Being involved in anti hate activism in the year that will see Article 50 triggered in Britain, Donald Trump take the presidency in the USA and – potentially – several far right governments established in Europe is no walk in the park. Make no mistake, these are challenging times. Hate is encroaching into the fabric of our communities and although the “alt right” are far more of a minority group than the column inches devoted to them would suggest they are, they do present a very genuine problem in the world today.

It takes a certain kind of person to be effective in this kind of activism. A balance is needed between having the compassion to want to do something constructive in the fight against hate whilst simultaneously being resilient enough to take the abuse that goes with the territory. It can be a hard balance to achieve. Lose the empathy and you lose the motivation but become too empathetic and the sheer volume of hate out there can become overwhelming.

Abuse is probably the key issue facing anyone involved with anti hate activism. Although the most high profile forms of abuse would be the targeted campaigns against high profile figures (think ranty little fascist Joshua Bonehill imprisoned for his relentless anti semitic harassment of MP Luciana Berger) or perhaps the street mob violence against Antifascist protests, in the main the abuse takes place online from anonymous accounts.

Online abuse can take the form of personal harassment (body shaming, racism, Islamophobia etc.), “d0xing” (revealing the real life identity of an anonymous account), bullying and message attacks ranging from unpleasant comments to serious death threats. It can be problematic in the fact that it does drive some well intentioned people away – I have lost track of the times people have told me they support what our group do but don’t want to be involved as they couldn’t take the stress of the abuse. It is also a concern in the sense that we lose a lot of man hours due to being pestered by far right morons.

One of our founders talks of the very real threat of “fash fatigue” where people get ground down by the daily diet of hate they are exposed to on the internet. His recommendation is that anybody serious about anti hate activism takes at least one day off a week to keep themselves mentally fit for the work they want to achieve.

There are also practical issues which the anti hate activist will almost certainly encounter at some stage. Funding is a problem, there are limited resources granted to this sort of activism and the funding that is available will be (and to be fair, rightly) channelled into the most established and/or government approved organisations.  Time is also an issue as many anti hate activists will also have a day job to pay the bills. After a full day at work it can be a big ask to expect people to spend their evenings engaging with haters, writing articles, creating graphics and pursuing the anti hate agenda in their precious evening time.

Speaking to people involved with anti hate activism there is a clear frustration about the parameters that the work must be conducted within. The morality of using legally dubious tactics, albeit for a good cause, warrants an article on its own but most people working in this kind of environment face personal conflicts as to whether a bad deed can be justified by a good outcome. Individuals will all draw the line in different places but for most of us there is an irritation that there are methods of fighting hate we are honour bound not to use. While neither my group nor I personally advocate breaking the law I do find it hard to condemn those who are effective in bringing hate criminals to justice with the use of these tactics.

There is a danger when fighting hate that the anti hater may become the very thing they oppose. Many Antifascists and anti hate activists are so vehemently committed to their ideals that their entrenched position against the far right can lead to opening their own hearts to hatred. I would liken this to the example of extremist animal rights activists, so blinded by their genuine (and very worthy) motivation to save animals that they go too far and adopt aggressive and dangerous methods of activism that threaten and endanger human life.

It is hard to take a moderate approach when dealing with people who spend all day on the internet spouting some of the stuff we see on a regular basis.  We come across organised attempts to attack individuals and communities, haters gloating over murdered public figures, memes mocking Holocaust survivors, jokes about “gassing” and “ovening” Jews, fake news to undermine and discredit Muslim communities and racist, sexist, xenophobic, Anti Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic and disability discrimination abuse. One might argue that hatred of this magnitude deserves much the same back. However I feel strongly that anti hate activists need to retain the moral high ground. When we fight fire we fire we become the very thing we are trying to eradicate. Frustrating as it can be for those desperately wanting to make an impact the best way to fight hate remains through reasoned discussion, education and the legal system.

