Digital Revolution Toolkit

The first step is knowing your enemy. The far-right is not a unitary movement that should be dismissed as uneducated, silly, or benign. 

The far-right uses a front stage/ back stage strategy where their social media posts and most of their public declarations are done in a way to hide their radicality. Humour is also their speciality as they can say terrible things but then hide behind the claim that they were ‘’just joking’’. Jokes work extremely well online, but they also help normalise far-right actors as they begin to look harmless when everything they say is done in the form of jokes. 

The far-right is unfortunately not just sending jokes and memes, they are also organising into online groups like on Telegram, Facebook, WhatsApp or even in alt-tech platforms. These groups have led to online troll attacks or to organising violent assaults on fundamental democratic values as has been seen from Brazil to the United States.   

Irish colleagues have shared learnings from working with allies to build an online approach to messaging against the far-right. 

1. You’re not debating logic with logic; you’re up against emotional rhetoric that aims to cause fear or anger, etc. 
2. The far-right don’t have to convince anyone with facts, they only have to confuse enough people to create a vacuum for doubt or unconscious bias to creep in. 
3. If you only ever say why the other side is wrong, you’re always debating on their terms and repeating their arguments for them. Say what you stand for. 
4. Be quick and reactive if you want to own the narrative.

An example of identifying the far-right tactics has been created by an ambitious mapping created by Italian colleagues. Trade union premises, along with online websites and platforms, have been attacked several times by far-right reactionary forces and after the unprecedented attack to CGIL headquarters on October 9th 2021, they decided to monitor all the actions against the trade union sites, by collecting them on the “Map of anti-union vandalism”, edited by Anna Chiara Manzo from the Fondazione Di Vittorio. 

This Map shows the geographical distribution of the attacks, with pictures and links to the news on the event, the claim of the attack, the responsible group, the reaction by the local trade union and communities and is a precious tool to better understand the links, similarities, differences, strategies of the many different groups threatening  trade union work, and to support coherent responses.

Social media companies are not there solely to facilitate human interactions and connection, they are there to make profit. Hate and anger build a lot of engagement, and engagement brings money.

If you look at studies from New York University, it is easy to see that the algorithms favour far-right content more than any other political ideology. Also, disinformation and misinformation are widespread on social media, but particularly far-right disinformation is the most interacted with online. 

These companies act like public utilities where everyone needs to be in order to live a connected life, but as long as they work on European soil, they have to play by our rules.

The ETUC has a policy to regulate social media companies so that hateful and harmful speech is not boosted by algorithms to earn profit for social media shareholders. Engagement online should not be geared toward the most extreme content including misinformation and disinformation. Political advertising should be transparent and clearly labelled to see where the information is coming from.

Trade unions are not here just to play defence, we are the polar opposite of the far-right. Not only because of trade unions’ history and proud tradition of opposing the far-right in the past, but because of what trade unions stand for today. Trade unions, above all else, believe in solidarity: we seek better lives, social justice and opportunity, for all working people. We stand for unity over division.

 There is no silver bullet or one-size-fits-all “cut and paste” solution to tackling the far-right. Trade unions are stronger together and will win with solidarity and by learning from each other.

A common feature that is shared everywhere is that the growth of the far-right takes place in a political- economic context where occupational and economic security as well as income have declined. 

That is why it is important to get our message of economic and social progress out to as many people as possible. Trade union policies are a direct antidote to the poisoned fertile soil that allows the far-right to propagate. 

The best way to get our message out is by organising online with our message of an economic alternative.  This is why it is so important to build lists of supporters who sign petitions or other actions for trade union campaigns so that they can hear and share a trade union vision where no one is left behind. 

Irish colleagues have examples of fighting the far-right as they faced hatful protests against asylum seekers and library books in recent years.  The Fórsa trade union put out statements on social media and their website with a focus on what they stood for and countered the far-right narratives by appealing to the strong sense of justice in Irish society. The language that resonated was:

• “Intimidating people will do nothing except scare vulnerable people and rip our communities apart”,
• “Racism has no place in Irish society”,
• “Trade unions are for everyone”.

When it came to representing librarians against far-right agitators, the union used strong digital communications in support of offline work (rallies, industrial relations, large online meetings for members to create spaces for them, and other work). The focus here was to not debate on the far-right’s terms. They did not engage with far-right arguments against the LGBTQ+ books; the union predominately ignored them and focused the calls on the employers to protect the workers from the agitators abusing people in their workplaces. 

Overall, the engagement with their digital content was high and positive in nature, and they became a target online by the far-right. Their online work was mirrored in their very prominent attendance at pro-refugee rallies, which vastly outnumbered the opposing groups.

It is crucial to share your message with supporters, however, supporters need to feel an ownership of the policies for themselves. Material cannot go viral if just shared from one central trade union account, you need many to amplify the message to ensure that more eyes have access to it. You should always make it as easy as possible to share all of your messages, petitions and campaigns.

Leaders on the ground, whether they be trade union members or supporters, can use the central messaging and adapt it to their conditions to cast a wider net and involve more allies in the fight for better economic and social conditions for everyone.

As an example of easily sharing your campaigns, British colleagues from the TUC built a petition platform that not only hosts their own campaigns but also allows for any trade union member or supporter to post their own petition and to control the messaging themselves. This allows for superior reach because political initiatives from the ground can be put up by those who know the terrain and share their messaging with workers and supporters who then get included on wider union activist lists.

An interesting inquiry to better understand the environment of the right and far-right has been released by the ANPI, the Italian National Association of Partisans – an organisation that is always very attentive to anti-democratic organisations and actions happening in Italy and abroad. After having investigated Facebook and Twitter, they reported on the use of Telegram by far-right groups. The investigation is really thorough, and the main outcome is that Telegram is the online place where groups and movements let the most radical violent and racist, anti-Semitic and subversive impulses emerge freely, strengthened by greater anonymity, in a real black galaxy. See more here: 

https://www.patriaindipendente.it/persone-e-luoghi/inchieste/la-galassia-nera-su-telegram/