Commentary: Why Asia may not be immune to far-right terrorism
SINGAPORE: Eleven people were killed in shooting incidents on February 18 in the German town of Hanau near Frankfurt, in what local reports have characterized as a right-wing extremist attack.
The incident, coupled with earlier arrests of several far-right extremists in Germany and the United States has refocused attention on far-correct violent extremism.
On Feb fourteen, 12 members of an extremist group known as Der harte Kern (The Hard Core), were detained for plotting mass-casualty attacks, including massacres at mosques in Germany, alike in scale to the March 2022 Christchurch shootings.
In January, several members of a US far-correct group known as The Base, were also hauled up on myriad charges, including firearm offences and conspiracy to commit murder. Government said they had uncovered and foiled plans for several attacks across the country.
EVOLVING TRANSNATIONAL THREAT
These developments underscore a dangerous new phase of militancy in the far-right, which until recently has by and large been linked to sporadic acts of violence involving lone actors self-radicalised online.
The 2022 Christchurch attacks, the worst mass shootings in New Zealand's history, further revealed how the cyberspace and social media has facilitated the porosity of far-correct extremism - an umbrella term encompassing white nationalist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic ideologies - and violence.
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Prominent far-correct groups such as the Base and Atomwaffen Partitioning (AWD), another United states of america based group, seek to advance the collapse of Western governments through violence and establish white ethno-states, and have moved beyond merely spreading propaganda online to incorporate a kinetic stage in their activities.
Their leaders actively encourage physical gatherings, with members cajoled into attending training sessions to selection upwards gainsay skills and then initiate acts of violence in support of the group'southward cause.
Their tactics increasingly come straight out of the playbook used by many Islamic extremist groups.
These range from disseminating propaganda videos featuring fighters participating in grooming camps, to maintaining virtual communities as well every bit using encrypted platforms such as Telegram to communicate, plot attacks and incite followers to violence.
More militant factions as well attempt to to radicalise independent prison cell clusters or even lone wolves to violence, in a manner which mimics the decentralised model of Islamist violent extremists such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS).
ASIAN LINKAGES
As western far-correct groups become better organised and more sophisticated, much of the electric current analysis on the move's largely decentralised capacity spanning North America, Europe and Australasia, fail its transnational ambitions, among the growing traction of right-fly ideologies globally.
The ascent of a white-supremacist, ultra-nationalist brand of correct-wing politics across Europe and the US in recent years served to embolden violent elements of the far-right. Information technology has also contributed to a surge in racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks there.
At the same time, right-wing extremist ideas, characterised by anti-globalism, ethno- religious nationalism and the pervasion of conspiracy theories that articulate grave threats to national sovereignty and individual freedom, have become more mainstream, including in parts of Asia.
To be sure, many of the pop anti-authorities protests in places such as Hong Kong and Republic of india, in their current iterations, largely articulate anti-establishment sentiments.
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Only their exploitation by various local right-wing forces and extremists to incite violence against minorities (in the instance of India) as well equally state targets, demonstrates how seemingly peaceful demonstrations, can pin to violent extremism, if simmering public anxieties about economic uncertainties, perceived government corruption and eroding national identities, are not effectively addressed.
These developments are a heightened cause for concern, given some international far-correct terror networks announced to be exploiting historical transnational links and the global spread of key extreme-right narratives to interact with right-wing nationalist and protest movements elsewhere.
Prominent western far-right extremists such as Anders Breivik, the attacker involved in a mass casualty attack in Oslo, Norway in 2022 that led to 77 deaths, have called for closer cooperation between white supremacist groups and Hindu correct-wing nationalists in India, links which can exist traced back several decades.
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Both movements are spring by a mutual hostility towards immigrants and Muslims and take similar overarching nationalistic visions. While so far limited to openly supporting the other in their respective activities, collaborations could accept an operational direction in the future.
Concluding Dec, white supremacists affiliated with a Ukrainian far-right group were also pictured in Hong Kong, likely to learn from the anti-government protests, riots and resistance movements at that place to further their agenda back dwelling house.
At the time, many local protestors in Hong Kong publicly rejected associating with the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, for fear of tainting the political legitimacy of their protests.
Information technology remains an open question whether ultra-nationalistic elements, which are a fixture of such protests, may seek to organise themselves by learning from correct-wing extremists elsewhere to further their interests.
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In Asia, organised violence arising out of a virulent right-wing nationalism is already evident in Mongolia, where neo-Nazi groups such as the Tsagaan Khas, fueled by a want to preserve racial purity, amidst other social, economic and political grievances, have targeted immigrants.
KEEPING AN Middle ON Diverse EXTREMISMS
It is unclear at this stage how far-right extremism volition evolve beyond the W, although low-end tactical alliances between western far-right groups or individuals and various ethno-nationalist and secessionist movements or even criminal syndicates, including in Asia, should non be discounted.
In the about-term, there will likely exist farther arrests of white supremacist networks and possibly more than loftier-profile attacks, mostly in the W.
Depending on the extent that far-right groups get involved in Asia-based groups equally well every bit the framing of their narrative discourse, extremist-driven violence in the wider region could proliferate if Islamophobia, for example, is used to stoke social tensions.
For policymakers, the vicious bicycle of reciprocal violence between white supremacist far-right and jihadist networks, a characteristic of the terrorism landscape in contempo years, serves as a reminder that counter-radicalisation policies must take into consideration the mutually reinforcing nature of various violent extremisms to ensure more effective outcomes.
Amresh Gunasingham is an Associate Editor and Kyler Ong an Associate Inquiry Fellow with the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Enquiry, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/commentary-why-asia-may-not-be-immune-far-right-terrorism-277366
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