WASHINGTON (AP) — The one who operates the Twitter account claims to be an Islamic fundamentalist dwelling in Spain, empathizing with violent extremists and eager for the times, greater than six centuries in the past, when Muslims dominated the nation.
The views are as faux because the account, a part of a unfastened and casual effort by far-right nationalists in Spain to make use of social media to fire up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant fervor and to undermine religion in Spain’s multicultural democracy. In some instances, they exploit Twitter’s unfastened guidelines to unfold hateful messages and threats of violence, whereas in others they pose as Muslims as a option to disparage precise followers of Islam.
By harnessing the facility of social media to speak, coordinate and evangelize, these behind the so-called Reconquista motion are counting on the identical playbook utilized by far-right extremists within the U.S., Brazil and different international locations who’ve used social media to broaden their energy and recruit new followers.
Reconquista additionally borrows the identical rhetoric utilized by far-right teams within the U.S., and even among the similar on-line memes, together with Pepe the Frog, a crudely drawn amphibian who has turn out to be a mascot for white supremacist and antigovernment teams within the U.S. In one Reconquista meme, Pepe is proven sporting the garb of a sixteenth century Spanish conquistador.
As within the U.S. and different international locations, the Spanish nationalists have seized on debates over trans rights, spreading deceptive claims in regards to the exploitation of youngsters and supposed conspiracies to eradicate the thought of gender. They’ve additionally criticized COVID-19 vaccines, feminism, efforts to handle local weather change and assist for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.
The exceptional overlap of techniques and pursuits isn’t a coincidence, however displays how far-right teams in lots of international locations are studying from each other, copying one another’s successes, mentioned Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the Princeton, N.J.-based Network Contagion Research Institute, a bunch that research on-line extremism and revealed a report on Reconquista this week. The findings had been first reported by The Associated Press.
“This is a recipe for disaster,” Finkelstein instructed the AP. ”All over the world we’re seeing totally different manifestations of the identical sort of drawback. The flags are all totally different, nevertheless it’s exceptional how related the memes are.”
One concern, Finkelstein mentioned, is that the rhetoric might result in offline violence.
Reconquista takes its title from the profitable effort by Christian leaders to reconquer huge components of the Iberian peninsula from its Islamic rulers and expel Muslims through the Middle Ages. It’s a time period embraced by some on the far-right, who see their opposition to Islam and immigrants as a divinely ordained sequel of types to that bloody, centuries lengthy battle.
Anti-Muslim rhetoric from accounts linked to Reconquista soared after a Moroccan man attacked two Catholic church buildings within the southern metropolis of Algeciras in January, killing a church officer and injuring a priest. The man, an unauthorized immigrant, is now jailed within the psychiatric ward of a Spanish jail awaiting the outcomes of a judicial probe; authorities imagine he acted alone.
Many of the violent threats towards Muslims that unfold on Twitter following the assault violated the platform’s guidelines, and in some instances the platform did act to take away the content material or droop the creator. But typically these behind the content material merely created a brand new account days after they had been suspended.
The far-right celebration Vox helped popularize Reconquista on-line, utilizing the time period repeatedly in Tweets forward of the 2019 election. Vox, whose members specific strongly anti-immigrant views, now holds 52 seats, or the third largest quantity, in Spain’s 350-member decrease legislative chamber. The celebration’s Twitter account was briefly suspended in 2020 for accusing its critics of selling pedophilia, and once more in 2021 for inciting hatred towards Muslims.
The celebration’s chief, Santiago Abascal, has made a number of references to the Reconquista, as he did final yr in a Tweet. “Today is the anniversary of the reconquest of Granada, an indelible memory of the day the recovery of the entire national territory was completed after eight centuries of Islamic invasion,” he wrote.
Supporters of La Reconquista typically show Spanish flags of their profiles and a few brazenly reward Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator whose rule ended greater than 40 years in the past. They typically seek advice from Muslims as Moors, an outdated historic time period for Muslims from North Africa. One makes use of a photograph of ex-U.S. President Donald Trump as their profile image.
“If loving Spain is very facha, well, I am very facha,” reads the Twitter bio of 1 supporter of La Reconquista, utilizing a Spanish time period for fascism.
“Reconquista style, but we won’t only remove the moors but also those who opened their doors to them,” wrote one other.
Spain has responded to the trouble to rehabilitate Franco’s legacy by passing a regulation final yr that made it a criminal offense to glorify the dictator. In 2019 Franco’s physique was exhumed from a tomb at a grandiose memorial advanced constructed by the fascists. He was reburied in a close-by cemetery.
Far-right teams in a number of international locations have sought to reshape public understanding of occasions just like the holocaust, slavery and, extra lately, the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. By ignoring the main points of the historic Reconquista or Franco’s dictatorship, La Reconquista seeks to legitimize its personal anti-immigrant views as conventional Spanish values, in response to Marc Esteve Del Valle, a professor on the University of Groningen within the Netherlands who has studied Reconquista’s use of the web.
In that sense, the web isn’t only a place the place Reconquista supporters discover one another and share info, however a way of shaping public opinion and politics.
“The social networks are tools to organize, to mobilize. It’s where the movement lives,” Esteve Del Valle mentioned.
Twitter has drastically lowered its workers targeted on ferreting out misinformation, hate speech and extremist content material because it was purchased by Elon Musk. The firm didn’t reply to messages in search of remark about La Reconquista.
In current years various informally organized far-right teams have used social media in related methods.
In Italy, an anti-vaccine group often known as V_V (after the film “V for Vendetta”) has used Telegram to threaten nurses, medical doctors and others concerned in efforts to avoid wasting lives through the COVID-19 pandemic. In Germany, an analogous group often known as Querdenken used Facebook to encourage violence towards vaccine supporters till it was kicked off the positioning. In Brazil, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro plotted on social media forward of January’s violent assault in Brasilia.
And within the U.S., social media performed a vital function in spurring the lethal Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol, and is now being utilized by supporters of Trump in an effort to whitewash the occasions of that day.
Trump himself has helped construct bridges between among the teams, as when he praised the Spanish Vox Party throughout a video message performed at a rally final yr.
“We have to make sure that we protect our borders and do lots of very good conservative things,” Trump instructed the gang. “Spain is a great country and we want to keep it a great country. So congratulations to Vox for so many great messages you get out to the people of Spain and the people of the world.”
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