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History, as written, tends to be executed upon black people rather than by them. Brought to the United States as slaves, freed by Abraham Lincoln, oppressed under Jim Crowin schoolbook constructions, blacks are the supporting players in Americas ultimate redemption arc. An anti-segregation activist such as Rosa Parks is reduced to a humble seamstress who was too tired to give up her seat on the bus.

HBOs Watchmen risks falling into this trap, by placing one of the deadliest atrocities ever perpetrated against black Americans at the center of a comic-book franchise full of brooding white men in masks. The series opens with the true events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which white rioters burned down the entire black neighborhood of Greenwood and killed as many as three hundred people. The brutal and breathtaking spectacle of this Watchmen episode, conveyed through the eyes of a small boy running for his life from a neighborhood movie theatre, has the familiar beats of black victimhood. A woman is shot from behind and collapses in the middle of the road. Two black bodies are dragged behind a speeding car, clouds of dirt billowing in their wake. Armed Ku Klux Klan members roam the streets. Its an adrenaline shot of vicious racism, at the expense of mostly anonymous victims.

As layers of mystery are peeled back in later episodes, though, Watchmen (whose Season 1 finale airs on Sunday) reveals itself to be a show about black people who have the ability to mold history in ways their ancestors could not. Though grounded in deeply sensitive past events, the series shares its most keen insights in the throes of its superhero conceit. Alan Moores original 1986 graphic novel followed white costumed adventurers who use P.R. campaigns, military contracts, and vast personal fortunes to turn themselves into superheroes in the public imagination. The show, however, upends some foundational Watchmen myths, by reorienting our vantage around three black heroes.

The standout episode of the season, This Extraordinary Being, travels back to the nineteen-thirties to cast the first costumed crusader in the Watchmen universe as a Tulsa Race Massacre survivor. Will Reeves, the young boy who grew up idolizing black gunslingers in Greenwoods movie theatre, becomes one of the few black cops in the N.Y.P.D. After a near-lynching by his fellow officers, he dons a hood, a noose, and the whiteface makeup necessary for the public to ascribe honor to his vigilante antics. If you want to stay a hero, his wife, June, advises as they devise his costume, townsfolk gonna need to think one of their own is under it. By night, he is Hooded Justice, the legendary, anonymous crimefighter who inspired future heroes. By day, his black skin becomes the perfect secret identity. If he has a superpower, its the ability to leverage both the invisibility and hypervisibility that black people often experience.

In the present day, Reevess granddaughter Angela Abar lives a double life as a masked cop and a costumed crusader named Sister Night, flitting between police work and vigilantism as she sees fit. Shes deeply suspicious of Reeves when he becomes the primary suspect in the murder of Tulsas police chief. Later, she comes to understand her grandfathers motivations after taking a psychoactive drug that lets her relive his memories as Hooded Justice. Abar and Reeves share similar childhood traumas and a roiling anger thats often vented by pummelling white supremacists. These violent scenes can feel thrillingly transgressive, a pushback against centuries of depictions of blacks as docile victims of racism. But they also use comic-book caricature to hint at a truth that Hollywood might shy away from depicting in a more realistic setting; read the archives of Tulsas black newspaper from the years before the massacre and youll find plenty of calls for armed resistance to white lynch mobs.

Dr. Manhattan, the radioactive blue super soldier at the center of the original Watchmen comic, ultimately serves as the bridge between Abar and Reeves. Though born a white German-American, Dr. Manhattan spends a decade hiding in Tulsa as Abars black husband, Cal. Like Hooded Justice, he uses blackness as a shield of anonymity in a world transfixed by white heroes. But because he agrees to give up his powers and memories to save his relationship, blackness also robs him of his ability to alter history with the snap of his fingers. The future is uncertain, he admits not long after turning into Cal, and my ability to influence events is limited.

Many of the narratives swirling around the three heroesthe ones that dont involve them directlyturn out to be distortions of Watchmen canon. In the show-within-a-show American Hero Story, Hooded Justice is portrayed as a square-jawed white brawler pulled straight from Action Comics. The fiction that Dr. Manhattan lives on Mars as a blue demigod is perpetuated by a paid hotline service that people can use to send him prayers. The villains that Sister Night is fighting, members of a mysterious white-supremacist group named Seventh Cavalry, draw their inspiration from Rorschach, the original Watchmen antihero, whose racist musings have turned him into a martyr for the alt-right.