I’d draw a literary parallel between an individual entering the world of anti hate activism for the first time and Lewis Carroll’s Alice going through her looking glass. It is a complete perception shift and a mirror into an alternate reality that exists by the side of but not fully part of the real world. This is particularly relevant in relation to the internet where social media sites have made it possible for people to have a voice without having to put their name to it. The big danger of course is that there is no going back. The way you view the world will have changed forever. As Emile Autumn sagely observes “Awareness is the enemy of sanity. Once you hear the voices, they never stop.”

When the social conscience is awakened there is an inherent danger that the mundane ceases to matter. Often I see colleagues and associates mocked for the hours they spend logged into Twitter and Facebook, engaging, debating and fighting with haters. It can be almost a kind of guilt complex, that every minute spent doing something other than fighting hate is a minute wasted. Rationally this isn’t true of course and on a practical level it is just as important to keep physically, mentally and spiritually healthy by having a well-rounded life. But I do understand why some people who take that step into the murky world of fighting hate find logging off their computer almost impossible at times.

I think for me, speaking personally, the challenge I find the hardest is coming to terms with the understanding that I could always do more. Every time I give to charity, write an article that helps raise anti hate awareness, get a hate account suspended on Twitter I become aware that more could be done. I could give more, I could fight more, I could do more.

I cannot help but recall to mind the portrayal of Oscar Schindler at the end of Spielberg’s epic film when he becomes painfully aware that no matter how many lives he had saved he could have made more sacrifices and saved others. I think those of us who log on day in and day out to do what we do can really identify with that. We may never succeed in changing the world but we will never have to live with the regret of wishing we had tried to have a go at it.

Image from Electron Dance

Roanna

Roanna is one of the founder members of Resisting Hate. She is the author of the majority of our articles, and also publishes a blog on Huffington Post UK

http://www.resistinghate.org

Newton told us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and although the science behind that may elude the author of this article, the premise doesn’t. The third law of motion is surprisingly apropos to the wave of Anti Hate activism on social media.

Online hate was initially confined in the main to anonymous message boards like 4Chan and specialised hate forums like Stormfront which catered to an extremist minority of a shared ideology. As hate views became slowly popularised, partly through groups like Britain First and their 1.5 million Facebook followers and partly through a changing tide in world politics, the wave of hate spread from small isolated sites to enter the mainstream world of social media.

It was as a reaction to this increase in online hate that started anti hate groups and anti hate activists to mobilise against the growing voice of hate which most frequently took the form of racism, Islamophobia, Homophobia and Anti Semitism.

At a recent seminar I attended, the lecturer described the far right as “groupuscular” by which he meant they are a structure of small mainly unconnected groups who share a common ideology but with no umbrella organisation or hierarchy. The same can be said for anti hate activism which broadly falls into four separate categories which it may be beneficial to briefly define.

1. Individual activists. Individuals with strong personal convictions who speak up and challenge hate on social media. Often some of the best memes (which play a massive part on social media in getting people engaged with issues) have come from individuals who have had their imagination sparked by topical trends.
2. Informal alliances. Groups with no inherent structure but who are composed of individuals who have formed organic alliances. These individuals generally tend to be anonymous. They have little to no accountability due to this anonymity so often use tactics to fight hate that more formal groups would be unable to get sanctioned.
3. Structured informal groups. This is where Resisting Hate would fit in. Organised tactics, specific vision and plan, brand awareness but no government/private funding. These groups tend to be independently managed with varying degrees of anonymity and open membership.
4. Formalised anti hate groups. These usually have a strong recognisable brand and reputable funding sources with public figures involved and high accountability. A good example of an anti hate group like this would be Hope not Hate.

