One look at the official Facebook page for the English Defence League (EDL) would give most people more than just pause. “I see the bbc [sic] have removed all non white faces from there coverage and just show burnt cars now,” says one commenter of the riots consuming parts of London and Manchester as of this writing. A banner to the left of the page has a cross and the Roman Emperor Constantine’s motto “In hoc signo vinces.”
“By this sign you will conquer.”
Image by Gavin Lynn
By far, the most worrisome part of the EDL Facebook page, however, is the phrase “12,311 people like this.” While Facebook is littered with pages spouting revisionist conspiracies and extremist political ideologies on both the left and right, these are growing increasingly more popular as extremist groups are turning to non-traditional media to spread their message and find followers. The German Federal Agency for Political Studies announced that the estimated number of far right messages posted to social networks in the country tripled between 2009 and 2010. In Facebook’s case at least, the position so far has been to let the self-correcting nature of social media handle the brunt of the problem. Spokesman Andrew Noyes replied to the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s request that several Holocaust denial pages be taken down earlier this year with a blithe insistence that “the mere statement of denying the Holocaust is not a violation of our terms.”
It’s not the case that you can put literally anything up on the networking giant, however. A page calling for a “third Palestinian intifada” was removed. Calling for explicit violence is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. Theoretically, when the English Defence League starts explicitly, rather than implicitly, supporting its members’ violent acts towards people and property, then it can no longer use Facebook as a platform.
There may be a bright side for those who oppose such groups. While social networking makes these groups’ message more immediate and visible, it also makes them easier to track. When addressing the press in the wake of the recent tragedy in Norway that left 76 dead at last count, the German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said, “Among the right-wing extremists, we are aware of a few potential threats. But the problem isn’t those we have in our sights, but rather those who are radicalizing underground.”
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