Though the new Watchmen expertly subverts expectations set up by the original comics, the show seems less confident inhabiting the world of Tulsa itself. There are vague allusions to a reparations program instituted for massacre victims and a couple of quick exposition dumps about Greenwoods past glory. The city itself only really comes to life, terrifyingly, in the opening scenes. But what Watchmen nails, more than details of Greenwoods history, is the way that history itself is so susceptible to manipulation, distortion, and erasure. In the real world, the massacre was initially national news, landing on the front page of the Times and prompting promises of recompense by embarrassed white Tulsans. But, unlike on the TV show, justice was never served in Greenwood. No white rioters were punished for their actions. Insurance companies and the city government refused to compensate black Tulsans for their lost property. Lawsuits stalled out in the courts. Many Tulsans, both white and black, stopped talking about what happened. A brutal invasion became a victimless crime, then a repressed memory, then a hazy urban legend that few people had even heard about.

But some of the people who rememberedblack people on the outskirts of recorded historynever stopped talking about it. Massacre survivors such as Bill Williams and Mabel Little recounted their memories of the event in memoirs or interviews with journalists. In the nineteen-nineties, two black Oklahoma state legislators, Maxine Horner and Don Ross, spearheaded the creation of the Greenwood Cultural Center, which serves as a community gathering place, memorial to survivors, and archive of firsthand accounts of the attack. More recently, the city of Tulsa has reopened a search for long-rumored mass graves of massacre victims, using oral histories from residents as a guide for where to look.

Black people have always derived power from their ancestral stories, from their ability to speak a truth that immediately complicates or contradicts an American myth. The reason we know what happened in Greenwood at allthe reason that the massacre is tangible enough for Hollywood to re-create in a glitzy prestige cable showis because folks in Tulsa kept talking about their memories, even when the conspiracy of silence was deafening. So its fitting that this new iteration of Watchmen turned out to be a story about a black family shaping and sharing history. After he regains his powers (and his famous blue skin), in the penultimate episode of the season, Dr. Manhattan mediates a conversation across time, between Abar in the present day and Reeves ten years prior. Together, the three of them determine that the sheriff is a closeted Klansman, with the robes in his closet to prove it. Watchmen offers some vital lessons about Tulsas past, even if the full history of the neighborhood still deserves a more thorough onscreen retelling. Where the show shines most is in how it conditions viewers to second-guess any story that is presented to them as a definitive historical account.

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The Great Achievement of Watchmen Is in Showing How Black Americans Shape History - The New Yorker

Jeremy Corbyn poses outside a polling station in London on December 12, 2019. (Getty Images / Peter Summers)

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The first thing to say about the British election is that the result is a staggering and historic defeat for both Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. Even Neil Kinnocka Labour leader famed in the United States for being plagiarized by Joe Biden and in the United Kingdom for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in 1992didnt lose so badly. The red wall of safe Labour seats in Britains northern industrial heartlandincluding Blyth Valley, which had never elected a Tory before, and Tony Blairs former constituency of Sedgefield, held continuously by Labour since 1935crumbled to dust.Ad Policy Related Article

The second is that Britain will now certainly leave the European Union, probably by the end of January. It is that certainty, more than any other factor, that explains both the fact and the scale of the Conservative triumphand the stunning success of Boris Johnsons transformation from a bumbling oaf without a mandate who couldnt get a single bill through Parliament into a prime minister with a majority no other Tory leader has enjoyed since Margaret Thatcher. Johnson bet the House (of Commons) on this electionand won. Yet, while the scale of Johnsons victory (and Corbyns defeat) is shocking, once the Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson betrayed Labour remainers by lending her support to Johnsons call for an early election, the outcome was neverdespite a steady drumbeat of wishful thinking in the left pressreally in doubt. Swinsons loss of her own seat to the Scottish National Party was one of the few cheering moments on an otherwise bleak night.

