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We asked ad agency Lucky Generals how it would tackle online extremism. It came up with the concept of BULLSH!TMAN who can swoop on to any website or social media platform in the blink of an eye. He doesnt care about left or right, he simply cares about true or false. Illustration: Lucky Generals

Earlier this week, a neo-Nazi teenager who built a homemade pipebomb was sentenced to a three-year youth rehabilitation order. The 17-year-old, from Bradford, had posted a message to Facebook on the day MP Jo Cox was murdered, praising her killer. Tommy Mair is a HERO, he wrote. Theres one less race traitor in Britain thanks to this man.

Court hearings revealed that the teenager had been recruited online by the secretive neo-Nazi group National Action, which was banned by the government in December 2016, becoming the first rightwing group in the UK to be proscribed under terrorism laws. In a chatgroup found on the boys phone, members discussed blowing up mosques and mimicking the methods of the IRA. The charity Hope not Hate warns that National Action has been emboldened by the ban and continues to be active, while the government anti-radicalisation group Prevent reports that one in 10 cases referred to it involve far-right extremism, rising to one in four in some parts of the country.

Nationalist propaganda has moved into the mainstream. Breitbart News, the far-right outlet once led by Donald Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon, is launching new sites in Germany and France. Breitbart London has already launched, and a cursory glance at its front page shows stories pushing three simple messages: migrants are bad; Muslims are bad; the EU is bad.

In light of the spread of far-right bigotry and misinformation, Theresa Mays government has launched a campaign to fight back. As part of a 60m government project, the advertising group M&C Saatchi will be tasked with combating the increasingly widespread influence and propaganda of the so-called alt-right. The Home Office put out a statement on the day the new campaign was reported: This government is determined to challenge extremism in all its forms including the evil of far-right extremism and the terrible damage it can cause to individuals, families and communities.

Taking on the alt-right is not the usual sort of ad agency brief, but M&C Saatchi has run many successful political campaigns. Its mantra when it comes to political communications has always been: Hit first, hit hard and keep on hitting. Its work has courted controversy for its ruthless and often negative tone. In 1997, it caused controversy with its New Labour, New Danger poster, depicting Tony Blair with a menacing set of demon eyes, an image so shocking that even the church complained about its satanic undertones. But its methods usually work.

The Saatchi team are past masters at taking complex political ideas and boiling them down to bold, concise messages. Maurice Saatchi calls it a brutal simplicity of thought. It has served the agency, and the Tories, extremely well. Posters such as 1978s Labour Isnt Working, 1992s Double Whammy and 2015s image of a subservient Ed Miliband tucked into Alex Salmonds breast pocket shaped debate and defined campaigns.

But the landscape the agency is now operating in is very different from the cleanly polarised battlefield of electoral politics. M&C Saatchi is not being asked to attack the Labour party or promote the merits of the Tories; it is being asked to combat an enemy that is altogether more abstract, in a contest where there is no clear finishing line. In the complex, confusing and ceaseless battle of ideas that takes place every second of every day across the internet, what role can a traditional ad agency possibly play?

The agency is reticent about discussing the details of its government brief. It says its role is not to deliver a national ad campaign, but rather to support the work of civic groups around the country that are already working in communities to steer people away from extremist ideas. It is assisting in various ways, from straightforward logistics, such as helping small organisations to build websites, to strategic advice on how to identify and engage with particular audiences. Its job is not to define the message, but to offer creative advice to others where needed. It might be as simple as helping with how to word a headline on a leaflet or a post on Facebook.

It will be under-the-radar stuff, says Benedict Pringle, editor of the website PoliticalAdvertising.co.uk, who has studied in detail M&C Saatchis past political work. If we see their work, then they will probably be doing something wrong. In other words, the agency will be an invisible hand, guiding the communications of various other groups involved in the fight against extremism.

What they will be good at is to help get into the mindset of the audience, and identify the strings they can pull to make them think again, says Pringle. They will be able to advise on media strategy: finding the best channels through which to communicate with the right sort of people. So they might monitor conversations on social media platforms and intervene in them in ways that might help change behaviour.

