Far-right extremists have been organizing online since before the internet - and AI is their next frontier

Far-right extremists have been organizing online since before the internet – and AI is their next frontier
Published: December 5, 2025 8:16am EST

Michelle Lynn Kahn
Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond


(The Conversation) How can society police the global spread of online far-right extremism while still protecting free speech? That’s a question policymakers and watchdog organizations confronted as early as the 1980s and ’90s – and it hasn’t gone away.

Decades before artificial intelligence, Telegram and white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ livestreams, far-right extremists embraced the early days of home computing and the internet. These new technologies offered them a bastion of free speech and a global platform. They could share propaganda, spew hatred, incite violence and gain international followers like never before.

Before the digital era, far-right extremists radicalized each other primarily using print propaganda. They wrote their own newsletters and reprinted far-right tracts such as Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and American neo-Nazi William Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries,” a dystopian work of fiction describing a race war. Then, they mailed this propaganda to supporters at home and abroad.

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Up next: AI

The next frontier for far-right extremists is AI. They are using AI tools to create targeted propaganda, manipulate images, audio and videos, and evade detection. The far-right social network Gab created a Hitler chatbot that users can talk to. ...............(more)

https://theconversation.com/far-right-extremists-have-been-organizing-online-since-before-the-internet-and-ai-is-their-next-frontier-269271