Gaming and Extremism: The Extreme Right on Discord

By Aoife Gallagher, Ciarán O’Connor, Pierre Vaux, Elise Thomas, Jacob Davey

Discord is a free service accessible via phones and computers. It allows users to talk to each other in real-time via voice, text or video chat and emerged in 2015 as a platform designed to assist gamers in communicating with each other while playing video games. The popularity of the platform has surged in recent years, and it is currently estimated to have 140 million monthly active users.1 Chatrooms – known as servers - in the platform can be created by anyone, and they are used for a range of purposes that extend far beyond gaming. Such purposes include the discussion of extreme right-wing ideologies and the planning of offline extremist activity. Ahead of the far-right Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, organizers used Discord to plan and promote events and posted swastikas and praised Hitler in chat rooms with names like “National Socialist Army” and “Führer’s Gas Chamber”.2 In this briefing we provide an analysis of 24 English-language Discord servers associated with extreme right-wing activity. This analysis is intended as a snapshot of current trends on Discord with a specific focus on the role of gaming, rather than a comprehensive overview of extreme right activity on the platform. Key Findings • We found that Discord primarily acts as a hub for extreme right-wing socialising and community building. Our analysis suggests that Discord provides a safe space for users to share ideological material and explore extremist movements. • Of particular concern is the young age of the members of these servers, who on average, when determinable, were 15 years old. This suggests that Discord could act as an entry point for children to come into contact with extremist ideology. • We found limited evidence that gaming played a role in serious strategies to radicalise and recruit new individuals on the platform. Instead gaming was primarily referenced in cultural terms, being used by members of these servers to find common-ground. • Gamified online harassment through ‘raids’ was a popular activity across the channels analysed. This suggests that this semi-organised cyber-bullying could be a vector which brings young people into contact with extremist communities. • We identified discussion in these channels expressing support for the proscribed terrorist organisations Atomwaffen Division and Sonnenkrieg Division. This included the sharing of branded content produced by these organisations, as well as the identification of one user who expressed an interest in joining Atomwaffen.  

Amman | Berlin | London | Paris | Washington DC: ISD Global, 2021. 13p.