The facts will need to be wrapped up in powerful images, memorable phrases and striking metaphors

This is something the agency gained experience of during the 2015 general election campaign, much of which was fought by micro-targeting small groups of floating voters online using bespoke messages. We had a single message that proved successful in 2015 about a long-term economic plan, says Tom Edmonds, who ran the Conservatives digital operation in 2015 before founding the consultancy Edmonds Elder. It was about knowing how that same message relates in different ways to a housewife in Devon or a mechanic in Derby.

Edmonds says that the ad agency will be trying to find the equivalent of the fabled floating voter in the fight against extremism. There is no point trying to convert the hardcore extremist, he says. I think they will try to run a very tightly targeted campaign aimed at people who have expressed casual interest in certain far-right ideas or shown some sort of intent to get involved. They will then have to find ways of running messages that resonate with them and relate to their lives and values.

Danny Brooke-Taylor, founder of the ad agency Lucky Generals, who worked on Labours 2015 campaign, says strategic targeting is one of the main skills the ad industry can bring to politics. Theres a risk that this kind of campaign is simply circulated among liberals and fails to reach, let alone engage, people with extreme views, he says. Obviously, some of these will be immune to any communication but there are always less committed types, who hold the views less strongly, and simply circulate what they genuinely believe is true, without interrogating it too much.

He says that once the audience is identified, the creative techniques of traditional advertising could still have a role to play. The obvious strategy is to correct false news using the true facts. And no doubt that should be part of the approach, he says. But simply trading statistics in tit-for-tat style doesnt actually get you very far. Theres loads of evidence that human beings make most of their decisions based on emotions. So, contrary to what politicians often say, the facts wont speak for themselves. They will need to be wrapped up in powerful images, memorable turns of phrase, striking metaphors, shareable infographics, and so on.

Approaching the subject-matter with humour might be the best way to diffuse the anger and vitriol of the right, says Brooke-Taylor. Sometimes, the best way to demolish myths is to make fun of them, he says. Ridicule can be a really powerful weapon to put bullies back in their place or to point out the flaws in an argument. An additional benefit of humour is that its more likely to be shared. This shouldnt be mistaken for advocating a flippant approach sometimes a smile can be used to make a devastatingly serious and effective point. Or, as Robin Williams once said: Satire isnt dead its alive and living in the White House.

Brooke-Taylor agrees that M&C Saatchi would be wise to keep its involvement and that of the government as low-key as possible. Ultimately, this campaigns from the government, he says. But part of the far rights rise is precisely because of a distrust of the authorities. So the branding will be important, if the message isnt to be rejected because of the messenger. Maybe influencers will have a role to play here? People who dont conform to the usual snowflake stereotype (whether we like it or not) and have more credibility with this audience?

The Saatchi team have always had a sharp eye for the close relationship between advertising and public relations. In 1992, they handed out easy-to-use tax calculators to the press, allowing individuals to quickly determine how much more tax they would pay under a Labour government depending on their profession. It was a rudimentary sliding scale made from cardboard that hammered home their key campaign message in a way that voters could understand and relate to. It got a lot of press coverage, and the public strove to get their hands on the calculators. It was as close to viral content as it got in the early 90s.

That sort of creativity is about treating the audience with respect and intelligence, says Dave Trott, creative director and author of the books Creative Mischief and Predatory Thinking. That means not simply trying to shout down the opposition by contradicting what they say and calling them stupid. People were very quick to brand everyone who voted leave as racist during the Brexit debate, which only drove people further the other way.

All the best creative thinking, says Trott, goes back to the work of Bill Bernbach, the legendary US adman who created iconic 60s campaigns for Volkswagen and Avis. He was brutally honest about both the failures and the merits of the brands. He celebrated that Avis was second in the car hire market to Hertz by conjuring the slogan: We try harder. His poster for the Volkswagen Beetle urged consumers to Think small. He wasnt trying to tell people that the Beetle was the sexiest car around, says Trott. He was appealing to their rational minds by telling them it was the practical and reliable choice. Audiences respond well when you give them the right information with which to make their own smart decisions. They do not like being lectured. And that is particularly true in politics.

