Sascha Lobo: The dark power of chats

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Police officers at a demonstration in Berlin, May 2020

Photo: Paul Zinken / DPA

There is such a thing as a medial cornea, a point in the sense of news that is so dull that you can hardly feel anything.

"A right-wing extremist police chat group was uncovered," that is one of the media's calluses.

Which is why it has now received too little public attention.

Sascha Lobo, arrow to the right

Photo: 

Urban Zintel

Born in 1975, is an author and strategy consultant with a focus on the Internet and digital technologies.

In 2019 Kiepenheuer & Witsch published his book "Realitätsschock: Ten Lessons from the Present".

In his "Debate Podcast", Lobo responds to responses to his columns.

It would be extremely important to track precisely how right-wing extremism is entrenched in parts of the security authorities.

This is due to the power of this form of communication.

Chats are the hygge back rooms of the internet, mostly they come with a communicative cuddle that loosens people's tongues.

Since the so-called messengers such as WhatsApp or Telegram, a mobile, colorful, low-threshold variant has been on offer, the world has been hanging on the chat needle.

16.09.2020 - 29 police officers in North Rhine-Westphalia

The italic headlines in this text all come from the 80 days from mid-September to the end of November.

It is even an incomplete list.

There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, the unmasking of a Nazi chat including the confiscation of smartphones often leads to further Nazi chats.

On the other hand, the authorities - above all Horst Seehofer - are reluctant to approach this problem scientifically and structurally.

There should be no study of right-wing extremism in the police.

Sep 17, 2020 - NRW Interior Minister Reul after uncovering several Nazi chat groups:

In the chat, a protected social digital space, the true attitude of a person can be revealed particularly easily.

Chats can create an intimacy like no other digital instrument.

19.09.2020 - Right chats:

If you want to look into a person's soul, you only have to call up your WhatsApp chats - despite all the roles and poses that many people take there, or perhaps because of that.

Because in this way you can playfully test what can still be said.

When in doubt, it was just a bad joke or an inappropriate exaggeration.

In this way, you can collectively explore how the chat group actually thinks and feels. 

01.10.2020 - Right-wing extremist chat groups:

It is no coincidence that extremists of all kinds love chats.

Not only that such protected rooms are well suited for terror planning.

Because the major social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are more and more aggressively deleting extremist accounts, the "Islamic State" has been withdrawing into chat systems such as RocketChat for years.

Due to the structure of this networked software, there is - unlike WhatsApp, for example - no central person responsible.

With a little specialist knowledge, you can chat anonymously, encrypted and barely findable or even switched off.

01.10.2020 - At the police in Berlin:

The Indonesian scientist Nava Nuraniyah has examined the importance of chat groups for Islamist extremists. Her conclusion is: "Private chat groups mainly function as a place for social interaction and personal bonding, they help to expand extremist networks, strengthen group cohesion and consolidate convictions."

05.10.2020 - Brown chats in Saxony:

The social dynamics of chats can hardly be overestimated.

A frequently heard argument in the discussion about online radicalization is: Social media only make visible what was there before.

As a counter-argument, the following is just as often stated: Social media cause radicalization.

07.10.2020 - Right-wing extremist police chats: The

Unfortunately, the two sentences are not mutually exclusive, both are correct at the same time.

If a digital instrument can get the worst out of the individual

dramatic effect - then it's chats.

October 14, 2020 - Holocaust trivialization, agitation against asylum seekers and "animal pornographic writings":

However, it is also true that chat is also one of the most wonderful social digital media ever.

On dating platforms like Bumble or Tinder, a short, written exchange can often be used to gauge how the other person is feeling.

And there is hardly any network-based movement, from "Fridays for Future" to #blacklivesmatter to the Hong Kong insurgent citizens that do not coordinate via chat.

October 15, 2020 - 

When words become deeds in the age of digital networking, this usually happens in chats or chat-like rooms such as private Facebook groups.

Social media have been built up by brilliant people with almost unlimited resources in such a way that they activate emotionally as much as possible.

October 19, 2020 - Right-wing extremist chats with the police:

Such a mobilization ability is good for the advertising industry, but bad for radicalization.

Because these mechanisms are partly reflected in chats, the small, private siblings of the large, public platforms.

For example, in the way you deal with shared pictures and videos.

10/27/2020 - Five right-wing extremist chat groups were uncovered in North Rhine-Westphalia,

The dark power of chats arouses desires.

The European security authorities just want to weaken the encryption of messengers once again.

The discussion about this is less black and white than both sides would like - but part of the truth is that we learned about right-wing extremist police chats almost exclusively through leaks from participants and the subsequent seizure of equipment.

The »weak point« of social media is mostly social and rarely in the medium.

29.10.

2020 - Right

-wing extremist content is said to have been discovered

Uff.

November 6th, 2020 - Another Nazi scandal with around 30 suspects at the North Rhine-Westphalia police force shakes Germany:

Every now and then it is asked whether it is really serious right-wing extremist content.

Or whether it isn't often just a difficult form of humor.

This question fails to recognize that humor is an essential means of spreading right-wing extremist attitudes.

November 19, 2020 - Nazi chat scandal spreads:

Uff, uff.

11/24/2020 - Interior Minister Reul: In the chat of the bowling group »Kunta Kinte«, police officers shared

The influential American neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin ("Daily Stormer") wrote in his infamous manual for Nazi digital communication: "The uninitiated should never be able to tell whether we are joking or not." The dynamic in chats is ideal for this.

Together with the ability to mobilize, the often informal appearance and the increasing group cohesion, this results in an instrument that is ideal for right-wing networks in security authorities.

November 30th, 2020

At least 15 "individual cases" - actually: mass individual cases - with probably over 300 police officers involved in barely 80 days.

No institution in Germany cries louder and more consistently for far-reaching surveillance options than the various police forces.

Maybe they just start chatting with their own people, and then we'll see.

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