The Internet is a breeding ground for fertility ... The far-right war against Muslims is getting fiercer

Al Jazeera Net - London

The alarm of the accuracy of the report "The state of hate" for the year 2020 issued by the British "optimism not hate" (Hope not Hate), about the growing influence of the extreme right, whether on the ground or in the virtual world, which has turned into a breeding ground for supporters of the populist right to spread their racist ideas. .

The report, whose summaries were presented at a symposium in the capital, London, shows that Muslims are at the heart of the incitement strategy by supporters of the extreme right in the world and in Britain in particular, because the supervisors of the report confirmed that the United Kingdom still includes the most dangerous figures representing the right wing and the activist Significantly online.

The report reveals that half of the reported hate crimes in the UK were against Muslims, registering a record increase in the number of assaults that reached in 2019 to 3530, to increase by 593% compared to the number of cases in 2018.

The 170-page document states that increasing racist attacks against Muslims in Britain witnessed an upward trend immediately after the terrorist attack on the Christ Church Mosque in New Zealand, due to the systematic campaign by elements of the far-right to raise the incitement of Muslims, using This is new technologies on social media platforms.

Islamophobia and the Internet
The report stops a lot when the extreme right is doing it on the Internet, after it has become the space for this trend of spreading hate.

British police recorded 89 anti-Muslim crimes online, while the report provides other statistics for "Tel Mama", which monitored 327 cases of cybercrime inciting British Muslims.

This difference between the number of cases registered with the British police and documented by anti-hate associations, explained by the report that security still reduces the risk of some phenomena on the Internet, such as promoting false ideas about Muslims or spreading false news against them.

The report believes that these behaviors are the main entrance to the extreme right to win new sympathizers, and therefore must be dealt with with the required seriousness.

To show the importance of paying more attention to what is being promoted on the Internet in inflammatory messages, the report markets the model message that the terrorist left behind the massacre of the Christ Church massacre in New Zealand, a language that is inspired by the ideas of the racist right, and includes a significant phrase in which the criminal addresses all sympathizers of his ideas, stating that "the truth Only on the internet. "

The authors of the report explain the extreme right's focus on the Internet with their awareness that the terrorist action does not stop with the final shot, but it extends in time through media coverage and images spread on the communication sites, strategies for dividing opinions and not pushing towards condemning the terrorist attack as much as ideas spread. Justifications for the perpetrator of the attack, such that what he did "is a reaction to what Muslims are doing."

And based on a study by the British University of Cardiff about the relationship between hate messages against Muslims on Twitter and its impact on the behavior of extreme right-wingers, the report reaches an interaction between the rise of racist content against Muslims in social media platforms and the increase in cases of actual attacks on them in the British capital London, By doing so, "spreading hate online turns into a path that moves from the virtual world to real physical assault."

Systematic incitement
Incitement against Muslims has moved from individual behavior to systematic work led by groups empowered by the techniques of social networking sites, and this warns the report of its extreme seriousness, providing an example of a veiled woman who was present in the attack that took place near the British Parliament in March 2017, and these appear The woman walks next to a victim and uses her phone.

This image, experts of the "optimism, not hate" organization, followed the path of its publication, to show that the first account that it published has put with it a comment that the woman is passing by the victim and is indifferent to what happened, and this is a totally false allegation denied by the author who confirmed that she was shocked by what happened, She was trying to call an ambulance to help the victim.

The British organization's investigations into this case revealed that a Twitter account was the first to publish the photo with a provocative comment on the veiled woman, who is one of 2,700 accounts on the same platform, owned by a Russian group that has been active since 2017, and aims to spread hatred against Muslims.

The report also highlighted the growing role of secret groups on the Facebook platform, in garnering more sympathizers with racist ideas and hatred against Muslims, where extremist activists operate with a strategy of feeling the pulse and then grooming, by publishing a controversial topic without showing anti-Muslims.

After that, the reactions and comments are followed up, and each owner of the commentary who holds extremist ideas is joined to closed groups, in which he finds himself with a group that shares the same ideas, which encourages him to move forward in spreading racism against Muslims through social media.