But it might be that the government is fighting the wrong enemy. The far right is actually in decline in this country, says Matthew Collins, author of Hate: My Life in the British Far Right. Their numbers are dwindling. The real problem is the way that some of their ideas have already been absorbed by the mainstream. Some of the stuff that the BNP was saying in 2010 about immigration and so on is now considered quite acceptable in the mainstream media. Whats more, Collins suggests, the government might be looking to do battle in the wrong place. Attacking the fringes is no longer the issue. Why arent the government looking at the fact that some voices in the mainstream think it is acceptable to say deeply offensive stuff with no concern for the feelings of others?

In any case, Collins is unconvinced that advertising is capable of changing anyones minds on extremism. No ad can convince people that their lives are better than they actually are, he argues. Do M&C Saatchi understand exactly why some of these ideas are actually attractive to a lot of people? Probably not. My concern is that they are trying to counter an idea that cant be countered by spin alone. It takes hard work. The only way to stop people being vulnerable to far-right ideas is to meaningfully change the circumstances of their lives.

The team at M&C Saatchi say their job is to help community groups; that they will help those groups identify and engage with those most vulnerable to extremist ideas. Posters and cardboard handouts might no longer be the means of communication, but the same principles still apply.

Sam Delaney will be in conversation with M&C Saatchis political team at Mad Men and Bad Men on 12 March, a live event that is part of the IPA Festival of British Advertising. For more information, go to adfest100.co.uk

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Think different: can advertising defeat 'alt-right' propaganda? - The Guardian

Paul Joseph Watson might look like a Millet's in Runcorn is missing ashelf stacker, but he claims to be the coolest man since the sixtiesended. As provocateur-in-chief for conspiracy news site Infowars, he's a high profile spokesman of the #AltRight, and a rumour monger for fake news stories like #Pizzagate.

But Watson wants to be so much more. Forget Beyonc. Forget Colin Kaepernick. Todays real icon of cool, according to authorities including himself, is an angry YouTube star. Watson wants you to believe that Conservatism Is The NEW Counter Cultureand that he is it's Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Tom Wolfe all rolled into one.

When youre done dying of laughter, its worth reflecting on the seed of truth that fake news exploits to get its hooks into the minds of the ignorant. Its true that liberalism is facing a shift change. The counterculture energy that fuelled the civil rights movement, the liberal ninetiesof Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama, is no longer a counterculture. Its the culture.

But it does not follow that the youth of today are ready to toss away their freedoms and go back to enjoying bible readings, polite tea dances and no sex before marriage. Some will. But then the great victory of liberalism is that you can choose the lifestyle that suits you. Even if its a lifestyle your grandparents struggled to escape.

In fact all evidence suggests that millennials and Generation Z are so liberal they will make the sixtiescounterculture look like a Mormon fun day. Todays twentysomethings arent just against Brexit theyre living as digital nomads all over the world.Polyamory is now so commonplace that marriage is starting to look like a minority activity.

Even if you can find some young people who identify as conservative, it often turns out they spend weekends dressing in furry animal costumes for kicks. We all know conservatives get up to all kinds in private, but I think were some way from Reince Priebus and Mike Pence embracing furry fandom in public.

Andrew Sullivan: Journalists need to question Trump's mental health

Paul Joseph Watson is like anageing rocker telling you metal is back because he saw some hipster kid wearing a Black Sabbath tee. Its hilarious and also disturbing to see that cultural myopia played out en masse, because while Watsons claims are laughable, the anger fuelling them is serious.

Its the same anger that manifests as outrage at female leads or a black actor in Star Wars. The anger of those who once lucked in to a dominant status over culture, but now have to compete on fair terms within it. Its the anger of racism and bigotry that has found some resurgence in the era of Trumpism.