While Corbyn fudged and fidgeted over Brexit, promising both to negotiate a new Brexit deal with the EU and then hold another referendum on that dealin which he pledged to remain neutralJohnson and the Conservatives offered clarity and closure. The Tory slogan Get Brexit Done might lack the pop-psychology punch of Brexit svengali Dominic Cummingss previous masterpiece Take Back Control, but as a banner for co-opting and neutralizing Nigel Farages far-right Brexit Party while also rallying the large swath of Brexit fatigue voters who cared less about the means than about putting an end to the countrys seemingly endless torment, it was pretty close to perfect.

The first duty of an opposition leader is to mount an effective opposition, and on Johnsons signature projectdragging Britain out of EuropeCorbyn was never close to effective. Which isnt to say that Labour would have done better as unequivocal remainers. None of the Labour defectors who urged their constituents to follow them to the Liberal Democrats kept their seats. Nor did Labours persistence in trying to fight the election on its chosen ground of defending the National Health Service and opposing austerity break through. Part of that failure was doubtless due to a hostile media environmentthe albatross around the neck of any Labour leader. But so were Tory pledges to increase spending on the NHS by 34 billion, build 40 new NHS hospitals, and fund 50,000 more nurses (partly by reversing a previous Tory governments cuts). MORE FROM D.D. Guttenplan

Its also true that Labours ambitious manifesto commitments to renationalize key public services, tax the wealthy, and finance a Green Industrial Revolution (the British version of the Green New Deal) to ward off climate catastrophe read less like a program for political revolution than an ever-expanding wish list of promises that were never meant to be kept. The Tories, on the other hand, kept it simple.

One consequence is that while Johnson has five years in power if he wants ithis pledge to repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act means he can call the next election at a time of his choosinghis political mandate doesnt extend much further than getting Brexit done. For the momentas the election map reveals in stark detailJohnson and the Tories have successfully pilfered much of Labours working-class base, especially in the north of England. But can they keep it?

Part of the answer to that depends on Johnson, who has once again demonstrated how dangerous it can be to underestimate him. A facile liar, serial philanderer, and shameless backstabber, Johnsons personal qualities have never been as important as his firm grasp on political reality. He won two terms as mayor of Londonone of the most racially and ethnically diverse cities in the worlddespite his Balliol College arrogance and penchant for classical allusion. And though Londona redoubt of fervent remainersstayed mostly loyal to Labour this time (with the exception of Kensington and Chelsea, where the Lib Dems siphoned off enough Labour support to hand the Tories a 150-vote majority just two years after the Grenfell Tower disaster)Johnson must know that holding on to his new working-class support will require him to avoid radical-right policies and keep his promises on the NHS.Current Issue

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Which doesnt mean a Tory government isnt going to be a disaster. Brexit will weaken an already faltering British economy, migrants will face an even more hostile reception, and the creeping privatization of Britains public sectoropenly under the Tories, stealthily under New Labourwill continue. But Boris Johnson is not Donald Trumpthough it will be interesting (by which I mean terrifying) to see how far Johnson will go to get that massive trade deal Trump promised this morning.

Meanwhile, Labour faces a terrible reckoning. The partys left, anticipating catastrophe, got started on purges early, driving out Deputy Leader Tom Watson (meaning there is now no one to take the reins when Corbyn resigns) and even removing democratically selected candidates who were deemed insufficiently devoted to the Dear Leader. In Bassetlaw, where my old friend Sally Gimson was forced out by a kangaroo court presided over by my older friend Jon Lansman, the result was a record-breaking swing to the Conservatives, putting a Tory MP in a seat Labour had held for 90 years. But the centrists, who did their best to sabotage Corbyn from within before leading their own hegira to the Lib Dems, will doubtless return once Corbyn is gone.

