Use of the web by ultra-conservatives

In a world that is increasingly dependent on the Internet as a method of communication – some say that even the behemoth newspapers like NYT will radically change their print presence within the next few years – it seems natural for the ultra-conservative parts of our world to use this as a platform for their needs.  It would not surprise me if someone in the US Department of Defense helped to guide the effort to offline the Al-Qaeda discussion forums on September 10th.  A misguided attempt at overpowering the terrorists, says Tech.Blorge (see article) since Americans now have fewer ways to watch what this group is saying to each other. In my work on linking Second Life activities to sentiments and cultural activities on the Web, the ultra-conservative discussion forum, Stormfront.org, was critical in educating me on what I would be looking for and why.  The Internet is more than what it may seem to modern-day government censors.  As Kentucky state government officials still struggle with what goes on the Web and how much (even after the secretive Fletcher administration is gone), our democracy depends on a commitment for discussion on what the Internet is and should be.

Social Psychology of Racism in Virtual Worlds

Check it out: research by Northwestern University professors Paul Eastwick and Wendi Gardner says that racist assumptions and norms in real life follow us into virtual worlds.  In their recently published article, “Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world” (Social Influence, vol. 4), Eastwick and Gardner used two tactics (foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face – see more on this at the Arstechnica review of this research article). They attempted to get avatars in There.com to show reactions to their ploys of asking for help – from avatars that were purposely created very dark or very light — a strategy that they describe in the article abstract as ”targeting both self-perception and reciprocity norms.”  Ultimately, the article abstract states that ”the race of the avatar requesting help impacted the success of the door-in-the-face compliance technique, raising the specter that real-world racial biases may also emerge in virtual environments.”  One of the most wonderful parts of this project is that the researchers involved undergraduate students in the discussions of their findings and thanked “Doug Medin’s Psychology 423 class for their insightful comments on earlier drafts on this paper.”

When Bella Yan wore an African skin for several months last spring, I got the impression that her large stature made an even more powerful statement in the gatherings in Second Life.  Certainly, her presence made an impact on those who observed her, but I did not get any particularly pointed comments or experienced any slights as a result of her new skin. 

Perhaps it is because there are so many more avatars in Second Life than in There.com – and those who participate in SL tend to be more successful in entrepreneurial ventures, from education to the arts, from humanitarian causes to business.  Just looking at the front pages of these two virtual worlds’ websites seems to me to show that SL allows a far greater flexibility in creating the look of an avatar.  Perhaps their research could be replicated in SL – but I wonder if their results would be the same in a diverse world of polyglots?

Wendell Berry and Community

Wendell Berry wrote “A Native Hill” in 1968 and it serves as a terrific way to start our class readings about the self and community.  He lives in Port Royal, Kentucky, and has for many years been Kentucky’s conscience.  In this early essay on who he is and why he so identifies with the comings and goings on his farm, he warned us: “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . .”  This turns the world upside down for us Kentuckians.  What I’ve observed as I grew up in Kentucky is that it is a very conservative state; people often think of themselves first (both as individuals and as members of a close-knit family) and others – especially strangers – come second.  Even though Kentucky is one of the poorest states in the nation, we still cannot gather the courage to commit to public funding for education, healthcare or public safety.   The will to use public funding for a common good is still lacking.  Wendell Berry does not call for increased government funding, but he does see the need for individuals to have the courage to think bigger than themselves – to think about the consequences of the rape of a mountain for coal or the ravaging of a river valley’s soil for tobacco. He urges us, in this essay, to give sustained attention to something in particular, something small, that represents something larger than ourselves.

