Screenshot: Jimmie Åkesson, Leader of the Sweden Democrats, August 2018. YouTube.
Recent years have seen the far
and extreme right wing building international coalitions to disseminate
propaganda in an attempt to bring the public around to their talking points,
including the development of large networks of online activists and trolls who
deliver sophisticated coordinated campaigns. These digital militias operate
across a range of platforms, but have especially come to be associated with the
‘Politically Incorrect’ (/pol/) boards of the 4chan and 8chan sites.
Such campaigning became
particularly pronounced in Donald Trump’s campaign to become the Republican’s
presidential nominee, and his subsequent presidential race. Overnight fringe
memes like Pepe the Frog became public talking points as these troll armies
shitposted themselves to fame, flooding social media with a range of far-right
talking points and conspiracy theories designed to boost Donald Trump’s image
and denigrate his opponents. Such activity also aligned with Kremlin
objectives, and the different groups of internet trolls enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship, disseminating and provoking a range of complementary
disinformation.
Following the US election these
communities continued their activity, seeking to replicate their perceived
success in 2016. In the run-up to the French election we observed American
activists engaging in a range of activities designed to sway the public in
favour of the Front Nationale. Some of these were poorly
considered, with American activists attempting to replicate their strategy
from the US election with little consideration for the
French context. However, there were more serious efforts, including the
dissemination of Macron’s leaked emails which occurred with potential support
from Russia. Perhaps most interestingly US alt-right activists outlined
sophisticated propaganda efforts which included the microtargeted dissemination of disinformation.[1] Such activity also aligned with Kremlin
objectives, and the different groups of internet trolls enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship,
This trend continued into the
German elections where sophisticated communities of German and American trolls
coordinated on the Discord chat platform, organising themselves into
pseudo-military structures and engaged in prolonged activity to discredit
Angela Merkel and promote the AfD.[2]
Here a clear dynamic was observed whereby individuals were recruited on
platforms such as 4chan before being directed to closed communities,
highlighting how individuals travel through digital ecosystems as they become
more actively involved in radical activity; something which was also observed
in the Italian elections, albeit with limited impact.[3]
A cooling trend?
Most recently the Institute for
Strategic Dialogue has been engaged in a research project designed to track the
extent of such activity in the Swedish election, the results of which are
published today. Importantly although we identified some instances of
coordination this was of low quality, and ultimately failed to translate into effective
campaigning, potentially because of an inability to galvanise or enthuse
Swedish activists to engage in this activity, suggesting that the trend for
international coalition building which could be observed in 2016 – 2017 seems
to be cooling.
In order to examine the extent to
which users of 4chan’s /pol/ board sought to influence the Swedish election we
analysed all threads posted in the month proceeding the election which mentioning
Sweden. Analysis of these discussions demonstrates that the election was the
most widely discussed topic in this period, with 44% of threads analysed
directly engaging with the topic. 17% of these threads contained a call to
action inviting individuals to directly engage in activity to disrupt the
election. Threads which explicitly contained a call to action ranged from
general requests that individuals share a piece of content on social media to
more organised Swedish Election General (SWEG) threads, which mirror the format
and lay-out of similar discussions which took place in the run-up to the German
and French elections.
These contain a set format and a
call to action for activists as well as clear objectives and tactics including
the dissemination of online propaganda, the use of offline media, and efforts
to on-board new individuals to the broader metapolitical movement. These
threads made up the majority of all calls to action which suggests that there
was some organised effort made to galvanise broader support for grassroots
information operations, potentially originating in Denmark.
Interestingly, individuals on
4chan were not directed to closed chat channels, as was observed in the Italian
and German elections. This could be because of intense press coverage of this
topic in the German election, with the result that activists are more cautious about
infiltration, a possibility which seems only too likely when it is considered
that researchers have been able to identify and infiltrate communications
channels which have been set up for the purpose of election disruption.
Screenshot: Swedish Election General (SWEG) threads.Whilst the presence of such discussion
demonstrates some effort to galvanise grassroots activity there is little
evidence to suggest that this desire for coordination translated into
campaigning, effective or ineffective. Indeed discussion on 4chan after the
election blamed the lack of electoral success by the AfS and SD on the
international far-right’s inability to engage in effective communications
campaigns. In the
Swedish instance this dynamic appears to have been reversed, with the
international far-right attempting to galvanise domestic groups.
When it is considered that a
large proportion of these threads appear to be being created outside of Sweden
this also provides an opportunity to reflect on the overall efficacy of such
activity. Whilst there have clearly been highly coordinated and sophisticated
efforts to use memetic warfare in the past, these relied largely on committed
domestic activist groups who could draw on international support. In the
Swedish instance this dynamic appears to have been reversed, with the
international far-right attempting to galvanise domestic groups. This is
perhaps related to the activity of far-right parties in Sweden as well. Whilst
the Trump and AfD campaigns both provided some explicit or implicit recognition
of grass-roots digital campaigning, there is little evidence to
demonstrate that AfS or SD politicians actively courted digital militias.
It is evident that the efficacy
of digital meme ops was stymied in the instance of the Swedish election,
largely due to an inability to effectively galvanise or organise a committed activist
base. Whilst these efforts demonstrate an attempt to replicate a tactical
playbook which appears to have been effective in the past and are thus worthy
of our attention, the inability of the global extreme right to effectively
mobilise perhaps represents a cooling of the international campaigning we have
previously seen.
This is worthy of further study;
if it can be established why these tactics weren’t effective, this provides us
with an opportunity for counter-hate strategists to attempt to replicate these
barriers to frustrate future far-right activism.
[1]
Davey, Saltman, and Birdwell, ‘The mainstreaming of far-right extremism online
and how to counter it: a case study on UK, US and French elections’, in Trumping
the Mainstream: The conquest of democratic politics by the populist radical
right (Routledge 2018)
[2]
Davey and Ebner, The Fringe Insurgency, ISD 2017
[3]
Ebner and Davey, Mainstreaming Mussolini, ISD 2018