Rise in racist activity seen on social networks
Facebook user Susanne W. has an appreciation for canines, evident in her profile photo and from the pages she has liked. She supports animal protection initiatives and is a fan of pages such as "Romania's dogs."
Equally apparent, however, is her lack of support for asylum seekers in her home country, Germany. She is a member of several virtual "civil movements" that oppose refugee shelters and has written on some of their pages that money spent on such institutions would better be spent on animal shelters.
Just a few years ago, it's likely that Susanne W. would have only expressed her opinions to close friends and acquaintances. But since becoming a member of social networking sites like Facebook, she's had ample opportunity to share her views with hundreds of like-minded strangers. One such platform is the Facebook page "Mut zur Demokratie" ("Daring to Uphold Democracy"), which has over 20,000 fans. Some of the most commented topics on it are "Misuse of the asylum system," "Foreign infiltration" and "Proud to be German."
Sharing xenophobia
Hundreds of similar pages on the social network have been created in Germany. According to Felix M. Steiner, they are mostly set up and administered by members of the far-right scene. Steiner is one of the authors of Publikative.org - a blog that monitors right-wing extremism on the Internet and reports on issues such as racism in everyday life and in the media. In 2013, the site won the most user votes in the "Best Blog, German" category of The Bobs - DW's online activism awards.
Various right-wing movements in Germany are making use of the internet
According to Steiner, extreme right-wing pages on social networking sites are there to "spread propaganda." They serve as "platforms through which asylum seekers and migrants are attacked in the most malicious way." And although the number of people who "like" such pages is far higher than the number of those who demonstrate in the street, Steiner said that the overall impression conveyed is one of large-scale support for such causes.
The trend of publishing right-wing material on social networking sites in Germany has been monitored for several years by Jugendschutz.net, a state-sponsored child protection service. Its latest annual report, published in mid-2013, indicates a strong increase of online right-wing activity, especially on pages popular with young users, such as Facebook and YouTube.
According to Jugendschutz.net representatives, the typical way of disguising online hate speech is through "black humor." In Germany, satirical statements are protected to some degree by the constitution, so long as a case can be made that they do not attack the dignity of a group of people. On the other hand, in the US, where many of the largest social networking sites are hosted, the relevant laws are more lax. This is why, according to Christiane Schneider, head of the anti-political extremism department at Jugendschutz, it is sometimes difficult to convince the administrators of such sites to delete certain content.
A legal dilemma