The challenges faced by the different types of anti hate activists vary substantially. For an individual activist it can be hard to get their views heard above the melee. They are also likely to be very dependent on one or two social media accounts, the loss of which can have a devastating effect on the impact they can make (and we all know how much Twitter enjoy suspending non far right accounts…)

Our group often work quite closely with the informal alliances category, most of whom prefer to be addressed by their pseudonyms. The challenge for these groups is credibility and reach. They have the ability to get information, often through non legal methods like hacking and social engineering but what they do not have is the infrastructure to get that information to a wider audience themselves or, due to their need for anonymity, the contacts in media to do it for them.

The fourth category, the formal group are expected to be totally open with regard to their daily workings. Their behaviour and the behaviour of those associated with them has to be exemplary. Their accounts are published and scrutinised by the media, their figureheads are well known enough for any scandals to hit the headlines and they often have to reframe their views to make them palatable and accessible to the mainstream media and Parliament.

The primary challenge they face is doing the day job in a completely transparent environment. The frustrations of this can be red tape, delays and targeted opposition from organisations with differing views. Although these groups do often receive both public and private funding it is rarely enough to meet the running costs and it is not unusual to see formal groups resorting to crowdfunding and donations from individuals to make ends meet.
Groups like ours in the third category probably face more challenges than any of the others. We do not have the funding available to the formal groups and although we share their aspirations of reaching a wide audience with self written articles, art work and infographics this can be harder without a regular source of income.

We do not have public figures who can guarantee that an article they write will be published in the press but we do have founders open enough with their identity and who are enough of a thorn in the side of the far right to receive regular threats of personal violence. Sadly, unlike the bigger formal groups, we do not have widespread access to police protection.

We have to be more cautious than the anonymous groups when it comes to staying on the right side of the law and need to be constantly aware that a public association with people who may make the choice to cross over that legal line could be damaging to the legitimacy of our brand.
However, that said, we also have the most opportunities of any of the groups and it is the informal structured groups like ours (and the many others out there) who glue together the interdependency for the informal organisation of anti hate activism as a whole. What we provide is the bridge between the informal alliances and the formal groups. We can legitimise information from the informal alliances, independently research it and pass it to our contacts in the formal groups. Equally we can take key priorities from the formal groups and ask our contacts in the informal alliances to help us obtain information that the formal groups would simply not have access to.

There is a real interconnectedness between the informal structured groups. In most industries groups with such a similar ideology and strategy would be seen as competitors but in the world of anti hate the exact opposite is true. We work together. We share each other’s posts and tweets and help to get one another’s messages out. Although this is still going back to that earlier definition of “groupuscular” as in there is no formal mechanism behind the working together, the linked social conscience gives every group a voice beyond that of its own reach. Again this can really benefit the informal alliances as their association with the informal structured groups can get their hard won information to the audience it deserves. And again it benefits the formal groups, some of whom may have a strong infrastructure in their own right but who by their very nature are not part of that unspoken union between the informal structured groups and benefit from reaching the wider audience that the interlinked groups can achieve.

I think the key message is that all these different forms of anti hate activism are relevant and valuable in the battle against hate. Each brings something different to the table, different tactics, different perceptions, different abilities. Each has evolved through necessity and the changed political and social landscape that has brought hate speech into the open. The unifying factor of a desire to see a hate free world is a strong indication that in the anti hate field of comradeship over competition we can allow ourselves to hope that these people willing to work together for a common good will achieve the ends they seek.

Image Credit: Liverpool Echo

Roanna

Roanna is one of the founder members of Resisting Hate. She is the author of the majority of our articles, and also publishes a blog on Huffington Post UK

