Homegrown militias, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists have been using music, gaming and social media platforms as hubs for recruitment for many years. Government reports, and reporting by the media on the use of social media by homegrown domestic terrorists has grown exponentially over the past several years. In late February, The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report titled “COUNTERING VIOLENT EXTREMISM: FBI and DHS Need Strategies and Goals for Sharing Threat Information with Social Media and Gaming Companies”
(https://www.gao.gov/video/countering-domestic-violent-extremism-fbi-dhs-sharing-threat-information).
A December 2023 report by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) titled “Five Things About the Role of the Internet and Social Media in Domestic Radicalization” (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-role-internet-and-social-media-domestic-radicalization), spelled out “how the internet and social media may both promote and prevent radicalization outcomes.”
Before examining the NIJ’s finding, lets take a step back and look at reporting on the increased use of the Internet by extremist right wing groups since the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Growth in Extremist Groups Recruiting on Social Media
“Violent anti-government extremists are developing communication strategies to circumvent recent clampdowns by the government and the tech industry in order to continue recruiting new members and promote their views online, according to a new confidential memo by the Department of Homeland Security,” ABC News’ Will Steakin and Josh Margolin reported in March of 2021 (https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/militia-extremists-developing-strategies-work-social-media-crackdown/story?id=76774620).
The report, by the Department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, warned that "some militia violent extremists (MVEs) are actively disguising their online social media outreach to promote violent anti-government narratives, connect with others espousing violent extremist views, and share tactical information by using layered communications," Steakin and Margolin pointed out.
These groups' efforts to "’obfuscate their recruitment of others into these tighter-knit online communities using innocuous postings in public groups’ would likely hinder social media companies' efforts to crack down on violent militia groups on their platforms,” ABC News noted.
Groups like the Boogaloo Boys and Three Percenters are becoming more savvy in their recruitment strategies. According to the report there are three planned stages: “recruiting via popular public apps like Facebook or Twitter, then moving to emerging networks like Parler or MeWe, then finally transitioning to ‘official private membership group(s)’ on secure encrypted messaging applications like Telegram and Signal, which have grown even more popular among extremists following the Capitol riot.”
As the process develops more deeply, recruits are then, according to the DHS memo, exposed to more "frequent communication of violent extremist messaging, sharing of weapons and tactical guides, and other tactics, techniques, and procedures."
A 2021 investigative report titled The Domestic Extremist Next Door: How Digital Platforms Enable the War Against American Government, from the Digital Citizens Alliance (Digital Citizens) and the Coalition for a Safer Web (CSW) warned that “social media platforms are allowing domestic extremists that peddle the possibility of violent action to organize, recruit, and plan” future actions (https://www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/clientuploads/directory/Reports/DCA_The_Domestic_Extremist_Next_Door.pdf).
While Facebook clearly has guidelines regarding extremist groups, a “new report from Avaaz, a nonprofit civic advocacy group, found that extremist groups continue to thrive on Facebook despite the bans, as evidenced by over 260 Facebook pages from groups that Avaaz said ‘spread violence-glorifying material in the heat of the 2020 election’” ABC News reported. [See “Militia Groups Ramping Up Recruiting Using Facebook and Facebook Isn't Doing Very Much to Stop It” @ https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/6/2239218/-Militia-Groups-Ramping-Up-Recruiting-Using-Facebook.]
National Institute for Justice’s “Five Things About the Role of the Internet and Social Media in Domestic Radicalization”
Here are the NIJ’s Five findings:
1, The connection between radicalization and the internet is complex and depends on individual and offline factors. – “virtual engagement and exploitation may be both a cause and a consequence of radicalization and will vary based on the individual.”
2. Individuals engage with violent extremist materials and online networks for various reasons. – “Individuals associated with extremist ideologies use and interact within virtual spaces for many reasons and with different goals. Some engage to gain information, others engage to disseminate information, and others engage to be social and interact with others.”
3. Spending more time online and on specific platforms may increase an individual’s risk of engaging with hateful content. – “Research shows that individuals (especially youths) who spend more time online and use certain websites (e.g., YouTube) may face an increased likelihood of being exposed to or engaging with hateful or potentially radicalizing content.”
4. An individual’s online interactions with others may increase their risk of exposure to hateful or potentially radicalizing content. – “Online interaction with both friends and strangers increases the risk of exposure to hateful content. Research on youths finds that online interaction with close friends was associated with an individual being more likely to see hate content.”
5. An individual’s beliefs, characteristics, and behaviors may increase their risk of exposure to hateful or potentially radicalizing content. – “Certain individual factors — race, political views, and awareness of what constitutes hateful content and risky internet behaviors — may affect the extent to which individuals (and youths in particular) recognize the potential harm in the content they consume online and their reaction to and level of engagement with it.”
Countering and exposing homegrown domestic terrorist sites on the Internet is extremely challenging. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole; while one group might get discovered and removed from a social media platform, another group quickly pops up in its place. However, removing these threats should not be viewed as a series of futile, Sisyphean tasks.
