A Twitter investigation reveals what the ‘freedom convoy,’ Islamophobes, incels and Hindu supremacists have in common

The so-called “freedom convoy,” which began in January in Ottawa, has garnered international attention and sparked a flood of social media conversations. To get a sense of how these conversations are framed, we analyzed tweets circulating in the “freedom convoy’s” social media sphere. Posts associated with #IStandWithTruckers and #TruckersForFreedom2022 claim to be fighting against state control. Twitter can be a window into the lives of other people. The platform affords a style which enables short posts, with a limited number of words, and the posting of brief videos, images and memes. These posts work to amplify extremist ideas in bite-size, easily shareable and visually engaging ways. The Pepe the Frog meme is an example of Twitter’s successful viral speed and reach. This frog became a symbol of white supremacy after Donald Trump retweeted a photoshopped image of himself as Pepe with a video claiming, “Can’t Stump the Trump.” Our analysis of Twitter is part of a larger preliminary examination of social media used by right-wing extremist movements in Canada, the United States and India. What we found is a story of fascinating parallels and the discovery that seemingly disparate right-wing movements use similar logic. Their arguments rely on several myths, which are not mutually exclusive.
One is the myth of a “Golden Age.” This concept harks to ideas of a mythical past that is regarded as perfect. The fantasy includes the way traditional forms of authority were venerated and racial and religious superiority was uncontested. Another myth, or old logic, is that of an “us” versus “them,” pitting immigrants and racialized others against a unified, imagined “us.” And finally, the posts display a desire to restore an idealized masculinity that advances and reinforces nationalist and masculine projects. In short, a return to the “fatherland.” At the base of these myths is a profound fear of losing one’s culture, religion, values and beliefs. This fear then gives life to the conspiracies about others who are different, the government and authorities. For this discussion, we conducted a digital ethnography of various hashtags related to the “freedom convoy” from Feb. 6-12. We focused on hashtags widely used in public conversation. Using the TAGS Twitter scraping tool, we collected more than 100,000 tweets and manually thematized the data using critical discourse analysis.

via theconversation: A Twitter investigation reveals what the ‘freedom convoy,’ Islamophobes, incels and Hindu supremacists have in common

By <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maksimsokolov” title=”User:Maksimsokolov”>Maksim Sokolov (Maxergon)</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”en”>Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link