“The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be”.

"If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist."

 (Joseph Sobran) 

American Nazi Party Flag

What is extremism, and who are extremist groups I here you say? …. I was asking the same questions three weeks ago until I started researching my assignment. Throughout my 19 years of living in this wide world of the web I have never heard or seen the words that form groups such as ‘Hammer Head Skin Nation’, ‘Stormfront’ and ‘National Alliance’, these are extremist groups from across the world, that have been around for many many MANY years.

One can be extreme in many ways!

Extremism is the real enemy of our times, and it is the enemy of all people. Throughout history there have been many extremist philosophies, religions, and styles of governance. White extremist groups are driven by things like; racial purity, anti Semitism, political hegemony, anti liberal and anti government, which are usually violent and un-welcomed.

Southern Cross Hammer Skins Home Page

Extremist groups utilise the Internet to send out messages and to recruit new members into their groups. They use social media platforms such as Facebook, Blogs, Myspace  Youtube and even video games to recruit new members due the fact that there are millions of users logging onto these sites daily, with having links on webpage’s etc groups such as the National Alliance is linked to basically every white extremist group and or organization on the internet today. The Southern Cross Hammerskin heads are the australian arm of the Hammerskins, they follow the 14 words which are "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." AKA "the 14 words". It is scary to know that we have this group in australia carry out their polices of the 14 words. The skin head started in the 1960's which had heavy British mod and Jamaican rude boy influences, they eventually the  spread across the world.. and yes into our very own country Australia.

 

 They are able to reach out to international audiences, large amounts of people and also the younger generation (generation Y). Yes it’s a great way for these hate groups to recruit more members! As I mentioned before white extremist groups have even made video games to purchase online... you know people are really struggling when a graphic video called "Ethnic cleansing" is made, the title speaks for itself, forward and to the point!

Ethnics Cleansing Video Game to Purchase
 But what about our younger generations innocence?.... Should we really be involving younger teenagers full of hormones and testosterone into a world wide web of violence? Unfortunately I don’t think we can wrap our younger generation in cotton wool to protect them from nasty and hate-full things on the Internet posted by extremists groups, as everything is now accessible on our computer even if there is a block on a site there is always another way around it.

Ku Klux Klan 

People are involved with groups everyday across the globe i.e. associations, organisations, such as sporting events, schools groups, reading clubs etc. These are things that we do in our personal time for self satisfaction, they are usually non associated with intended violence or hate against others, as our sporting groups, school groups etc are usually all multicultural… are extremist groups the same? NO … hate groups such as the Skin Heads and KKK (Ku Klux Klan) pick on homosexuals, Asians, and are anti-black towards anyone that is not of the same European race as them, basically extremist groups such as the skin heads are just pure racist!. 

 Reference: LSM208 Week 6 Lecture slides

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/neonazism1.html

Wright,M (2008) Technology & terrorism: how the internet facilitates radicalization, The Forensic Examiner, Winter .Ebscohost viewed 26 March 2011