Anti-Muslim Sentiment Dominated Extremist Twitter Accounts After the Election

Rasa - In the month following the election, extremists on Twitter exalted in the election of President-elect Donald Trump by circulating a number of memes and images, many of which targeted Muslims, in an attack on political correctness that mirrored a terrifying emergence of hate incidents.

News ID: 425876

Date: 18 December 2016 - 16:55

RNA - A Hatewatch analysis compiled from social media data related to more than 1,800 extremist Twitter accounts found that more than 1,750 unique photos and memes were distributed over a month-long period between Nov. 8 and Dec. 8. (Twitter has since suspended some of these accounts as it continues to face high public scrutiny for what role in played amplifying hate during the campaign.)

But the pattern suggests a wide distribution of hate imagery. While images and memes that expressed anti-Muslim rhetoric and imagery, 75 in total, accounted for only about 4 percent of the total distributed images, these images were shared on a much larger scale. A single image or meme, in fact, was often shared well over 100 times. In total the images were redistributed more than 2,750 times.

For context, images that contained hate speech such as white nationalist sentiment and were not directed towards Muslims, or images that contained the names or depictions of white nationalists, accounted for 3 percent, just over 50 in total. But even they were shared about 1,500 times.

While manually categorizing images admittedly leaves open room for subjective interpretation, images tagged for anti-Muslim rhetoric were hard to argue against.

One image depicted London Mayor Sadiq Khanas as a Pokémon character named “Hamaskhan,” with the accompanying description: “Probably the most dangerous Pokémon, Hamaskhan believes that Londoners should learn to accept Islamic terrorism whilst he is mayor.” Another photo, shared by over 40 people shows a father and son holding swords. A caption imposed over the image read, “1/4 of US Muslims polled agree VIOLENCE is ok against those that offend Islam!” Another meme called President Obama “Islam’s Trojan racist jihadi.” One disturbing image was a map showing the locations of three Islamic Centers in Oakland, Calif. The image was shared more 92 times.

A number of images and memes were either produced by or made reference to anti-Muslim hate groups. Most prevalent among such groups was the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a one-time hawkish think tank that has become a conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States. Among CSP’s claims are that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated all levels of government, and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a group run by Pamela Geller, who has claimed that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X and once said, “I believe in the idea of a moderate Muslim. I do not believe in the idea of a moderate Islam.”

Many of the AFDI images originate from an advertising campaign AFDI ran on public transportation in major cities in the U.S., including slogans such as “Islamic Jew Hatred, It’s in the Quran.”

Some of the CSP images shared originated from a 2012 video series that claimed to expose the Muslim Brotherhood’s successful efforts to infiltrate American society and government. Screen captures from videos produced by anti-Muslim speaker Bill Warner, a former physics professor who sometimes uses the name “Bill French.” Warner once said, "The two driving forces of our civilization are the Golden Rule and critical thought. … There is no Golden Rule in Islam. ... There is not really even a Ten Commandments."

Other memes and images were clearly an attempt to demonize Islam and Muslims. Some photographs depicted women being whipped and stoned in foreign countries –– images commonly used by racists and anti-Muslim activists to claim that this behavior stands for all of Islam. Others centered on a conspiracy theory popularized worldwide that Islam is taking over Europe as a result of this year's Syria refugee influx.

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