Global extremism, as close as your keyboard

Opinion

An arrest in Winnipeg has provided yet another reminder of just how much extremist attitudes have spread across the world.

A 19-year-old Winnipeg man, Nevin Thunder Young, was arrested Jan. 12 on 26 counts of mischief. He is accused of spray-painting antisemitic graffiti on buildings in Charleswood over a three-month period.

The graffiti also included the initials M.K.Y., associated with a racially motivated violent extremist group calling itself the Manic Murder Cult. After the initial charges, Young was also charged with terrorism-related offences.

Police have pointed to online radicalization as a possible motivation for the incidents. While the charges against Young have yet to be proven in a court of law, the story of a troubled young person turning extremist after exposure to such groups online is sadly not unique.

As University of Winnipeg adjunct professor Kawser Ahmed told the Free Press earlier this month, extremist groups are turning to the world wide web to recruit, taking advantage of vulnerable people who bear different grievances and weaponizing those feelings against minority groups. They have flooded online spaces, including social media platforms and even video games, to seek out potential recruits.

It’s a chilling thing to imagine that a faraway gang might be able to effectively indoctrinate a person thousands of kilometres away without ever having to even meet them in person. And yet, that is what’s happening around the world.

Sometimes, steering people towards such groups even appears to be intentional.

An NBC News report from June of last year revealed that YouTube, the video-streaming site turned to by countless people for everything between the artistic and the inane, had a bad habit.

A study by a London, U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a non-profit organization, found YouTube’s recommendation algorithm began to direct users to right-leaning videos even if that user had not previously engaged with any such content.

“The researchers also found that YouTube recommended videos including sexually explicit content to the child account and videos featuring influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with human trafficking and rape (allegations that he has denied) in Romania, even though he is banned from the platform,” the NBC report states.

Extremist spaces are proliferating online — while they may recruit through mass-appeal platforms such as major social media sites or online gaming communities, platforms such as Telegram have become a haven for extremist points of view seeking to consolidate their followers in a place where the echo chamber can have its fullest effect. It is bad enough to consider how many adults get roped into these communities — a phenomenon we have seen earlier with the QAnon movement, which in hindsight seems less like a one-off and more like a harbinger of extremism to come.

It’s difficult to fight a rising tide, especially when mainstream platforms seem to have no intention of stopping the process. Facebook has done away with fact-checking and is leaving users to their own devices; the Elon Musk-owned X has become a hotbed of extremist attitudes since his takeover of the platform; and YouTube, according to research, points adults and children alike toward extremists with little to no nudging.

So, what to do?

Be vigilant. More than ever, we must take note of what worlds we, and our children, are being sucked into when they turn to a computer, or phone, or tablet. Be willing to recognize who in our circles may be more susceptible to these messages, and attempt to turn them from those dark paths. It won’t be easy, but it’s worth doing.

Hate movements are spreading their tendrils across the world, and they’re not taking a day off.

Neither can the rest of us.