concepts that dominate the discussion. The first is based on the usage of the police. We have a Verfassungsschutz in Austria that only works on police laws and it only acts against criminal offenders that are politically motivated. They do not look for dangers that are non-criminal offenders. This is the main understanding of right-wing extremism or left-wing extremism in Austria. You have another usage. This is the scientific idea of right-wing extremism and there is a concept by a guy called Willibald Holzer. He is working for the Documentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes and he did a concept of right-wing extremism that focuses on ideological criteria like racial, glamour-folkish thinking or being violence-prone, and so on. If you talk about right-wing extremism or populism, you have to have in mind that the usage of the concept is slightly different to Germany. If you look at right-wing extremists in Austria, you could talk about three phenomena. One is right-wing extremist or neo-Nazi groups that operate outside the law, that do things that are prohibited by revisionism and incitement I think is the English translation for Verhetzung. Is that true? Yeah. So they do like producing stickers and putting them to the walls, but also taking part in paramilitary manoeuvres. One famous leader of them is standing on trial in two weeks. His name is Gottfried Küssel. These groups are mainly reached with jurisdictional means. Gottfried Küssel is a very known person because he was prosecuted 10 years ago. He's, by his own words, a national socialist, and he was also sent to jail for 10 years because he wanted to re-establish national socialism. And he did paramilitary manoeuvres in the 90s. Wer hat sich Drache took part? So the opposition leader, I will refer to him in one minute, has connection to these very militant groups. The second phenomenon is a smaller group, right-wing groups, right-wing extremism groups with connections to neo-Nazi groups that try to operate inside the law. There are small parties that try to stay inside the law and use the internet, mainly social media, to gain support with very catchy topics like anti-Islamic campaigns. This is their main strategy. I forgot to say the main strategy of the groups outside the law is to make neo-Nazi propaganda and reporting their own activities. And the third group you have is the mainstream party, FBE. They are, you would say, right-wing populists with right-wing extremist edges. Some call it right-wing extremists because of the scientific concept. And this group is very strong in social media. Hatzisch Drache's website on Facebook has 114,000 supporters. You have seen the other groups before, they had about 20, 40, whatever, a thousand. The Chancellor in Austria, his name is Werner Feinmann. He has 2,500 fans. And the guy, the Vice Chancellor, has 400. So you can measure how much support they get with their policy in this particular group of society. Thanks. Thank you, Philipp. Now Anna Gross from Berlin. She is quite active in the neo-Nazi net. She is a linguist and a cultural scientist and engaged in civic education and empowerment strategies. Please give us your concrete insights about the situation in Germany, especially in the Internet and Web 2.0. Exactly. Since we are here at Republica, now it's my turn to bring us back to the Internet. Well, the Internet, the connection of red-wing extremists on the Internet, as you've seen Europe-wide, you could say, well, it seems to be an Internet phenomenon. Maybe it's on the Internet. What is going on in the offline world maybe doesn't matter. But it does matter in a really, really big scale. And that's why we need to talk about this and we need to talk about it here. And if you go out here from here today, please talk about it with everyone else, you know, who works online and offline, because the democratic culture doesn't stop when you turn on your computer. This is where it's really important. And we all need to still work on the fact, and we all will always have to work on the fact that democratic culture needs to be practiced and practiced and practiced every day. So what does that mean concretely for people with red-wing extremism in Germany? Well, red-wing extremists, for example, put up addresses of people who are against Nazis, whether they are working in unions, whether they are working in the so-called antifa, or whether they're just some regular people who have been seen on demonstrations. Their addresses, their phone numbers, their websites, their photos, their videos, and everything is put up online. And it's very difficult to take it down because most of the time it's on international servers. And then the result of that is people get visited. They get, their buildings get tagged, saying something like, kill communists, or people get attacked on the street because they're recognized by their Facebook pictures. So if you work online against red-wing extremism, one advice on the side now, please don't use your regular name, because it might be, and don't use your clear pictures, because it might be dangerous in the end, in the offline world that's on the side. So that's one thing where it gets really, really dangerous, and it's often, like I said, difficult to take down these websites. That's one thing. On the other side, which is even more important, as we talk about social media today and social networks, if you see mobbing in commons, for example, if you see that people get attacked in commons by racists, by a red-wing extremist or something, and in a topic that doesn't have anything to do with red-wing extremism, let's say they talk about how to save the environment, and very often use topic, or the topic of child abuse, or other topics that doesn't seem to have anything to do with red-wing extremism, or politics in general, people get attacked by them, verbally, aggressively attacked, and sometimes, and unfortunately, it happens more often than you even