ONLINE NETWORKS OF THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN EXTREME RIGHT

Abstract

This article applies instruments of social network analysis to a study of communication networks within the Italian and German extremist right. Web links between organizational websites are used as a proxy. Indeed, extremist groups increasingly use and abuse the Internet for their propaganda and their recruitment, and also for their internal communication. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organizations, even violent groups. In a macro-, micro-, and meso-analysis, the various specificities of the two national political sectors are demonstrated and linked to the offline reality. The Italian network appears to be very fragmented, highly diversified, and difficult to be coordinated (‘policephalous network’), whereas the German network is denser and much more concentrated on a few central actors (‘star structure’). These differences are mainly due to political opportunity structures in the two countries. Additionally, whereas the Italian network structure allows for the construction of a typology of sub-groups of organizations, the German communicative structure seems to be more erratic and less coordinated. The article also highlights the function of websites which are not related to any specific group. Indeed, these are of special importance for the far right as a political arena which is usually banned from the dominant societal discourses (if not even legally forbidden). Considering this, new modes of communication can be of greater use for extremist groups than for more traditional political actors.

Keywords:

• network analysis
• right-wing extremism
• communication networks
• political violence
• radicalization

Notes

This paper builds on a broader research project on the radicalization of political activism, financed by the START Center of the University of Maryland and directed by Donatella della Porta at the European University Institute, Florence. We would like to thank Manlio Cinalli for the useful suggestions concerning our analyses.

SPLC Report, ‘Hate Groups, Militias on Rise as Extremists Stage Comeback,’ 2004. http://www.splcenter.org/center/splcreport/article.jsp?aid=71

For other important databases tracking hate sites, see the US Anti-Defamation League (http://www.adl.org/learn/default.htm) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=242023).

Germany counts 17 agencies for the ‘protection of the constitution’, one at the federal level and one for each of the 16 Länder. All 17 agencies publish an annual report which summarizes all activities which were directed against the principles laid out in the German constitution. It is organized in several sections, on extreme right-wing groups, extreme left-wing groups, and groups of extremist immigrants. For 2006, the Verfassungsschutzbericht mentions no less than 1000 web sites maintained by the German extreme right, but this also includes sites by private individuals. This confirms that the internet is an important tool of communication for German extremist groups, as a means of organizing protests, events, and meetings but also for online discussion.

Such as the summer barbecue of Deutsche Stimme, the newspaper of the most important political party of the German extreme right, the NPD, which is regularly accompanied by music groups.

In 1997, the AN also organized a meeting in Rome and Milan entitled ‘1,000 days until the year 2000’, where telematic populism and the interaction between internet and politics were discussed (Caldiron 2001, p. 337).

A broad variety of extremist groups have been identified (such as the ‘White Supremacists’, ‘Black Separatists’, and ‘Militia’ movements) and the role of the internet for their mobilization strategies illustrated. For example, it has been demonstrated that the internet supports underground groups in improving the effectiveness of their means of communication (Whine 1997), information strategies (Burris et al. 2000), and in the building of collective identity, solidarity, and new organizational modes of ‘leaderless resistance’ (Gerstenfeld et al. 2003). In a recent study, based on a content analysis of 132 web sites of radical organizations, Schafer (2002) underlines the role of internet for these groups in selling goods and obtaining financial resources, as well as in facilitating communication among the members (Schafer 2002).

We have used the UCINET 6 software for this analysis (Borgatti et al. (2002), Ucinet for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis. Harvard: Analytic Technologies).

This ranges from studies on participation and social mobility (Van Deth 1997) to those on migration chains (Piselli 1999) or those on the entry to the labour market (Bagnasco 1999).

For the Italian case, we have identified the most important groups of the extreme right with the help of some organizations which can be considered analogous to some American ‘watchdog’ organizations, such as the site of the ‘Osservatorio Democratico’, including an analysis of secondary literature (see the recent contribution by Roversi 2006). In the German case, we started from the web sites of the two political parties NPD and DVU and various online publications (Deutsche Stimme, Deutsche Nationalzeitung) plus a key word search in Google.

For the classification of the Italian organizations, we referred to some categories which have been traditionally proposed for the study of the extreme right (Burris et al. 2000; Tateo 2005), adapting them to the specificities of the current Italian context.

Gnosis, Rivista Italiana di intelligence, ‘Relazione sulla politica informativa e della sicurezza’, May–August 2001.

The country of Switzerland (‘Schweiz’) has nothing to do with this region. The term is based on the fact that the hills and mountains of ‘Saxon Switzerland’ are very similar to the Swiss landscape.

For these and the following measures, see Scott (2000).

In 2004, the NPD and the DVU created an electoral alliance. Only one of the two political parties presents candidates in any given election. However, this alliance is not appreciated by the activists of the extreme right who would prefer only the NPD to present candidates. We can suspect that the financial resources of the DVU (its leader, Gerhard Frey, is a wealthy publisher) is the reason why this collaboration is still maintained.

The indegree counts how many contacts a certain actor receives from other actors, whereas the outdegree counts how many contacts depart from a certain actor.

Such as Il duce.net with 15 links, and Brigata nera, Il RAS, and RSI, all with 11 links.

In our analysis, the Deutsche Stimme has been treated separately. Its indegree is 10.

Technically speaking, a ‘clique’ is a decentralized network where all the nodes (actors) are adjacent to each other (Scott 2000).

The data about the ‘cliques’ (hierarchical clustering of overlap matrix) are available on request.

Both analyses have been performed with a minimum clique size of 4.

These organizations form a very dense sub-group, sharing mutual links in 10 cliques.

For both countries, we have followed the criterion that the organizations in every sub-group must share mutual links in at least two cliques.

Therefore, a group (or block) which is identified in such a way can unify actors who are very different from each other in typological terms (e.g. political parties and skinhead groups), but which are grouped together by virtue of being similar because of the structure of relations into which they are inserted.

As we can see, block 2 and 4 are characterized by having many more contacts within than with any other block of the sector. This suggests that these two groups can be considered as true ‘coalitions’ within the overall network.

The second group is also linked to all the other blocks of the network, apart from blocks 6 and 5.

This block is mostly composed of political parties (Forza Nuova, Fronte Sociale Nazionale, MSI-FT) and political movements (such as Fascismo e Libertà).

In fact, the second block appears as the most active in creating contacts within the sector of the Italian extreme right (although less so with blocks 6 and 5). In contrast, block 4 is the least active in the construction of contacts within the network and only maintains links with blocks 2 (and 1).

The EU report ‘European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia’, Italy.

The most recent attempt of the most important elements of the Italian extreme right to create a coalition was for the European elections in 2004. The Alternativa sociale coalition, originating from Libertà di Azione (headed by Alessandra Mussolini), tried to unite the most important political parties of the Italian extreme right which had never collaborated in an election campaign (Fronte Sociale Nazionale, Fiamma Tricolore, and Forza Nuova). However, this coalition was unable to maintain unity before the election took place, after the decision of MSI-FI to leave. Despite this, the coalition has obtained one parliamentary seat in the European Parliament. After a bad result at the Italian national elections in 2006, the existing contacts between the components of the coalition were terminated.

Yet another, more technical further elaboration of this research could also consist in an analysis of web links to hosting servers and bandwidth providers.

Although the authors share responsibility for the whole article, the final writing of sections 1, 4, 5, and 6 (pp. 86–88) is to be attributed to Manuela Caiani; the final writing of sections 2, 3, 6 (pp. 89–91) and 7 to Claudius Wagemann.