Its going to be messy, and uglybut absolutely necessary if Labour is going to mount an effective opposition to Johnsons brand of One Nation Toryism (a modern remix of the coalition of industrial workers and rural landowners pioneered by Benjamin Disraeli), let alone ever return to power. The northern white working class may be lost for now, but as Jon Cruddass knife-edge victory in Dagenham shows, a One Nation Labour that addresses white and minority workers on more than purely economic grounds can still wineven for a remain MP running in a Brexit constituency. Indeed Labours Futurethe coroners report Cruddas authored after Labours defeat in 2015wouldnt be a bad starting point for the debate about the partys future that, once it elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader, Labour never had.Brexit

Finally, a brief word about Labour and the Jews. As Ive written here before, unlike in the United States, the Jewish vote simply doesnt matter in Britain. There is only one constituencyMargaret Thatchers old seat of Finchley and Golders Greenwhere Jews make up even 20 percent of the electorate. (Mike Freer, the Tory MP who held off a challenge from Jewish Labour challenger Sarah Sackman in 2015, easily defeated Luciana Berger, the former head of Labour Friends of Israel who defected to the Liberal Democrats in 2019.) Despite the oceans of ink spilled over Jeremy Corbyns failure to adequately address anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, the whole issue might have made a difference in three seatsat most. (One of them, sadly, was Hendon, where my son and his friends spent election day trudging through the rain in a doomed attempt to turn out Labour voters.) The chief rabbis ridiculous claim that Corbyn and Labour represented an existential threat to British Jews made the front page of Rupert Murdochs London Times, but most of Britains 250,000 Jews (who make up a smaller portion of the population than Muslims, Hindus, or Sikhs) dont go to synagogueand even of those who do, only half belong to the chief rabbis denomination.Related Article

Corbyns longtime support for Palestine was always going to make him a target for supporters of Israel. And while he responded to the crisis with maddening incompetence, and with an insensitivity to Jewish pain in the face of a small number of truly horrifying incidents of anti-Semitism within the party, any attempt to paint Corbyn as a bigot has to get around his repeated denunciations of anti-Semitism (something that cant be said for Hitler and his buddies, or Trumps pals on the alt-right). As I told American friends, so long as the nuts in this country have easy access to guns, it will remain much safer to be a Jew in Britain than in the United States. For me, as I suspect for many Jewish Labour members, Brexit was far more important than Corbyns personal failings. Most elections, after all, come down to a choice of the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, in Britain the greater evil triumphed.

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Oh No, Jeremy Corbyn! - The Nation

Social media has become an addictive part of everyday life and we must be wary of all the ways it is exploited.

Social media has reached a saturation point that the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey could scarcely have imagined in their wildest dreams. Businesses utilise it to sell us product, friends use it to keep us in the loop on their nights out, and politicians not to mention sundry shady organisations and troll farms manipulate it in the hope of winning.

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have proven to be inescapable and, for many of us, stupidly irresistible.In the political sphere this year, the world watched as Donald Trump continued to unleash bile-filled, lying tweets at his adversaries. The Presidents propaganda machine fired out shots against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suspected whistleblowers, ambassadors, cabinet members, and whoever else dared criticise the man in the Oval Office.With the impeachment hearings swinging into full gear towards the end of 2019, Twitter remained Trumps platform of choice for hysterical rants.

In our personal lives, many of us refreshed Instagram daily to see our friends living their so called best lives, while we remained stuck in the mundanity of our own. Consequently, many of us have developed a nagging fear of missing out (or FOMO), and cant stand spending time alone.

Gradually, the truth about Surveillance Capitalism emerged. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was called into account on the court floor. Mark Zuckerburg claimed that users have nothing to fear. He was lying. The acclaimed Netflix documentaryThe Great Hackserved as a further wake-up call to users around the world: we are being played for fools. In June, Facebook announced plans to integrate cryptocurrency into the website. You might characterise it as megalomania. And you might be right.

Meanwhile, sinister forces have subborned social media to dangerous political purposes. Trolls in fascist States aim to destroy democracy. Governments here look on like goms. The poisonously cynical alt-right group QAnon spread the hashtag #FakeWhistleBlower. And Deep Fake is on the way.

What effect is social media having on the human condition? Scholars have said it is a minefield for our mental health. It breeds addiction, self-doubt, and passivity. Leisure time once dedicated to reflection, reading, or socialising, has been replaced with hours of refreshing a social media feed that amplifies fear and insecurity. So who is going to fight back? And how? One things for sure: it is time for radical action.