For me, it was not a “native hill” but Dry Run Creek that formed my love of the country and its life rhythms.  Often sluggish but susceptible to flooding in the spring, Dry Run meandered along the northern and western boundary of my family farm in Scott County.  Our house, built originally in the 18th century, sat on the crest of a hill overlooking the iron-and-wood bridge that crossed the creek to reach US 25.  The old ford was just north of the bridge and the hard bed of the creek there was where my pony decided one summer day to roll and get me off rather than practice jumping for the Scott County Fair Horseshow.  The creek fed the roots of huge sycamore trees along its banks and my brother built us a treehouse in one of the bigger trees on a small island.  I loved following the creek bed, finding crawdads and tadpoles along the way.  The limestone rocks cracking against each other as I waded along and shoved the thick algae aside with my shins.  The semi-wild Angus cattle didn’t mind sharing the cool shade with me and my sisters.  Hot summer days meant swimming parties and homemade boat races.  In the winter, the creek often froze over and we would take a broom down each day to keep the surface smooth for ice skating parties.  My older brother would skate wildly in a courageous effort to win at hockey against our cousins.  As we grew older, the creek grew more and more mossy – more polluted than was safe even for wading - and we were warned not to go anymore.  My baby brother grew up knowing the creek was unsafe.  The creek levels dropped off as the farms north of us used the spring water for irrigation, and the toxic run-off killed the catfish and tadpoles in our creek.  Nobody came anymore to sit on the stone wall and fish or go frog-gigging.  I left for college and my parents sold the farm.  I live in the suburbs now and my kids didn’t play outside much at all growing up here.  The traffic is dangerous and the lawns around us mostly belongs to somebody else and are mostly off-limits.  My kids’ growing-up years could have been in a suburb anywhere in the US.  My early years in rural Scott County with a large extended family as close friends is only a story to tell my children – and the creek still runs to the Elkhorn River with its poisonous chemicals freshly applied every year by the farmers of Scott County who can’t imagine the creek any other way. 

One of Bella Yan’s favorite places in Second Life is the Center for Water Studies, and one of her favorite friends is Delia Lake who runs it.  The Center is an educational and recreational build in SL “dedicated to increasing the appreciation and understanding of water habitats. We hope that we can all use what we learn about water habitats in SL to better care for our precious water resources in RL [real life].   Degraded water systems are a serious threat to human health in many RL lands.”  When you’re ready to explore someplace great in SL, go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Better%20World/45/25/22.

Reflection on my journey

And so, my journey ends (see my first posting here). The freedom that is offered in Second Life allows for a wealth of experiences, and the opportunities are endless.  I am constantly modulating who I am – when I am alone in an empty sim, when I shift my conversation from observer/Other to comrade, when I see a place to shop for a better pair of boots.  The creativity involved in the design of an avatar and strategies for communications tends to overwhelm my senses even though I’m sitting safe at home in front of my computer.  Though I might have started out thinking that online anyone can be anybody or anything – for me, my gender, race, class, age, heterosexuality … all these remain constant.  It seems easy to jump between the 3D world of Second Life, photo editor software, webpages, scholarly books and my notes.  But it’s exhausting.  My cyborg self, blending human and non-human, seems clumsy and stupid in the fast world spinning around me.

This journey into virtual rightwing activities has only skimmed across the surface of many groups (large and small) that are experimenting with this new form of online branding, communication and place.  Those rightwing organizations such as the Front National or Stand Strong America that are sophisticated in their uses of the Internet use Second Life to solidify and fix their identities rather than explore the multiplicity of identity formation inherent to the Internet.  This is not a place for roleplaying and simulation for rightwing activists.  It is for real.

Protesting FNSL

I journeyed once again to the FNSL platform to see if I could get a conversation going. 

This time, I saw in the group gathered together at the back of the platform, a furry who was protesting.  The bear (Elie) was dancing around in the center of the group with a big poster that declaimed fascism and then a flag of the German antifascists.  She wore a Roman toga over long trousers and had sneakers on her feet.  The contrast of the slender 2-legged bear with the busty dominatrix in a red mini-skirt, black stockings and a whip highlighted for me how different women can be portrayed in Second Life.  As I stood there watching, I was responding via instant message to one of the FN members, godefroy, who was attracted to the list of conservative groups in my profile… and Elie chatted in English and in French as she continued to dance and wave her flag.  Here’s some of the text dialog:

godefroy to me via IM: i little speak english sorry ^^
Me via IM: ok, thanks anyway
godefroy via IM: you are national-socialist?
Me via IM: I’m exploring, thank you – interested in learning more
godefroy via IM: ok ^^
godefroy via IM: i’m ns too ^^
Me: lol what’s going on with Elie?
godefroy: bad bad
Elie: nothing
godefroy via IM: elie is bad ^^
Elie: just protesting
Elie: yeee ahh
Elie: si [yes]
Elie: pourquoi tu te sens concerné par ce panneau [why are you concerned by this poster?]
Elie: le FN n’est pas fasciste pourtant … [the Front National is not fascist however...]
Elie: tous lesmilitants ici sont racistes [all the activists here are racists]
godefroy to me via IM: elie is jewish!! lol

Not much of a protest compared to the real life antifa, but annoying if the visual medium is important to a user and one’s sense of proprietary ownership of space is strong.  However, the group didn’t seem to mind her all that much and continued interacting via text chat and voice through out the time I was there.  I left when they were getting into a discussion about the Jewish and Islamic versions of creation – and the dominatrix started talking about how all Jews, Arabs and blacks should be annihilated. 