can think of, it happens in the offline world, and that's where the real dangers are. Could you please also give us, maybe, saw some slides from Alzimone before, but what are issues, topics, but also maybe some, some, you know, surfaces, which they are using music and fashion or whatever. You know, it's, I think, when I first deal with this issue after a long time, I was quite surprised how it, the red-wing extremism is reshaped, also in their surface, in their cultural surface, in their fashion and in their attitude, and probably you can give us some insights how to discover it. I mean, in the first glance, you won't see it, probably, as an un-experienced user. That's very true. Most of the time, they come as sort of underground. One of the things is that red-wing extremists have known, have learned the Internet, as all of us have, unfortunately. They are technically very advanced. They are very advanced in knowing how to design graphics, how to produce videos that look impressive. They really know how to react to Facebook, for example, as we've seen the National Party of Germany, for example. The spokesperson of that party has his own Internet company, so he knows how to produce a video that looks impressive and that catches people. One of the real dangers online that makes it so fashionable lately is that the Nazi is only two clicks away from all of you. It's actually your neighbor. For example, the youngsters in the red-wing scene, they also, as they've changed their clothing, I mean, this typical, you see the Nazi by the skinhead and the shoes, has never really been as it is, because most of the Nazis have it in their mind and not in their approach. But the same is online, as we've just seen. They use Bart Simpson and they use other pop culture topics or fashion, for example, they all like to wear typical, maybe if you want to call it, American fashion of hoodies or sneakers or things like that. So it's very difficult to differentiate that and to see the coats. So you should always take a closer look at what, when you see a video that tells you something about the so-called truth no one ever speaks about. It might be a so-called truther who is trying to promote his ideas. There is a whole movement behind that on the social media, on the social networks, who use the technique of very highly technical, improved video taping to impress people. Because you can only watch it for like a minute or two. A few facts are only mentioned, but a lot of youngsters especially catch up on that. So what we are seeing now quite briefly is that this is not just an argumentative, a rational discourse about some topics. So it's more a cultural fight for, or a fight for cultural hegemony to use Kramshi. So in the second round, we can share some examples of counter tactics and approaches, you started it already. You have some examples from the Dutch experience, how the civil society, the state or whatever, is acting in the net against this right wing populist or right wing extremist. What is your observation? Is this a case? I think I have a bit of a sad answer to that, that civil society has not managed to do much in the Netherlands. And I think that is because if you only... Well, the old reaction, before 9-11 there was a right wing party, very even more extremist than... Much more extremist actually than Gerd Wilders has ever been. That was represented in parliament. And the reaction to this was to try to silence it and try to make it go away and try to make it irrelevant and keep it fringe. And that has certainly not worked. I think that what we have seen is very much an eruption of the fact that... Of suppressed ideologies that have been present in society and that have not been able to find a way out and that have materialized in Pimfertein at first. And when Pimfertein was murdered, the first thing that people started saying, and especially after Teo van Gogh was murdered actually, the things that people said to each other, apparently we cannot say what we think in this country. Apparently we do not have freedom of expression. And this has become really the one thing that Gerd Wilders has capitalized upon, that he has a right to say whatever he thinks and that has come to include any insult that comes out of his mouth, which happens frequently. Because he is very good at insulting people. So I think that we have not really managed to find an answer, apart from one answer that might have my proof to be very effective, which is to make him responsible for government. Whereas in Denmark this has completely failed, the economic crisis has come to our aid and he had to face the situation where he would have to take responsibility for large cuts in people's pensions, in people's whatever, kinds of incomes that government benefits they were receiving. And since the people that vote for him are mostly poorly educated and many unemployed among his voters and a lot of elderly, those people tend to lose a lot in an economic crisis, and especially by the right-wing government's ideas about how to solve the crisis through austerity. And I think that's where he panicked and had to face, he couldn't face the cutbacks. And now he's lost credibility among his electorate. That's interesting. But that's really the only thing that we have found to deal with this group, because one after the other, new people came and new leaders have been found and this group has not died away, it has not gone, managed to contain it. Maybe one more observation is also the structural ignorance within the fields of social media, cultures, probably. So you are in your friend's circle, so for me the question is, you observed a little bit Hans-Ymone, the European examples, and you showed some of it, and could you probably give us some insights, what are typical successful counter strategies, counter tactics towards that and overcome probably the ignorance of the different cultures, political cultures also. Have you some successful examples, because