http://www.resistinghate.org

The responsibility for the views of each individual lies with the individual. Ultimately each person makes the choice for themselves how they approach the world and the people in it. However, the information that sits behind those choices can be the responsibility of a much wider collective.
As suggested by the title of this article I genuinely believe that one of the major factors at play in the upsurge of racism and bigotry in our country is the role of the media, both from the position of actively promoting intolerant views and also for not doing enough to block intolerance from a prime position in the public domain.
The most crucial mistake in my view goes back to when the terrorist organisation ISIS first appeared in print and on television screens. This self styled “Islamic State” group should have been called anything, absolutely anything at all, by our press except Islamic State. Reporting on a minority terrorist organisation with a name that suggests a definite link with the entire Islamic religion has caused serious and significant confusion in the public which in turn has led to a massive uplift in hate crimes against Muslims with anti Muslim hate crime jumping 200% in 2015 1. The terrorist group’s unwarranted title also suggests a legitimacy that ISIS cannot lay genuine claim to. They are shunned by both Muslims and non Muslims worldwide. The newly coined term “Daesh” which I believe ISIS intensely dislike was a good idea but it was too little too late. By then the damage was done.
Whilst giving the foreign ISIS a legitimacy their status doesn’t warrant our newspapers were also busy printing ill-advised headlines at home. The Mail in particular seemed to relish the opportunity to create divisions in communities with headlines including “Muslims tell us how to run our schools,” and “Britain goes Halal.” This in my view is not unbiased impartial reporting it is sensationalism deliberately designed to court controversy and widen, in particular, the post Brexit rift between followers and non followers of Islam. The primary danger of these headlines is that people believe them. If the front page of a popular tabloid tells you Muslims are the enemy, some people are going to believe it. Worse, if people see hate speech freely expressed in the tabloids the danger is those people then go and emulate it. The tabloids then have to go further and further to retain the shock value that sells newspapers and eventually we end up with the likes of Katie Hopkins referring to migrants as “cockroaches” and Kelvin Mackenzie openly attacking a female Muslim newsreader for her personal choice of dress.
The media have pushed and pushed at the boundaries of what is acceptable to publish under the guise of free speech and freedom of the press until now it appears even abuse is something we can expect to see in our newspapers.
But in the modern era of social media newspapers are not the primary source of information for the public. A poll by Pew Research Centre 2 showed 63% of people use Facebook and Twitter as their primary source for the news. The concern with this is that the news provided by these channels is not regulated and can often be factually inaccurate or biased. This begs the question of who is responsible for the hate some of the more extreme social media advocates are putting into the ether. It is not enough to say Twitter and Facebook are platforms for free speech. Hate speech is not free speech, it is inflammatory speech and often intended to motivate readers of social media to take their hate into the real world. A specific and tangible example of this is the Britain First Facebook page which is used to motivate their followers to attend meetings of an Islamophobic focus. Another example is the hash tags on Twitter where like minded racists like the EDL for example can gather to “recruit” new members to their cause.
Both Twitter and Facebook are the despair of anti hate groups all over the country for their unwillingness to tackle hate on their social platforms. Facebook routinely insist that Britain First do not contravene their community standards and I speak from experience when I say that my anti hate group has put many, many reports in about certain individuals on Twitter – who routinely incite actual harm against Muslims- but we have had little success in getting them banned. Looking at some of the tweets Twitter deem appropriate it is hard to understand what value the social media giant believes these people are bringing to their platform.
It does not take much imagination to understand where this diet of hate, initiated by the press and perpetuated by social media will end up. People are becoming steadily influenced to believe that it is acceptable to hold discriminatory views against others in their community. As these views become more and more mainstream this will increase the divide between faiths, races and cultures and lead to a schism from which there will be no going back.
Although I maintain that people cannot abdicate their personal responsibility for their beliefs or their actions by blaming others, it has to be acknowledged that the views of the populace are being stoked by the information they are being fed. I would like to believe firmly enough in the innateness of human goodness to think this diet of hate will have no impact but it would be naïve of me to do so. Unless it is checked, this increase in hate speech will lead to violence on the streets and when it does much of the blood spilled, in my opinion, will be on the hands of the media.

1. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tell-mama-report-reveals-200-jump-in-anti-muslim-incidents-in-2015_uk_5772837ce4b0d257114a6f3e
2. http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/

Roanna

Roanna is one of the founder members of Resisting Hate. She is the author of the majority of our articles, and also publishes a blog on Huffington Post UK

http://www.resistinghate.org