He said the harassment is even worse for those who are women, people of color, in a religious minority or LGBTQ. Gavin Yamey, a physician and public health professor at Duke University, has written about the rise of threats against health care workers during the pandemic.
USPS ROAD RASH OFFLINE
The data is especially concerning given a rash of incidents around the world that indicate some extremists are moving from online rhetoric to offline action. In May 2020 the channel had 5,000 subscribers it now has 50,000. That channel has grown steadily since the pandemic began and now has a reach of around 400,000 views each day, according to Telegram Analytics, a service that keeps statistical data on about 150,000 Telegram channels on the site TGStat. One was a scheduled speaker at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist deliberately drove into a crowd of counterdemonstrators, killing one and injuring 35. ISD researchers linked two usernames involved in running one Telegram channel to two prominent members of the American far-right. The researchers found suggestions that far-right groups on Telegram are working together. “Embrace who you were called to be,” read the post, which was accompanied by a swastika.
For example, someone posted a link to a news story about a Long Island, New York, synagogue on a channel popular with the far-right Proud Boys and added a message urging followers to join them. Indeed, mixed in with the COVID-19 conspiracy posts are some direct recruitment pitches. O’Connor said he believes the people behind these posts are trying to exploit fear and anxiety over COVID-19 to attract new recruits, whose loyalty may outlast the pandemic. In a statement to The Associated Press, Telegram said it welcomed “the peaceful expression of ideas, including those we do not agree with." The statement said moderators monitor activity and user reports "in order to remove public calls for violence.” Telegram, based in the United Arab Emirates, has many different kinds of users around the world, but it has become a favorite tool of some on the far-right in part because the platform lacks the content moderation of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Many of the posts contain hate speech directed at Jews, Asians, women or other groups or violent rhetoric that would be automatically removed from Facebook or Twitter for violating the standards of those sites. Other posts downplayed the severity of the coronavirus or pushed conspiracy theories about its origins. “It allows conspiracy theorists or extremists to create simple narratives, framing it as us versus them, good versus evil.” “COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for radicalization,” said the study's author, Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. One Telegram channel saw its total subscribers jump tenfold after it leaned into COVID-19 conspiracy theories. The tactic has been successful: Nine of the 10 most viewed posts in the sample examined by the researchers contained misleading claims about the safety of vaccines or the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing them. The post is one of many that white supremacists and far-right extremists are using to expand their reach and recruit followers on the social media platform Telegram, according to the findings of researchers who sifted through nearly half a million comments on pages - called channels on Telegram - that they categorized as far-right from January 2020 to June 2021. “The Jews own COVID just like all of Hollywood,” the accompanying text says. PARIS - The mugshot-style photos are posted on online message boards in black and white and look a little like old-fashioned “wanted” posters.
By DAVID KLEPPER and LORI HINNANT, Associated Press
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