the first round was in parts quite scary, how successful this kind of political culture and extremism can be. This is Mikro? Yeah, it's working. What really must be said, I work on the scene on the internet for quite a time now, I think since ten years approximately, and the first thing we always did was setting on information and saying the person needs more information, they are not really knowing what they are doing, and as I said, I make a website, you write some beautiful texts with a lot of explanations, what is the problem about campaigns or anything, and you reach some people through that kind of work, but you don't reach all the people and perhaps not always the important ones. For example, we have a forum also where people can ask questions and we see we reach people who get in contact with right wing extremism because their parents and their children get in contact with the right wing extremist scene, or there are in sports or football clubs and have trainers who have contacts with the right wing scene and ask how to deal with it, so we can reach such persons over information, but what we also wanted to, the persons we also want to reach are young people, people who are for example not very highly educated because they are really also very open for prejudices or something like that, and our experience is that you need a lot of different forms and this is also why we are here and are talking to you because perhaps you are the ones who can make great videos, great graphics or something like that, and we try to do this too of course, to also reach the message to persons who do not like to read long texts, but that is very important to be aware that they are right wing extremists who are threatening democratic societies, and the good thing is when we started we felt quite alone with doing this and until now I must say this is a great development, there are a lot of individual activists but also groups who are doing constantly more things on the internet and in the social media and I am happy about everyone who is with us at this theme because for example if you use humor which is always working very well to deal with the themes, we are working for a foundation, we have to do some serious things of course and can't do everything, I am very happy if some other private activists do also things which are not always very politically correct or something like that, what we can't do, and there are a lot of examples of persons or groups who are doing very humorous and nice things and they are really also, if you have a nice video or something that recommended of course and shared and this is the best way to spread the news. So Philip, the Austrians are known at least in Germany for their humor as well. They really are. Some, yes, I think so, yeah. So, I mean the serious question is, are there successful tactics or examples that you can deal with this thriving populism in Austria for instance? I'd say we are ten years ahead but we are not successful yet but we have learned a lot. One thing we have learned is you cannot overcome right-wing extremism or populism in only fighting right-wing extremism and right-wing populism. This is the criticism on the concept I was referring to before, that the concept of the problem is on the right edge and on the left edge does not see the dangers that come from the center of society. It doesn't see the portion, it doesn't see racist concepts from the center, not to mention extremist financial products that endanger our social cohesion. So we have to also get into confrontation with the center of our society and we have to identify the problems by their political and by their ideological programs because the codes can change. The dangerous programs can come into different uniforms. They can come into Nazi uniforms, they can come into Bart Simpson hoodies and they can come also in suits and ties. So you have to identify the danger by the ideological substance. That's the main thing we learned in Austria the last ten years. Thank you. If you have some questions, remarks, we have a mic here there in the back. Does anybody want to ask something? What I'm really angry about is that we have, is that chasing of an enemy that is legal. It's really just that enemy but it's legal. We are living in a democratic world and the real problem are the people that are accepting that bullshit. It's not just the Nazis in themselves. I accept that they are idiots but I'm also really afraid about the people that are believing all that bullshit. So all the sensibilization is not chasing just an enemy but also talking to the people and the fact that people have to learn not to listen to such bullshit. Okay, this was more of a statement. Does anybody also have a question? At the moment? You can also ask later. Or any other statement? Maybe it's rather a stupid question but if I'm now want to be an activist and to start doing research on the net, I always would think, okay, now I'm researching on right wing extremism but who prevents me from the Faschungschutz who thinks that now I am a right wing extremist. So can I open every website without having to prove that I'm not a Nazi? Until now I must say yes, you can. I do this for a lot of years now and I was never really officially asked by the Faschungschutz what I'm doing there. Now it's really at the moment if you're doing research, for example, I want to have a look on the internet on right wing extremism, especially in social media, especially in international social media, as Facebook or YouTube, it's very easy to get in contact with it. You don't have to use a very popular code or something like that or a popular right wing extremist band, you will find in every social network a lot of entries and comments and things like that. So it's easy to have a look at it. So this is also a problem of course because everyone can get this easy in contact with this right wing extremist contents. But it's interesting if you like to engage again