There will never be another counterculture, because there is no longer a mainstream culture for it to counter. Culture today is a sea of sub-cultures, some smaller and some larger, but none dominant. Hollywood is learning that lesson slowly, but its going to take throwbacks like Watson a long time to learn they arent the hero of every story any more.

In the place of a counterculture, our generation is living in the midst the greatest cultural renaissance in history. Today we can taste the food, music, art, and storytelling of every culture in the world. And with the help of the internet, creators can combine parts of all our cultures to make something new. The decades ahead will be a cultural wonder we cant begin to imagine.

Conservatives can stay scared of this for as long as they want, or they can step out of their shells and join in the fun.

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There's a very simple reason why the alt-right is not the new counterculture - The Independent

Email a copy of "Richard Spencer: Alt-Right Hero Embarking on College Lecture Tour" to a friend

Richard Spencer speaking at the National Policy Institute conference on Nov. 19. Photo: YouTube/Screenshot.

Alt-right leader Richard Spencer, who garnered national attention with his controversial appearance at Texas A&M University lastDecember, plans tosow his white nationalism on college campuses across the country in 2017.

Known for using phrases like Hail victory (the literal translation of the Nazi phraseSieg Heil) and mimicking the Nazi salute, Spencer traffics in far-right ideas that center around the preservation of the white race and Western civilization. He peddles his message through a think tank known as the National Policy Institute, an online publication called Radixand, now, a planned college speaking tour.

Spencer, who initially built momentum through his websites and online comments, is increasingly shifting his attention to live audiences. Prior to his Texas A&M appearance, Spencerand other white nationalists set up a safe space on the University of California-Berkeley campus to discuss how race affects people of European heritage.

February 16, 2017 2:34 pm

Spencer sees collegeaudiences as fertile ground for his message of discontent. I think you need to get them while they are young, Spencer told a reporter in December. People in college are at this point in their lives where they areactually open to alternative perspectives.

This yearsWhite House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day has given Spencer even more fodder for horrendous statements.

President Trumps Holocaust message neglected to mention Jews, antisemitism or the Nazi campaign of genocide that claimed sixmillion Jewish victims. Most Jewish organizations were highly critical of this omission.

Yet Spencer found no fault with these omissions; rather, on the websitealtright.com, he criticized the activist Jewish community for commandeering the Holocaust narrative.

It is all about their meta-narrative of suffering, and it shall undergird their peculiar position in American society, and theirs alone, Spencer wrote. When viewed from the perspective of Jewish activists, Trumps statement becomes outrageous, as it dethrones Jews from a special position in the universe.

In his statement, Spenceremploys a favorite trope of Holocaust-distorters and antisemites: the claim that the enormity of the Holocaust is exaggerated by Jews, who manipulate World War II-era history for their own political purposes. The antisemitic stereotypes that frame Spencers brand of Holocaust denial are the same themes that were invoked by the Nazis.

Holocaust denial not only clouds our understanding of history, but it also minimizes the grave threat posed to the contemporary Jewish community by rising antisemitism. Moreover, it harms Israels security by diminishing what was once a bedrock understanding of the crucial need for the existence of a Jewish state: the Jewish people have already been targeted for total annihilation, and without a firm safe haven in the ancestral Jewish homeland, Jews will always remain vulnerable.

Spencer has already announced his intention to spread his bigotry and false version of history to American college students. For the young men and women born at the end of the 20th century, the Holocaust is merely a distant historical episode; for them, its lessons are faded, if not altogether bygone. Unfortunately, their minds areripe for exploitation by a hate monger and Holocaust denier like Richard Spencer.

