Monitoring by the Online Hate Prevention Institute shows how far-right groups used the attack on Flinders St and rising African youth violence to promote hate and violent extremism

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Flinders Street and African youth violence

Dear Supporter,

Last year started with huge momentum for the far right. Donald Trump was in the White House, the Australian Government was seeking to remove laws against racial vilification (section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act), the Alt Right was mainstream news, Nazi posters were on display on university campuses in Melbourne, racism seemed to becoming more acceptable in society and antisemitism had become mainstream.

Thankfully this extremely dangerous situation improved as the year went on. The changes to the anti-racism laws were defeated in the Australian Senate. Attitudes against racism in the US strengthened after Charlottesville. United Patriots Front leaders Blair Cottrell, Neil Erikson, and Christopher Shortis were convicted on criminal charges for serious religious vilification. Facebook purged a number of far-right pages across the globe and later Twitter too purged accounts associated with extremist groups. By the end of the year the infrastructure of the far right was significantly dismantled.

In the last days of 2017 the new far-right strategy emerged. The Flinders Street attack in which a vehicle was used to deliberately drive through pedestrians was seized upon by far right groups to promote a narrative of "Muslim terrorism" at odds with the message from police that the driver was being treated for mental health issues, was on drugs, but was not known to have any connection to terrorism. Then came the rise in youth crime, largely carried out by African youth. The far right jumped on this bandwagon as well with traditional racism based on skin colour, anti-refugee sentiment and efforts to again present this as someone linked to "Muslim terrorism". In both incidents there were calls not just for a renewal of far-right rallies, but for vigilante action and in some cases for violent extremism.

We are still doing significant work to tackle online hate and extremism despite operating at a reduced level of activity due to budget cuts. The links below highlight some of the our recent work and engagements. This work is promoted online and reaches a larger audience thanks to the support of our regular monthly donors. Each $5 donation helps us reach around 1000 additional people. If more supporters become donors we can increase our impact even further.

Regards,

Dr Andre Oboler
CEO, Online Hate Prevention Institute

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Recent Articles & Media Coverage

Flinders Street Car attack
On December 21st 2017 a car deliberately drove through pedestrians outside Flinders Street Station. Our report outlines the incident and online responses by both police and the far-right.

African youth crime in Melbourne
While the African youth crime problem in Melbourne is being tackled by police, our briefing shows how far right groups are using the problem to promote racism, anti-refugee sentiment and religious vilification.

Presentation to Victoria Police
Last week our CEO, Dr Andre Oboler, gave a presentation to Victoria Police looking at the social media responses to the Flinders Street and Bourke Street attacks. The presentation also examined the excellent use of social media by police during these incidents.

Tackling Twitter hate: robots & people
Twitter recently closed the account of a robot that providing a valuable service alerting people to impostor trolls. This briefing looks at the value of automated and human centered responses to hate.

Twitter combating online abuse
Twitter has made some significant changes to its approach to tackling online hate. We discuss them in this briefing, as well as the risk of anti-hate work being overly focused on Twitter as it's easier than monitoring Facebook or YouTube. Also published in J-Wire.

The campaign against hate
In March 2018 we'll be launching a new campaign working with selected community groups to tackle online hate. Each selected group will get a reporting gateway on their organisations website. Interested peak community bodies can contact us about this campaign.

Dutton, Turnbull legitimising anti-immigrant vigilantes, say experts
The Age, 15 January 2018
OHPI CEO Dr Andre Oboler told The Age that some comments from federal politicians are feeding both racism and far-right extremism.

Statement from Coalition to Advance Multiculturalism
OHPI was pleased to join other civil society groups supporting a statement against the racist collective targeting of the African community in response to the African youth crime problem: "Victoria’s diverse faith and multicultural communities are extremely concerned and disappointed by... [reporting & discussion] surrounding youth crime in Victoria, which appears to target and make scapegoats out of the Victorian African community..."

Presentation on OHPI
Late last year we gave a presentation on OHPI and its work as part of the 2nd National Advancing Community Cohesion Conference. The session was streamed live on Facebook and the recording can be seen here.

Representing Australia at IHRA
Also towards the end of 2017 we represented Australia as part of DFAT's delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in its meeting in Bern (Switzerland). At the meeting Australia's membership was upgraded to liaison country status.

Annual Report

OHPI's audited accounts, which incorporate the Directors report on activities, are publically available through the Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission website. The information below provide some of the highlights / key information from the report.

Financial Report
2017 FY income was under $28,500, a significant drop compared to the 2015 peak of over $245,500. Savings, including a move from staff to volunteers and reduction in activity have kept OHPI sustainable on the reduced budget. The drop in funding was due to the end of the initial seed funding to establish OHPI.

OHPI Publications
During the 2017 FY OHPI published 25 briefings about online hate, contributed to a book on cyber-racism and contributed chapters to two other books. Two submissions to Parliament were cited in parliamentary reports and a previous report on anti-Muslim hate was cited by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Media Engagement
OHPI was in the media 24 times including: Triple J, K-Rock, SBS News, J-Wire, Huffington Post, Vocativ, Ynet News, ABC News, the Australian Jewish News, the Daily Mail, the Herald Sun, Forward, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and New Matilda.

Reporting Software
Significant advances were made in the development work on our reporting software (Fight Against Hate) and analysis tool (CSI-CHAT). The software will be used in a number of projects in 2018.

Online Engagement
Our Facebook page remained steady through the year at around 24,000 supporters. Our website was viewed by 22,800 different people. Our 25 briefings collectively received 7,879 likes / shares while our reach on Facebook was 427,444 people.

Our impact in 2017 was significant, but also lower than in past years. The absence of dedicated staff has reduced the amount of content we can produce and our capacity to share it. While still a very worthwhile effort, it's clear that an increase in funding sufficient to reengage staff would enable an increase in both output and impact.