How Neo-Nazis Are Taking Advantage of the Covid-19 Crisis
By: Anahide Tinghir
Tags: Covid 19, Freedom Of Speech, Terrorism, Society, Freedom

How Neo-Nazis Are Taking Advantage of the Covid-19 Crisis

In March 2020, the Western world finally took the measure of the Covid-19 pandemic and applied the first restrictions to contain its spread.

Quarantines implemented all around the globe are, for many, a source of anxiety or even depression. Isolation, fear for loved ones, time spent behind screens, or worrying about restricted freedoms… According to the sociologist Cynthia Miller Idriss, the climate was perfect for growing conspiracy theories, and extremists didn’t wait to use them for propaganda and recruiting purposes.

« This dynamic creates a perfect storm for extremist recruitment and radicalization. Extreme isolation and increased online presence on gaming platforms, social media, and more, creates growing possibilities for exposure to extremist content and expands the gateways that can lead to extremist radicalizations ».

The ultra-right, or far-right, is more dangerous than the mainstream extreme-right. It is both distinguished and characterized by the use of violence. Those groups are described as “terrorists” by the organizations in charge of tracking them.

Ultra-right partisans believe in white nationalism, white supremacism, cultural nationalism, and neo-Nazism. Their ideologies center around racism, ultra-nationalism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, and opposition to equality and democratic principles.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Tech Against Terrorism observed social media infiltration by neo-Nazi recruiters, who take advantage of massively shared conspiracy theories to sell their doctrines. Born of cooperation between tech companies and public authorities, Tech Against Terrorism’s mission is to monitor the terrorist threat on internet platforms and support companies and institutions in addressing it.

How Did the Covid-19 Crisis Become a Vehicle for Neo-Nazi Ideology?

Conspiracy theories are not the preserve of neo-Nazis. So many theories are circulating on social media that it is getting difficult to distinguish what is real and what isn’t.

Crises are invariable vectors of fake news and speculations of all kinds. Of course, the virus is an inexhaustible source for them. The European Think Thank Fondalpol listed a few of the made-up plots that became popular in 2020:

People believe that the coronavirus is linked to the development of 5G. China would have used this new technology to spread the virus across the planet.

The virus is said to be a tool for implementing social control. As always, a small group of people is plotting to take power over the planet. They would use the virus as a pretext for imposing social control over humanity.

The virus would be a biological weapon, discriminating against certain parts of the population, races or ethnicities, to eliminate them.

And, of course, the one we’ve heard the most about, QAnon and the Deep State. These theories have been around since 2017 but they have grown remarkably since the beginning of 2020. On Facebook, between January and April, QAnon gathered more interactions than WHO guidelines: 80 million for QAnon against 6.2 million for the WHO. Meanwhile, on Twitter, the hashtag #QAnon increased by 21%.

Beyond being false, those conjectures are rooted in anti-government and xenophobic ideas -especially the last two, often implying the existence of a global-elite conspiracy to control mankind. Over the course of two weeks, Blackbird AI studied 40 million posts related to covid-19 on social media. Approximately 18 million were found to push harmful narratives to the public.

Although they aren’t necessarily responsible for their creation, Neo-Nazis thrives in plot theories. They love exploiting conspirational narratives, as it gives a lot of credit to their idea of accelerationism.