A new sim for FNSL

There is a bright new spot in Second Life for the rightwing French political party Front National.  It’s easily found in the SL search engine and when teleporting in, you find yourself on a long rectangular platform high in the air.  It is a lovely open space filled with bushes and flowers in the carefully constructed green areas and bounded with white walls.  The glowing white podium area includes seats in a round for a sizeable meeting space with posters and flags well displayed around the edges.  At the center of the main walkway to the meeting area, I found a donation box ready for avatars to pay Linden dollars for the cause – nearby a lighted cone scripted to count avatars who visit the platform and record their names glows with the floating text above showing the visitors that their presence is being noted and archived. 

I found there a group of avatars gathering for a meeting, and though kind enough to try and communicate with me in English, they were not particularly interested in speaking with me. So I wandered off to take pictures. Besides the map that made the immigration populations seem to overwhelm the whole of France, I found two matching posters – the one featuring a young woman of color attracted my attention first.  I translated with my rusty college French:

This poster is on one side of the platform sim and the other matching poster offers the solution to the “broken” ideas of the French parties of the political left and the political right – offering the FN as a centrist solution that is better than what the other parties offer.  The points made in this poster by the downward thrust of a beautiful girl’s thumb are that the mainstream French concepts of nationality, assimilation, a social ladder and secularism are wrong.  However, by promoting “traditional” values, this party consistently offers little hope for women (removing them from the workforce) and minorities (”sending back” immigrants and their children out of France).

At the far end of the platform, visitors find a series of posters with reprinted news articles and internal communications from the leaders of the party.  The images of Le Pen are beatific, and it’s difficult to believe that his message is anything but good (for a quick reminder in English, see the BBC clip of Le Pen’s speech during his run for the presidency last year).  One poster is a message dated today, April 28th.  The gist of it is a complaint about the latest media attack on Jean-Marie Le Pen’s remarks on World War II – that these attacks bring about the discord in France, not Le Pen.   The internal communication then is that FN is the victim of the mainstream press and it is not their fault that “more than 80% of the French people consider us dangerous.”

Lundi 28 Avril 2008
Deux poids, deux mesures…
Communique de Louis Aliot
ne nouvelle fois, les propos de Jean-Marie Le Pen sur la seconde guerre mondiale creent la polemique dans le landernau politico-mediatique et par voie de consequence, seme un certain trouble dans now rangs militants. La zizanie qui regne sur la toile nationaliste, les propos inqualifiables des identitaires contre le Pen, les commentaires a la fois insultants, quelquefois interrogatifs, desempares ou pathetiques que je recois sur ma boite mail, prouvent que ce sujet est conflictuel et qu’il divise d’une maniere tres importante notre famille politique et sert d’epouvantail a une grand majorite de Francais (ce n’est pas un hasard si plus de 80% des Francais nous jugent dangereux).

Satire in SL

Is it safe to be satirical about conservatives in Second Life? 

Early in my wanderings I found General JCChristian, builder of the Wellstone Cafe and Conservative Heaven (see the article on his Giuliani campaign headquarters).  He encouraged me to talk to a few of his friends, and told me about Stormfront.org as a resource.  He said that other than a few griefers who took offense at his making fun of conservative ideology, he had not encountered any real references to extreme rightwing politics.   Today, I see in his blog that his luck has changed.  Check out the picture of his site littered with boxes marked with swastikas.

Terrorists in Second Life?

Last summer, the author of Inside Al Qadea, Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, began including Second Life in his remarks to the press about terrorist activities.  The Australian ran an article in July 2007 that delved deeper into these suppositions, tried to connect the acts by griefers in SL with terrorist roleplaying. In The [London] Times article of August 5, 2007, a more accurate depiction of Dr. Gunaratna’s comments show that he was monitoring twelve known jihadists in Second Life. Some SLers were wondering why SL was singled out (see the comment posted at the bottom of this August 10, 2007 posting) when it is clear that there are many different online platforms that can be used: “Google Docs and Spreadsheets systems and Zoho notes and wikis and private free forums, etc.” 

