The Hate-Map
Introduction
The Hate Map was conceived as an idea in reaction to the uptick in far right terrorist attacks rooted in white supremacist ideology globally over the past decade. The growing trend of attacks inspired by, and building on other attacks has been especially evident in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings, but has also been evident prior to this. An issue has, however, been that attacks of the far right largely have been reported on as singular.
White perpetrators in white-majority countries, fuelled by white supremacy are often described as lone wolves, gunmen, shooters and attackers rather than terrorists. This project to map the white supremacy seeks, both to show global trends in attacks and other incidents, and to highlight the fact that the perpetrators of these incidents are organized through both formal and informal networks existing in both virtual and physical spaces and building on shared ideology, methodology and tactics that span national borders in a global movement.
The Map
Methodology
The Hate Map is populated with data submitted both by our internal researchers, the public and our network of volunteers. This data largely stems from publicly available news-sources and consolidations of information from other public data-sets and records. Existing records are however often limited in scope and fail to give a comprehensive picture of the global activities of the far right ranging from spread of propaganda and low-level activities through major terrorist incidents.
All data in the Hate Map is verified and quality controlled by internal researchers who are experts on far right extremism and experienced in the field of open source intelligence (OSINT) building on public sources and providing verifiable documentation before it is made available in our public-facing database and dashboard. Our researchers take great care to verify sources where there might exist any doubt. Links to external sources are provided for all our database entries in order to ensure that the public further can verify any incident independently.
Our dataset is cross referenced against the work of other institutions and organizations mapping the far right in order to ensure as comprehensive a picture of the global situation of the far right as possible, in keeping with the highest academic standards.
The Hate Map is a living document and both recent and historic events are added and verified on a daily basis.
You can explore the public data and records of incidents in more detail here:
Definitions, Scope and Terms
Both the “far right” and the broader terms of “violent extremism” and “terrorism” are generally ill-defined. We therefore find it valuable to include our working definition of these terms here.
First of all we define violent extremism to be the violent denial of diversity. Unifying all violent extremists, regardless of their beliefs or ideological objectives is their beliefs that peaceful coexistence with someone different from them is impossible, and that violently enforcing this either through forced submission or through eradication of diversity is the solution.
White supremacists wish for all people in their community to be white, they thus see it as legitimate to both kill and intimidate those who are not, or those who support the idea of peaceful coexistence. Islamist extremists such as ISIS wishes for everyone to follow the same interpretation of Islam, they enforce this by killing and intimidating those they disagree with, and through threats and intimidation seek to convert others to subscribe to their interpretation.
The violent components of violent extremism can broadly be categorised under the definitions of violence developed by peace-researcher Johan Galtung. He divided violence into the categories of Cultural Violence, Structural Violence and Direct violence which is a fitting framework also for understanding the violence of violent extremists.
When we think of violent extremism, and in particular terrorism we most often think of direct violence, the behaviours that serve to threaten life itself or diminish the capacity to meet one’s basic human needs. This includes killing, maiming, bullying, sexual assault and emotional manipulation at any scale. This ranges from attacks on individuals to mass violence. Terrorism, as we define it, are acts of this form of violence rooted in violent extremism as previously defined. However, in order to properly reckon with violent extremism as a whole we also must understand, and account for both structural and cultural violence.
Structural violence is the systemic violence hindering equality for certain groups, whether this is through a criminal justice system, education or healthcare system or other systems enforcing marginalization and injustice. These systems can be either formalized, such as in the Apartheid system in South Africa, or culturally functional without legal mandate as seen in areas where segregation de-facto exists and creates social injustice such as through access to quality education in certain neighbourhoods over others.
Cultural violence are the social norms that normalise and make direct and structural violence seem “natural” or “right'' or at the very least acceptable. This is exemplified by the belief that Africans were inferior to Caucasians which has left room for atrocities such as the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, and imperialism, the beliefs about Jews reinforcing antisemitism leading to the Holocaust, both of which fuels the beliefs of the far right to this day.
