Far-right groups capitalise on Covid-19 pandemic, while Islamist extremism wanes

Right wing groups turn violence into a 'game' with more points for attackers of Muslims, Jews, African Americans and liberals

Far-right group the Boogaloo Boys hold a rally at the Capitol Building in Lansing, Michigan. AFP

Alarmist and tech-savvy, far-right groups have capitalised on the coronavirus pandemic, fanning flames with politically motivated attacks and hate-speech.

As more people went online during the coronavirus pandemic, researchers noticed a decline in Islamist terrorism but a notable increase in right-wing conspiratorial anti-democracy rhetoric that also promotes violence against police and minorities in the US, a study by the Institute for Economics and Peace showed.

­“We have witnessed an emboldening of the broad ecosystem of far-right extremism, from white supremacist ‘accelerationist’ groups using the Covid-19 crisis to claim democracy is a failure and call for insurrectional violence, to wider extremist constituencies opportunistically using the ongoing pandemic to spread conspiratorial hate speech,” the IEP’s Terrorism Index 2020 report said.

“In the US context, such content has sought to ‘gamify’ violent extremism, detailing how ‘players’ can achieve ‘points’ by carrying out attacks on law enforcement, liberals, Muslims, Jews, Black Americans and other groups deemed ‘enemies’.”

Despite only a minuscule portion of global terror attacks occur in the west, they are notable for largely taking place outside the realm of conflict and war, unlike in the Middle East.

In parallel, various extremist groups used the coronavirus to push their agendas further.

In Syria, Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al Sham characterised the coronavirus pandemic as an apocalyptic omen which would bring about “political and economic collapse” offering the group an opportunity to further reign. ISIS touted the disease as a “Soldier of Allah” and Taliban marketed it as the wrath of God used to punish mankind for its “sins”.

Already on the rise in the West and especially in the US, however, far-right groups have painted an altogether different picture.

In March, as more countries were starting to come to grips with the realities of the virus, a white supremacist channel’s followers grew by more than 6,000 in that month alone and another by 800% just by focusing on coronavirus messaging.

Initially described as a domestic terrorism threat by the FBI in 2019, far-right QAnon conspiracy movement flourished during the lockdown with memberships on social media increasing by up to 120 per cent in March.

In this manner, the coronavirus is weaponised by extremist groups inspiring violence on the ground as it has been throughout history whenever economic, social and geopolitical calamities hit.

So far, the long term effects of these groups are not yet clear but the global and western landscape for extremist groups is growing increasingly complex, digitised, dispersed and fertile feeding off one crisis after the next.