Eric Fusfield is the Bnai Brith International Director of Legislative Affairs and Deputy Director of the Bnai Brith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy

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Richard Spencer: Alt-Right Hero Embarking on College Lecture Tour - Algemeiner

Who is Milo Yiannopoulos? This is both a journalistic and a philosophical question. The first answer is that he is an editor of the fringe right-wing website Breitbart formerly led by Donald Trumps chief strategist, Steve Bannon whowas banned from Twitter for his involvement in the harassment of an actor in the Ghostbusters reboot. When he was booked to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, on 1 February, a demonstration against him ledto smashed windows and to Donald Trump tweeting: If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence [sic] on innocent people with a different point of view NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Publicity such as this is nectar to Yiannopoulos. His forthcoming book, Dangerous, has done brisk business as a result of the tweet and is now at the top of Amazons political humour chart.

Yiannopoulos has emerged as the alt-right movements thirstiest self-promoter, carefully flirting with bigotry for clicks. When Gamergate began, he appointed himself the king of an online vigilante army, defending video games from feminists who wanted plausible storylines and better underwiring for female characters. This was despite hisfrank admission that he didnt play them himself. There was, however, some mysterious quality that made him more of a gamer than women who had spent their whole career in the industry. (My mistake: it wasnt a mysterious quality. It was the ownership of a penis.)

Getting the attention of Trump to whom he refers as Daddy was probably the highlight of Yiannopouloss life. The Gamergate episode shows just how well adapted he is for success in our media ecosystem. To paraphrase theUS journalist Matt Taibbi, he is a vampire squid, relentlessly jamming his blood-funnel into anything that smells of notoriety.

He is also unhindered by principles, shame or the desire to be consistent. He has said almost uncountable appalling things, then insisted either that he did not mean them or that some aspect of his identity made them OK. For example, he once wrote about how preening poofs in public life made it harder for regular young gay people. But he is gay, so whats the harm?

Similarly, when a blogger suggested that he was anti-Semitic, he referred to being Jewish himself. (He has also claimed to be Catholic.) He has been the subject of magazine profiles mixing the ostensible condemnation of his views with the titillation of being so close to a bad boy. Hes the easiest baddie that a journalist will ever nail because he plays up to it, revelling in his pantomime villain persona. Before it was suspended, his Twitter handle was @nero (he also maintained a secret account, @caligula). And why not? All this calculated offensiveness brings in more money, more fame, more armies of fans. Critics get wrapped up in whether he means what he says, when it doesnt matter: the effect does.

However, there is a reason why Yiannopoulos educated at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Kent until he was expelled isnow plying his trade in the US. A large number of British journalists remember his previous incarnation. Before he was a provocateur, he was a failed tech blogger with a vindictive streak and a poor record with money.

Yiannopoulos got his first break as Bianca Jaggers speechwriter and was part of the Telegraph blogs squad put together by Damian Thompson, now the editorial director of the Catholic Herald, which also included James Delingpole and Dan Hodges.

He is an adept chameleon and has had three names already. Born Milo Hanrahan, he briefly traded under Milo Andreas Wagner before settling on a surname taken from his Greek grandmother. (As Wagner, he wrote a 2007 book of poetry called Eskimo Papoose, featuring lines such as I shall not be your passive victim/Buggering my way to freedom/On white linen wings. He now describes it as a work of satire. Of what, its hard to say.)

His reputation in Britain was sustained by pettiness. When the tech site that he founded, the Kernel, racked up thousands of pounds in unpaid bills, he told one contributor that she was behaving like a common prostitute in wanting to be paid. Another, Jason Hesse, won a high court order for unpaid wages in 2013. (After the Kernel was sold to German investors, others were also paid.) And when the Guardians Charles Arthur complained that the Kernel was using hisphoto without permission, Yiannopoulos sent over an intern with 60 in pennies.

After that incident, James Ball now at BuzzFeed wrote, People in both tech and the media are frightened of Milo: hes a man they discuss in DMs [direct messages], not open Twitter (or open anything). That is still true. Everyone who criticises him knows that they risk a backlash from his fans, and that oh-so-postmodern ironic harassment feels just like the real thing.

So perhaps its time to say: sorry, America. We gave you the Beatles, but not all of our exports can work out.