Violent extremists as we define them are thus those who advocate for or execute acts of violence to promote the violent denial of diversity.
Lastly we come to the question of the definition of the “far right” element of far right violent extremism.
It is possible to argue that all violent extremists are far right extremists, especially if one maps the left-right spectrum from liberal to authoritarian. We have worked with people fighting against extremist organizations such as the Taliban and ISIS who quite consequently refer to these organizations as far right organizations and empathize with that view.
Extremist groups largely have more in common with each other than what divides them in their violent denial of diversity which often manifests in similar ways irrespective of the “ideological” ties of the extremist groups. This is however not particularly helpful in determining the scope of the Hate Maap, which tries to demonstrate the issue of a global extremism rooted in what we largely refer to as the “western far right”. This far right movement is visible through the remainders of colonialism such as among certain groups of white South Africans, but is largely to be found in white majority countries and communities in Europe, Russia, Georgia, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In the broadest sense we can define this form of far right movements in white-majority locations to consist of people who believe in and promote white supremacy. The clearest statement of this can perhaps be found by taking the movement at its own words, looking at the famous 14 words coined by David Lane, a member of the terrorist group known as The Order, focusing on racial purity and the preservation of “whiteness”
White supremacy still consists of a fairly complex set of beliefs that has strong connotations in the form of rampant sexism and homophobia. Both sexism and homophobia can of course be tied to white supremacy as the control of women and sexuality equates to control of the reproduction of the white race. Homophobia can thus be seen as an expression of disdain for those who don’t wish to participate in hetero-normative reproduction, it’s also an expression of disdain for what’s seen as steriotypically “feminine characteristics” from a perspective focusing on machismo and the need to through violent means defend the “purity” of whiteness. The gender elements of far right extremism are complex and further ties into the focus on sexual reproduction and beliefs held in fringe groups often aligned with white supremacist ideology, such as the incel community.
In our definition we also account for the Islamophobia and antisemitism that is particularly present in the European far right. The Identitarians and other Eurocentric far right extremism often present their perspectives on the idea of “race” as more blurred, choosing instead to focus on the idea of “culture”. This has been especially visible as far right extremists across the world have moved away from using language focused on race and shifted focus towards migration where the issues of nationalism, religion and national identity often play a larger role. This has largely manifested as Islamophobia and hatred against newly arrived migrants, still often with racist undertones.
The concept of wanting to “defend” a misguided concept of European or national “identity” against Islam has been prominent over the past decades. This has among others been shaped by commonly held beliefs and narratives supported across the world throughout the global “war on terror” which has fuelled islamophobia and the perception of migrants from muslim-majority countries as an existential security threat.
In order to legitimize islamophobic beliefs one often hear that arguments and hatred against migration in Europe, especially as it stems from the alt- and far-right, is rooted in “legitimate religious criticism”. While we firmly believe no power-structure, including religion, is beyond criticism this argument quickly falls apart. Displays of ignorance of theology and the diversity that exists within Islam, and statements along the lines of “they look Muslim” which frequently is seen on the European far right as justifications of discrimination supports this.
The trend of hatred towards migrants has also been seen in reaction to the largely non-Muslim migration to the US from Latin America. There’s evidence to suggest that fair-skinned Latin Americans are generally treated better in the US than Latin Americans with darker skin, further underpinning the white supremacist roots of far right extremism.
There is a minority of active non-white members in some of the far right communities on our radar that must be accounted for. These might argue, in line with the more religiously fixated far right, that they are promoting “western/european values” rather than white supremacy directly. An analysis of these “western values” shows that it quickly equates to Eurocentric white supremacy and weakly concealed racism. In the case of the non-white members this may be a display of internalized racism. These non-white members of the far right may provide a convenient cover for a far right organization which seeks to make the ideas promoted more palatable.
