“There is no point in showing them statistics on IQ by race or the excessive power of the Jews.
It's best to save that for later ”or“ Avoid using a swastika as a profile picture or displaying a Hitler reference in your username when you first approach. ”These two tips come from different Recruitment “manuals” for would-be extremists spotted in newsgroups on the Telegram messaging app by Tech Against Terrorism, a program of the Executive Directorate of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee, reported The Guardian on Monday (January 18th).
Maieutics of hatred
They call themselves “Converting a Curator” or the “Complete Conversion Guide” and they've been swarming Telegram ever since Twitter and Facebook started cleaning up users who have expressed sympathy for the rioters that have stormed. the Capitol on January 6.
The downfall of Parler, the social network of choice for supporters of Donald Trump, has further accentuated the exodus of supporters of the Trumpian cause, from the most moderate to the most determined, in search of a new digital El Dorado.
On Telegram, which claims greater freedom of expression, the most uninhibited fringe of the far right wants to take advantage of the windfall to swell its ranks by applying the precepts of their “manuals” to these newcomers.
One, found by Tech Against Extremism in a discussion group of over 1,700 members, presents, for example, the “seven steps” to a successful conversion.
This guide recommends, in particular, to start by identifying the best candidates for radicalization, then asking them seemingly innocuous questions such as "what exactly are the Conservatives keeping?"
or “Is it a coincidence that Hollywood, the multinationals and the media are all against us?”.
Then these extremist “instructors” must get their followers to point out the “right” answers that coincide with the racist and anti-Semitic view of this movement.
This mad maieutics must lead to the extremist apprentice accepting, for example, that the “media and Hollywood” are in the hands of a “cosmopolitan elite” (classic anti-Semitic reference to the “Jewish conspiracy”) or that the aim of the conservatives is to safeguard “white America”.
Once the little seed of hatred is planted, the aspiring “recruit” is redirected to very specific content on YouTube, which is supposed to reinforce their extremist beliefs.
YouTube's algorithm then takes over.
By the game of recommendations, the site “always offers more videos in the same vein or even more hateful”, explains Bharath Ganesh, specialist of the extreme right on the Internet at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), contacted by France 24. For this expert, the Google platform continues “to play an essential role in this radicalization despite the efforts of moderation”.
The “redpilling” or Matrix with extremist sauce
“The current proliferation of these far-right indoctrination manuals on Telegram is very worrying,” said Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, interviewed by the Guardian.
“It demonstrates the capacity of this movement to adapt to events and its rapidity to jump at the slightest opportunity”, specifies Bharath Ganesh.
Because these textbooks are only variations for the post-Trump era of similar guides "which have already been circulating for years on Twitter, 4Chan or Reddit", notes the researcher from the University of Groningen.
These extremists even have a term for this recruiting technique: “redpilling” (“giving the red pill”).
This is a reference to the movie The Matrix, in which the hero must choose between a blue pill and another red one that will allow him to see the reality of the world.
On the extremist Web, “this concept was first developed by anti-feminist movements to awaken new recruits to the alleged reality of 'brainwashing' of men by women,” Bharath Ganesh explains.
White supremacists then applied it to their own paranoid view of the world in which there would be a secret plan to carry out a “white genocide”.
On Telegram, Tech Against Terrorism has, moreover, found “manuals” explicitly referring to this concept, such as “the exhaustive guide to redpilling”.
In most of these documents, the authors regard the “censorship of conservative voices” by social media as a blessing.
“We must take advantage of this because the Big Techs made a big mistake by exiling all these individuals to the one place [Telegram] where we will have access to them without limit or filter.
It is a mistake that they will sorely regret ”, one of these guides reads.
Haro on Telegram?
Tech Against Terrorism is not far from sharing this opinion.
"If traditional social networks are too quick to ban users who post disturbing, but not necessarily illegal, messages, it will simply push these internet users into the arms of extremists who are just waiting to radicalize them even further," says Adam Hadley at the Guardian.
This fear is mainly based on the idea "that Telegram is known to have a less strict moderation policy than the big social networks or competitors like WhatsApp", recognizes Bharath Ganesh.
But that's changing, says this expert.
The messaging service has, for example, closed “dozens of extremist newsgroups promoting violence in the United States,” noted the American channel NBC.
But Telegram represents a much more pernicious danger in the fight against radical abuses.
As a “niche” messaging service, it can very quickly lock the user into a “bubble” of extremism.
On Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, there is always a chance that these people will be confronted with content or other users who do not share their vision of the world and make them think.
This is much less true on Telegram and, in this sense, the “risk is that the process of radicalization will be faster and deeper there”, summarizes Bharath Ganesh.
For this expert, it is a “risk that must however be accepted” because the alternative - of social networks which would not clean up on their platform - is worse.
“By banning these extremist voices from major social networks, we reduce what these people need most: the audience,” he notes.
The goal of these extremists is to make more and more people swallow the “red pill”, and not to evolve in a small world where everyone, in the end, has already taken it.
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