You can read the complete 'Whole Hog On 2019 in one brilliant sweep in the Hot Press Annual in which we distill the highlights and low-points of the year, across 132 vital, beautifully designed pages. Starring heroes of the year Fontaines D.C. on the front we cover Music, Culture, Sport, Film, Politics, the Environment and much, much more. Buy this superb publication direct from Hot Press here.

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The Whole Hog: We should fear the dangers of social media - hotpress.com

Ive been so engrossed in the current political landscape that the fact we have 18 days until 2020 has sort of passed me by. The start of another decade usually gives us momentum to press refresh. But given our current circumstances, a moment of retrospection feels wise.

Where were we in 2010? Well, we had a black American president, and his famous poster of Hope that blew up the world was still fresh in our minds. That same year Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director (a woman hasnt won it since).

Scrolling was not a thing. BuzzFeed and its infectious memes was only four years old, and going viral actually meant something. Instagram hadnt quite caught on we were mostly mucking about on Twitter so screen addiction was not a topic, nor debilitating FOMO. And Fake News was, well, not in the news, although Facebook was a new obsession for millions worldwide.

We had embarked on a Tory-Lib Dem coalition government perhaps the calmest of political marriages we will see for a long time. And a global recession which had hit hard in 2008 hadnt completely destroyed us though it had ruined many lives.

The oldest millennial then was 29; the Kardashians were not a global phenomenon (Kim was 30 and still single). The internet felt hopeful and was giving people all over the planet a true voice for the first time. Recommendation algorithms hadnt started to control how we saw content they were arguably one of the biggest precursors to some of the most damaging aspects of our new technological world order.

We were blissfully ignorant of the political populism that would bring Donald Trump to power, give birth to the alt-Right and set Brexit in motion. Our crippling fear of our planet dying from ever-increasing emissions had receded (even if the danger hadnt), momentarily pushed out of our minds by the global recession. The Paris Accords would not be signed until 2016.

Today, many of us feel incredibly anxious about our future; the environmental statistics can feel justifiably overwhelming. Our news media can too often feel like non-stop hype, and Facebook is amok with peddled political lies.

But we also have Extinction Rebellion, and have witnessed the extraordinary power of Greta Thunberg. We are living in an era of activism never seen before.

And who could have guessed at the power of #MeToo? Or that we would see a film like Black Panther? Or that hashtags could genuinely sway opinion for good and social media campaigns could help set people free? As for me, Im a decade older and probably not much wiser. My children are now in their teens. The fear of advancing years, however, has given me fresh drive.

Far from slowing down, Ive launched a media company, ThisMuchIKnow, whose message is one of action and hope over 24-hour negativity. I feel a restless energy many would describe as a mid-life crisis. I dont. At 46, I see this as a time to start again; to stave off mortality and to assiduously consider how I want to shape my next 10 years.

As for Britain, we are still sitting on the precipice of a momentous decision. The real battle lies not in Brexit, but in whether we and this new government will have the bravery to save our planet. Only revolutionary action will grasp the incredible opportunities ahead rather than clinging dangerously to current comforts. Because by 2030 it will have become much harder to press refresh.

As one mad enough to sit through this election to the bitter end at 6am, nursing a nasty white wine hangover in bed admittedly I passed out for two hours in my sons bed at 3.30am I watched two leaders give very different losing speeches.

Jo Swinson delivered by far the most gracious words of the night.In total contrast was Jeremy Corbyn, who blamed the media and Brexit, said that his policies were the right ones, and said that he was not going quite yet.

As dawn crept further in and we saw a Conservative government with even fewer women in it than before, and no chance of Luciana Berger leading the Liberal Democrats after her defeat in Finchleyand Golders Green , my hope is that the Labour Party mightfinally vote in its first female leader.

Earlier in the evening I had joined others at an electoral debate at new all-female club The Wing, where those from the 50:50 campaign drove home again how far we are from gender parity in government.

And that Labour has never voted in a female leader this can surely not happen again.