this to have a look what they are doing, of course, because we also do this as we said, because so then we know which are themes we have to work with. For example, we said we work with young people and for example the truces which were mentioned by my colleague, they really have anti-Semite thesis and something like that and they really confuse people who address and ask for example and say I do not want to believe it but this is a video, they are so convincing and how can I argue that this is not really true. So these are really difficult topics and you really can deal with this I think with argumentations and things like that. So it's also important to have a look at it. First of all that and then I would like to add also once you found the sites don't forget to report them because as soon as they reported, of course, it takes a while to take it down. We just learned that Facebook for example only has six people in Dublin to delete everything that is on German content of everything from pornography to right wing extremism and so of course it takes weeks for them to take down right wing extremist stuff. Unfortunately yet we are trying to still work with Facebook to talk about that topic but like I said report the sites, the more people report, the quicker they get taken down, the quicker the problem gets at least limited. I feel a little bit split about having whatever political propaganda on the web because of course on one side I think I don't want to see it there, I don't want people to be able to spread there in my opinion bullshit or whatever boring stuff, don't want to sound naive on the same time but at the same time I'm also quite glad to be able to recognize what they're doing, how many there are and I in that sense would want them to tell me more about them because I'd like to know what they're doing, where they show up, what people are behind it so I once stumbled about that web page from I think it was NPD, whatever Berlin Treptro, I don't know and I saw that on their website they had that area for their dates, for their activities and that was empty and I was really tempted to write them to like please fill up their dates and care for their website so that I'm able to be informed about their activities. I can comment this, I surely understand this because I'm also very interested in what they're doing of course but I think it's a difference where they're doing it. So I think it might be a thing we have to deal with in the democratic society that they have their own networks, that they have their own blogs or something like that but the question is do they have to connect in spaces where mostly non-rightwing extremist people are meeting and where they try to get into a connection and I think this is a quite important difference because I think it is a democratic value and something also companies can do that they don't spend their own space for those opinions. I'm a bit, from the Dutch perspective I think that it's also there is a danger in just removing things and trying to influence the debate from that side. I think we've lost the language in the Netherlands, the moral right if you will where we continue to be bashing right-wing extremist speech now we find ourselves in a position where we cannot do that anymore. We have lost the initiative on that and that is I think is very worrying and so I think that it's mostly not a good idea to just target the symptoms you have to dig deeper than that. I'd say it depends on how big the thing is. If it's very small it's good tactics to have an eye on it but if it's getting bigger you have to do something against it because if you have small publicity for some ideological programs then it will spread and it will find people who think this is a normal ideological program they can support however. If it's getting on a certain level and this is a tactical question not a principal question you should get rid of it from public space. I think of the FBE being a 7% party in Austria 15 years ago and today it's between 20 or 30. We will not have national socialism if they get into government again but they are really able to do very bad things there. I have a question on the intervention of third nations into these debates both in logistic and organizational support because for instance parts of the Islamophobic movement in Europe were partly supported by the public diplomacy program of the State Department or you have now, right now, this RT, the kind of Deutsche Welle of Russia supporting all these fringe groups with their social media and they are getting a lot of clicks for these extremist contents so how do you view the intervention of governmental actors for whatever agenda into building up these groups, supporting these groups, giving a larger audience to them and helping to professionalize these services? I have no idea. I don't quite understand. The question was that foreign governments or organizations, state organizations are funding extremist groups in the net, trans-nationally. Or promoting the agenda for whatever reasons. We know that this exists when we had the Cold War of course, say the German Communist Party was of course somehow supported by the East, we know that and vice versa, we had this ideological warfare between the two blocks and we always have interventions of professional actors who engineer these sort of groups even within certain societies. I think in the Netherlands it was recently disclosed that the Maoist Party was just part of the secret service in order to lobby the Chinese and to make sure that it also happened in Europe after 9-11 that the Americans tried to promote this Islamophobic thought and I noticed it back then, and I was very aware and very concerned about these very unsound sort of communications that were promoted. I really cannot comment on the Maoist Party which is very much a formerly Maoist Party in the Netherlands being sponsored by any foreign groups. I have no knowledge of that. I do know that