LAUSR

Recently, the undercover cyber agent Julia Ebner spent two years inside right-wing extremist networks. For her book Going Dark—The Secret Social Lives of Extremists, she adopted five different identities and joined a dozen tech savvy extremist groups—from jihadists and Christian fundamentalists to white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and radical demagogues. First and foremost, right-wing extremist leaders create a protected and often rather secretive social bubble. This creates an aura of exclusiveness as well as the highly useful in-group-vs.-out-group (13) structure which establishes a sense of belonging for those admitted to the inner circle—somewhat like refashioning Germany’s Nazi SS. Unlike Nazi-Germany’s SS, today’s right-wing extremists create international hubs, using social networks and even dating apps (15). These lay the foundation for their growing global network. They also hack into systems. In March 2016, printers across U.S. college campuses produced, for example, printed Neo-Nazi flyers (17). In January 2019, right-wing hackers leaked personal details of hundreds of German politicians. To join one of these secretive discussion groups, the undercover cyber-agent had to send a picture of her hand together with a piece of paper reading MAtR (Men Among the Ruins, 21). Provided the hand is white enough, you are in. So far, no genetic testing proving your Aryan make up is needed. Next to MAtR, right-wing extremists also use WOTAN (Will Of The Aryan Nation), 4/20 (Hitler’s birthday), 88 (the 8th character of the alphabet is H, hence HH for Heil Hitler) as codewords. Men Among the Ruins is the work of Italian right-wing demagogue Julius Evola who wrote about spiritual racism, being motivated by Benito Mussolini and admiring Heinrich Himmler. To be admitted into the ring of Neo-Nazis, the undercover agent told them, “I am white and of Austrian stock.” The reply was, “you are vetted.” She was in. White supremacist forums like the U.S. site Stormfront operate in a similar way. Many right-wing extremists, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists believe that every single aspect of their lives is ruled by Jews, the infamous global elites, and the cultural Marxists. Hitler’s mythical nonsense of a Bolschevistisches Weltjudentum [The Myth of JudeoBolshevism] is kept alive.