Epstein with Maxwell in 2005 (Patrick McMullan via Getty Image)

While Harvey Weinstein is finally going into the dock over two rape charges next month , the horror of Jeffrey Epsteins crimes gets amplified. And all we have is deafening silence from Ghislaine Maxwell,the woman who has reportedly admitted helping to procure him young girls for massages. There are reports she is to do an interview on an unnamed US TV network but nothing is certain, especially her whereabouts. How, in an era where everything and everyone can be tracked, can this woman still be hiding unseen?

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Kardashians, Greta and #MeToo with 18 days left of this decade Im carving out a moment to reflect - Evening Standard

The first article in this series discussed the psychology behind alt-right radicalization onlinewho is most vulnerable to extremist indoctrination, the risk factors correlated with such vulnerability, and the forms that the process of radicalization can take. Now, the next question to be asked concerns the actual implications and dangers of online alt-right extremist movements and their recruitment efforts. We have seen too often that radicalization in the virtual world can lead to real-world violence; we have seen terrible acts of mass violence that have been connected with members of the alt-right online, such as in Christchurch and El Paso. But are these acts of violence the only dangers posed by the activities of the alt-right online? The second part of this series will explore whether, in a hypothetical world devoid of the tragedy of alt-right violence, the virtual activities of the alt-right would still have real-world implications.

There is a tendency in alt-right activity to weave dark humour into online content, meaning that the rest of us often struggle to distinguish between honestly-held, hateful beliefs and ironically-presented hate speech. A leaked style guide from a neo-Nazi site proves that this is actually a tactic of the alt-right in some cases: The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not.Anonymous imageboards like 4chan are not dedicated to any specific ideology, which makes it especially difficult to determine whether or not users actually believe the appalling things they are writing, or whether it is all part of some sort of ironic, competitive game to see who can say the most abhorrent thing, or share the most despicable, hateful meme.

The first article in this seriesdiscussed the dangers of anonymous-poster imageboards like 4chan. This danger stems from the power such sites have to provide exposure to alt-right content and to engender a link between violence, hate, and commonplace humour in peoples minds. Inherent to the structure of 4chan itself is a tendency to provide gateway content to extremist discoursewith a single click, users can be taken from one thread discussing video games or current events to another thread full of hate-ridden rants against minorities and women. 4chan users near-ubiquitous use of darkly ironic humour with regard to almost any subject means that terroristic violence, hate crimes, and bigotry are talked about in such a way thatmake people laugh and belittle their importance. This creates a link between toxic content and humour: people find themselves amusedby hateful thoughtswhether they accept them or notmaking hate speech appear more readily acceptable and less harmful.

Dr. Ghayda Hassan is the founder and director of the Canada Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence (CPN-PREV) and a UNESCO co-chair on Prevention of Violence Radicalization and Extremist Violence. She gives credence to the idea that, in certain cases, users of sites like 4chan may be participating in a collective exorcism of hate-feelings which they dont actually accept. That is, people may congregate online and express feelings of hatred which they neither accept, nor believe; indeed, they may even appear to advocate hate crimes, without actually subscribing to any part of what they are saying.

We all have hate-feelings, says Hassanhaving hate-feelings is part of being human. Neither acceptingnor acting on these very human feelings, however, isnatural, andboth can lead to discourse and actions which the majority of us would consider utterly inhumane. Normally, says Hassan, we have positive social spaces in which we can experience and express our feelings of hate without it meaning that we actually want to destroy the target of our hate. The danger comes when these constructive spaces are replaced by unmediated online platforms where real-world regulatory processes no longer exist. In the real-world, people around us react to our expressions of hate and help us to understand hate-feelings and how to deal with them in a healthy way. Online, however, anyone can say anything anonymously, and there isnt always a constructive reaction or discussion that follows in order to help somebody work through their hate-feelings in a positive way, explains Hassan.

There is the obvious concern that online alt-right content and recruitment efforts will generate more hate and inspire more radicalization, or at least expose more people to extremist ideologies than would be the case without this virtual outlet. While this may be the case, expressing hate-feelings online, even without mediation to help you interpret and dismiss them, doesnt mean that an individual will act on those feelings in real life, says Hassan.Although the risk is certainly greaterwith the lack of divide that once existed between the virtual world and the real world, activities in the virtual space can bleed into the real world, desensitizing people to violence and prejudice, and normalizing expressions of hate.