Gid Wildus has been receiving large funds from undisclosed donors probably from foreign countries, probably from America. It's unclear what exactly that influences, but we have introduced new legislation that would force him to open up about that and he has announced he's going to refuse, so he'll be fined. So his funding is actually a big problem for him because of these kinds of measures. On the first hand I think it's pretty weird that there's a European movement of nationalistic parties. My question is, do you think that the topic of Islamophobic issue is a topic that unifies the Romanian, Italian, Spanish nationalists or not? It definitely unites them, but I think the nationalists' sites that we've just seen, their connection is they're all nationalists. So it's the paradox, but they're always paradox. There's nothing that has a straight line in their way of thinking, their views. So in that part where nationalists connect internationally, the paradox just comes out straight in your face. There's more examples for the weirdness that lies behind it, but that's one of them, thanks for pointing it out. And yes, it's definitely the topic of Islamophobia seems to connect. A lot of people who are also not really considered to be right-wing at the moment. So it definitely is a topic that needs to be focused on and needs to be addressed within... I mean now, yeah, it's definitely, right now it's a big topic. Okay, I think we are over time now or... Yeah, do you have something? We only have one final statement, or would you rather want to do a short round of... Let the audience speak. I have a short question, or maybe two. So when I come here to listen to you, I get the imagination of all the things I heard, I always heard that. I heard about the right-wing stuff on the Internet everywhere, and I hope I have to find a solution. So what can I do? And now I just think about it, and when I look back about 20 years, so maybe 20, 25 years ago it was quite easy. So on the street, there was these guys, or a skinhead, you know, a bomber jacket, and you know, okay, that's this. And I think in these last 20 years it changed a lot. So the people, so they see, or you can recognize me, or yeah, I'm a Nazi. So they change. If you go on the Internet, so today it's quite hard, or it's more difficult to recognize. So the science has changed. And I think if you make work, it would be quite harder anymore. So I'm not sure if it's the right way to block these websites, or fight against them. I think it should be more the way to inform all people about. Sorry. What's the way? What do you recommend? What to do? So I think it meant... Probably it's a good introduction to the final round. So probably some recommendations or observations. What is next, so to say, and out of your perspective? I'd say it's necessary to put stop signs. To say, this here is a stop. And to reject some positions and to delete them from the Internet and so on. But you shouldn't stop there. You should do it and then go away and look at the other things. Look how wealth is distributed, how chances is distributed in society. And also fight for a better world for all people. Not just... Occupy yourself with right-wing extremism, but go to a better living for all people and social justice and so on. So to find the right line, not to put too much energy on the stop signs, but also occupy yourself with a better future. This is the solution, I guess. I would say it's both. Totally agree to that. There are those people out there who are a threat to our democratic views. So we need to be informed about that and we need to be aware of that. While at the same time be a good example of how to do it better. So I think the social networks are the place to be using it in a very humoristic way. And to show how you live a democratic culture and how you want your life to be lived in a democratic way. So both at the same time. Put the stop sign, but also show where the stop sign ends and how you want it to be. I would really try to focus on what is causing all the discontent. I think there's a large group in society that has been getting the wrong end of the stick, if you will. They have been impoverished and see that their future is slipping away from them. Even if, whether that's accurate or not, that's what they're experiencing. And they feel that they're being replaced by a new class and they recognize them as being from different countries. And are unwilling or unable to integrate really well. And that really gets the anger going. I think that's why we need to focus our attention mostly. Yes, I was asked to do it short, so I will do it short. I think we will not in our lifetime overcome racism or antisemitism or something like that. So it's our aim always to strengthen the people who are not right wing extremists. And have a good feeling for all people living together and make these people more visible and make them more powerful. And this also makes much more fun than working with the right wing extremists themselves. We usually do not want really to argue and listen to arguments. So I wish that a lot of you will work with us together for society where we all can live. The next panel is waiting. She is quite nervous here. Just if you go on the stand from the BPB, we have a flu term magazine on Nazis. So you can read it and get some good examples as well. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
extremism, right wing populism is not anything against right wing extremism on the internet and to we get in contact with persons like this one only Germany but Europe and if the right wing together in the real world but on the online The Strache from Austria here or for example this with and this is really not only over Europe but one theme which we're close now is what can we do that we are all users on the social networks and well on a number of right wing blogs or call it right-wing extremists because of the has not managed to do much in the Netherlands.