When I searched on “jihad” in the SL groups, I found a few entries.  The “Islamic Army of God” group members are all inactive (you might notice in the group window that the members’ “last login” is “unknown” – meaning these users haven’t been inworld in a long time).  I’ve not seen any past news articles about this group in SL, but perhaps someone will be able to tell me inworld. Another group, the “Jihad Terrorist” group charter warned: “If Your injoy making ppl mad and causing trouble this is the group for u trsut” – griefers.  The “Drag Queen Jihad!” group (with a picture of Matt Damon as its icon) said, among other things: “Look here’s how it works, even though we will all deny it until our dying day.  There are two kinds of people in SL.  There are the white bread types, those of us that like to build, chat, maybe roleplay a litte, texture, and have fun using the great tools provided….. And then there are toasters. If you need a toaster, Talk to us! ” - griefers. And, with the American flag in the icon box, the E.A.F. group: “American Jihads We are civys ready to fuck up terrorists. lets get out there and get some bitches!!!!!!! Elite American Forces…” – griefers? xenophobic nationalists? I’ll ask them and find out. 

In Wagner James Au’s New World Notes blog post of August 7, 2007, a conversation with Dr. Gunaratna is recorded – and that he knows jihadists who are users of Second Life and if SL users encounter real-life terrorists in Second Life they should report what they know to local government officials.  Who would know, though, if the anonymous account holders are simply roleplaying a fantasy that spills over from commercial gameplaying?  In Au’s blog post, “Jihad and Second Life,” some updated comments were added:

Drown Pharoah, a Muslim Sufi Resident who often attends prayer services at Second Life’s Mosque in Chebi, offers these stirring words in comments:  “I think I can speak for ALL Muslims in SL in stating that, should we become aware of terrorists operating in SL, we would contact the Lindens immediately.” Also, Rohan Gunaratna writes in with a correction about a jihadist mentioned in the UK Times article:  “[I] did not say to the UK paper that ‘Irhabi 007′ was operating in Second Life. I think the paper made a genuine error.”

Antifa reactions still smouldering

The antifa (anti-fascist) responses to Renouveau Français and to Le Pen’s Front National are not as militant or eventful as last year in Second Life, but the signs and group slogans remain.  I found these two posters near the SL headquarters for Renouveau Français.   

 

 

 

 NOTE:  A week later the poster with reference to the Front National as a neoNazi organization was gone.  Likely, it was protested by members of the FN and deemed by the Lindens as going too far in its depiction of this party’s ideology as Nazism.

Exploring headquarters for Renouveau Francais

Finding the new headquarters for the French rightwing activists in Second Life wasn’t hard.  A search in places in Second Life yielded Renouveau Français (French Renewal) at a sim called Ghloogums. 

Teleporting in, I saw a large meeting space with a few benches with pose balls for seating.  The benches faced a podium with large pictures behind emphasizing the classical ideals of French conservative thought –including the warrior saint Jean d’Arc who served as a champion for French sovereignty against oppression from the English (for a history of the use of imagery and rhetoric on Le Pen’s website, see L. Clare Bratten, “Online zealotry: la France du peuple virtuel,” New Media Society 2005: 7:517-532). According to the notecard welcoming visitors, “Our organization defines itself politically as nationalist, catholic and anti-revolutionary (meaning hostile to the false dogmas and false principles of the 1789 revolution). … We will set the record straight and propose a counter-information against the downpour of lies and omissions perpetuated continuously by the servile mass media.”  There is no doubt that this virtual meeting space is to recruit followers of their message for cultural purity.  The welcome note goes on to declare that, “… besides the broadcast of our analysis and proposals the greater number of French possible, we are working on training politically, philosophically, and humanly a new generation of executives which will be essential tomorrow in any attempt to redress our nation.  We will particularly focus our efforts toward youth as its generosity and enthusiasm allows us to hope in the future. Help us to make possible a rebirth of France! http://www.renouveaufrancais.com/index.php“

The posters along the back of the meeting space included one that used homophobic humor to poke fun at the members of the Communist Party of Second Life - a group dedicated to working against fascist activism in Second Life.

On another wall, I found beside a poster calling for the youth of France to join their revolution, another one describing the purpose of the European National Front.  Among its many goals, this organization exists to defend “our culture, our traditions and our christian identity against the cultural globalization, the uncontrolled inmigration… [and in] defense of life and traditional family against the crime of abortion, gay marriages and the adoptions by homosexual pairs.”  The poster gives brief biographies of two post-World War I fascist leaders: Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938, founder of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania) and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936, founder of the nationalist party called the Spanish Phalanx).  But they really  don’t need to refer to nationalist history of decades ago – there are plenty of nationalist movements taking place throughout Europe today.  Videos posted on YouTube provide a wide range of examples:  a news report on French nationalist power in Vitrolles, a rally in 2006 by the Portuguese National Front, a 1994 biography of Hungarian neo-Nazis led by Albert Szabo, a British National Front march through Bermondsey in 2007.