On the basis of this, as well as commonly used language to describe the issue of far right violence, such as Racially and Ethnically Motivated Terrorism (REM-T) we thus argue that racism and white supremacy is the defining factor of the groups and actions we map.
About The Hate Map
Empowering Knowledge Based Action Against the Global Far Right
The Hate Map is an online resource and dataset available to researchers, activists, advocates, journalists and others who are interested in understanding the global impact of far right extremism. The map was conceived in reaction to the uptick in far right terrorist attacks rooted in white supremacist ideology taking place across the world over the past decade..
While other datasets exist that focus on existing racially and ethnically motivated extremist organizations, networks and individuals the focus of the Hate Map is on incidents. The scope of incidents covers the activities of the global far right ranging from low-level actions such as flyer campaigns, protest, marches and festivals, to acts of direct violence, including hate crimes, violent attacks and terrorist attacks. Through this we seek to get a more complete overview of the global, regional and local threats posed by racially and ethnically motivated extremists and their levels of activity.
By focusing on events rather than groups or networks we seek to capture those who fall outside of traditional organizations, the so-called “lone wolves”. By doing this we can get a better understanding of the real-world impact, and security risks posed globally by racially and ethnically motivated extremists, moving beyond dated frameworks reliant on terrorism and extremism stemming from established and easily definable organizations and networks.
White perpetrators in white-majority countries, fuelled by white supremacist ideology are often described as lone wolves, gunmen, shooters or attackers rather than terrorists. Acting as a central and live repository, the Hate Map highlights the fact that the perpetrators of incidents often are organized through informal networks of influence, often building on shared ideology, sharing tactics that span national borders in a global movement, and that the actions of individual terrorists has the potential of causing ripples and inspire others across the world in unprecedented ways.
The Hate Map focuses on actions promoting violent extremism rooted in white supremacy. For the purposes of this mapping, violent extremism will be defined as the denial of diversity through means including direct violence, intimidation and public displays of symbols associated with hate.
The Hate Map will primarily focus on Europe, USA, Canada, Georgia, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. Where relevant, events occurring in other locations will be added to the Hate Map. In the initial phase of the Hate Map, mapping efforts will focus on events from 2000 to date.
The primary target groups for the Hate Map will be researchers, advocates and activists working against the global far right, in addition to policy makers, journalists and others who shape the discourse and knowledge surrounding this issue. The goal is to keep the Hate Map as a freely accessible resource.
Creating this dataset will enable us and other researchers to among others;
better understand the relationship between propaganda and low-level actions such as flyer-campaigns, protests, marches etc. and potential escalations in an increase of direct violence. This will be key in creating regional early warning systems to inform the implementation of preventative and counter-extremism measures.
better understand the geographic relationship between racially and ethnically motivated actions and other key demographics such as local racial and ethnic diversity, employment rates, education levels and the presence of social infrastructure such as libraries, activity centres, sports facilities etc. This can be key in planning cities for the future that by design are inherently preventative to radicalization.
provide concrete evidence, maps, training, toolkits and guidelines uncovering the pan-national nature of the global far right movement. This is key for the judiciary, who in many places struggle to prove the existence of international networks and collaboration related to racially and ethnically motivated terrorist attacks. This in turn causes issues in appropriately sentencing and convicting racially and ethnically motivated terrorists.
provide guidelines, toolkits and trainings empowering the international press to appropriately contextualise, describe and cover racially and ethnically motivated crimes and acts of terrorism.
better analyse the impact of preventative programs and efforts by mapping localised trends in behaviour over time.
Callendar showing incidents by date
Graph indicating frequency of reported events
© All rights reserved – to reproduce, reuse or embed this map and its content either in full or in part in any other context please contact the Khalifa Ihler Institute with a statement of your intended use.
Report Incidents
As we are trying to get as broad a picture as possible of white supremacist incidents globally we have created a form for public reports of incidents. Please fill the form in with as detailed information as possible, as well as reliable sources if there are incidents you are aware of that are missing from our records. The input to the form will go through an editorial process for verification before being made public.