Dr. Hassan points out that, while there is certainly no guarantee of social upheaval in the foreseeable future, a look at history shows us that increased polarization of the population and increased hate around otherness can contribute to civil conflict. Thus, radicalism and expressions of hate speech that occur in the unmediated arena of the Internet have the potential to increase hatred towards others. Previous wars have all been accompanied by highly de-humanizing discourse, she continues, and we are definitely preparing the social space for a more tense relationship that, [in the] long-term, may lead to civil unrest or disruption.

Carrie Rentschler, an Associate Professor of Communications Studies at McGill University, focuses on social movements and media activism. She points to online hate-speech and the alt-rights tactics of doxxingas well as rape- and death-threats as culprits in the creation of an intense culture of fear. In such a culture, people, particularly women, are afraid to speak out against hate and condemn the alt-right for fear of retaliation against themselves or those they are close to. Whether or not rape- and death-threats are realized, the fear of that realization is often enough to shut down would-be vocal opponents of the alt-right. The very threats made by radicals online are harmful, says Rentschler; whether it is carried out or not, the threat itself says you are not safe.

Examining the practice of doxxing gives us a better understanding of just how scared targeted individuals can be. Doxxing is an attempt to stop the target from participating in a certain kind of discourse, engaging with a particular cause, or challenging a specific group or ideology online. Doxxers destroy an individuals privacy and anonymity online in an attempt tolegitimize their threats and make the target feel exposed, vulnerable, and afraid. Doxxers will reveal the real name, occupation, face, and even address about loved ones of the targeted individual. By frightening and shaming their opponents into silence, doxxers create a culture of fear wherein people are threatened away from voicing their opinions. It is a tactic used by both the alt-right and their opponents, and hasunfortunately become increasingly mainstream.

Rentschler explains that when people are afraid to challenge hateful ideologies for fear of harm being done to them or their families, our society becomes one in which the hate-mongersare empowered because there are fewer and fewer voices to counter hateful, radical ideas. Rational discourse and debate can no longer take place when too many people are frightened into silence, andhate-speech is made dangerously prominent and powerful in such a society.

Online hate speech has the potential to indoctrinate non-radicals into extremist ideologies, normalize certain kinds of violent or discriminatory discourse, desensitize people to the idea of viewing of even committing acts of violence, and create a society in which people are afraid to stand up and speak out against hatred and violence. Knowing all this, one might ask: what steps can we as a society take to combat the powerful effects of online extremism, and to protect ourselves from its influence in the real world?

Rentschler emphasizes the importance of de-platforming, moderation, and holding people to higher standards on internet platforms. There is promising evidence that banning users who share hateful and extremist content on social media platforms is an effective way to reduce the amount of hate speech that is shared. Holding people to particular standards online is essential, says Rentschler, but currently, there is very little in place to stop online hate speech and harassment. Likes, popularity votes, and upvotes are key to the proliferation of extremism online, Rentschler explains; the more popular content is, the more available and accessible it is made. This means that the more likes an alt-right post receives, the more mainstream exposure it might be given.

In terms of developing a solution to mitigate dangerous online activity, while some might think that it would be easier to discuss and challenge toxic ideas through free debate so as to prevent their normalization and acceptance into mainstream society.However, when asked, Rentschler was more skeptical: Im not sure that the fact that its out there means were discussing it and debating it, says Rentschler; unless were actively and constantly challenging such speech, its relative prominence might do far more harm than good.

And what about free speech? Isnt it important that we defend the right of even the most bigoted extremist to freely express themselves, even if what they say is abhorrent? Rentschler points out that at a certain point, the right to free speech of the alt-right infringes on that same right of those who would stand up against them, exemplified in part by the effectiveness of doxxing and similar practices. Theres an important question to be asked, she saysWho cant speak, out of fear of harassment and harm? We might champion free speech as a pillar of what makes ours a free and safe society, but when it comes to online extremism and the very clearconcerns it poses in the real world, the issue is far from black and white.

Featured imageflat screen computer monitors on table photobyKaur KristjanonUnsplash.

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Unmasking the Alt-Right: Real-World Implications of a Virtual Movement - The McGill International Review