See original here:
Milo Yiannopoulos: the chameleon who enthralled the alt right - New Statesman

In the era of President Donald J. Trump, a strange warped reality has enveloped us into a world of terrifying executive orders, fictive events touted as fact and a flow of scandals that just dont seem to stop. The first few weeks of the administration have been both exhausting and horrifying for all of us who are subject to U.S. governmentprocesses, like the court system, being challenged by an administration simply in favor of legitimizing its own power and voice. The processes that sanctify and solidify the U.S. secular, liberal hegemony are being penetrated by an alt-right. The alt-right consolidation of power is not a visible movement that people can pinpoint on the streets. While its no longer in the form of a KKK rally, the alt-right has consolidated its power through what seems convincingly similar to a passive revolution.

In Neo-Gramscian terms, Cihan Ziya Tugal, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, classifies the passive revolution as an incorporation of revolutionary movements (the alt-right) in existing systems (U.S. liberal democracy). This transformation mainly consisted of bourgeois empowerment without popular participation and economic loss of privilege for the aristocracy without its total extinction." A passive revolution is distinct because in this case, the conservative right from the Tea Party to the pro-life movement have expanded their networks in civil society. The proliferation of organizations and social networks that regulate everyday life, or civil society, has generated the means for a formidable and politically organized base. Trumps process of delegitimization of the liberal order made up of institutions, to which people consent, exercises a reinforcement of his own domination. If we consider civil society as an arena of organizational networks that can be mobilized by political society and ultimately the state, the president's close ties with alt-right organizers, like Bannon, engenders the links between civil society and the state. His rise to power elicits an unlinking of liberal forces and the state and relinks the state with the alt-right political movement, is in line with the traits of a passive revolution. Trump's presidency has affirmed the conservative right as a whole, particularly in its efforts for generating and supporting organizations that regulate American's relationships with the economy, society and the state, all in-line with conservative thought. What this entails is a difficult environment for access to abortions and contraceptives, and the expansion of undocumented peoples rights, among other civil liberties.

The passive revolution is not yet complete though we see the process of it unfolding before our eyes. The left must not only learn how to better read the signals and headlines of the minutebut read it in unison. With every "so-called judge" comment or executive order that circumvents Congress follows the political impetus for establishing an alt-right hegemony. In interpreting Trumps rise to power as a state that is day by day becoming more entrenched in the alt-right power bloc, those who oppose must find the common ground to fight its messaging. The mass protests in airports and on the streets becomeincreasingly necessary. Shows like "Saturday Night Live" (SNL) have become an increasingly important stage that not only undermines the administrations authority through skits and humorbut on a certain level displays its horror. "SNL" has been able to cut through and represent the absurdity of the administration in a way that the mainstream media has failed in communicating to the public. In our increasingly dystopian reality, the inverse result has manifested in comedians providing a more apt critique of current politics than the "so called" critics in the newsroom.

The "so called" prefix that renders the institution or position in question as fake requires the overwhelming response provoked, whichcalls into question the "so-called" presidents authority. I am not unable to admit that the alt-right is indeed a well-organized political movement with clear messaging, unity and social activity in its base. What they are able to do that is so extremely fundamental for the left to appropriate is the movements convincing promise to offer those living in precarity with a vision for a better future. The movement is not made up of one class of people, but Trump was able to mobilize the movement to its current height of influence by outlining a class struggle and offering the impoverished what the left failed to deliver to people in 2008. On the left, we must find a way to focus on an uplifting class message, one that can unify and offer an alternative to the fascism served daily. Perhaps this is in the form of organizing to reinvigorate the labor movement in solidarity with a myriad of race, sexuality and documented status issues, or perhaps it requires something new. Whatever this possibility entails, it is clear that it needs to happen faster than the alt-rights not-so-passive passive revolution.

Meryem Uzumcu is a School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in planning and public policy, Middle Eastern studies and womens and gender studies. Her column, Fahrenheit 250, runs on alternate Tuesdays.

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UZUMCU: Alt-right's passive revolution is upon us - RU Daily Targum