Louis Beam, Grand Dragon of the Texas Crown of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, inspects the Klan’s security force in full combat gear in Santa Fe, Texas, on February 14, 1981. Credits – Ed Kolenovsky—AP
For more than a decade, a growing number of bigots inciting violence and riot have been unleashed almost entirely on social media platforms. They easily target some of society’s most vulnerable individuals, sometimes with tragic consequences. The use of social media to radicalize and mobilize for violence was perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the arrest of hundreds of people who participated in and posted about the uprising on January 6, 2021.
Many observers have lamented the role social media has played in spreading far-right ideas and conspiracy theories and radicalizing large numbers of Americans. Critics have called for more aggressive regulation. But few people realize that the use of technology by America’s violent, far-right extremists is nothing new. They have long understood the importance of messaging and the power of media and entertainment to spread their ideology.
In fact, in the 1980s, racist, anti-government extremists enthusiastically welcomed the emergence of digital technology and desktop computers as a particularly promising, cheap, and effective means of reaching a broader audience. These first steps laid the foundation for using social media platforms to revolutionize modern terrorism.
Louis Beam, the “general ambassador” of the Aryan Nations and former Grand Dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan, engineered the first large-scale use of technology to advance far-right extremism. Beam, a decorated Army veteran, grew up in a segregated Texas town and boasted of being a member of the KKK by the fourth grade, trying to rally his classmates.
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A 1982 conviction on misdemeanor charges of conducting unauthorized paramilitary exercises on federal lands caused Beam to resign as Grand Dragon and head to Idaho, where he resided at the Hayden Lake compound of the Aryan Nations.
There Beam began planning a revival of the white supremacist movement he had been forced to abandon in Texas. It brought the concept of secret, underground warfare known as “leaderless resistance” out of obscurity. Beam envisioned a powerful organization that distributed ideas and funds to loosely affiliated cells, allowing the white power movement to work around law enforcement undercover operations.
It says in a 1983 issue Inter-Clan Newsletter and Survival AlertBeam explained that in the system he envisioned, any cell could be “infiltrated, exposed and destroyed” but that this would have “no effect on the others.” The only hurdle was finding a way for dispersed cells to communicate.
Beam announced his solution to this problem at the Aryan Nations Congress in 1983; This was the most important and important meeting of the American white supremacist movement.
The meeting took place just weeks after a shooting involving federal law enforcement resulted in the death of Gordon Kahl, a longtime member of the North Dakota chapter of the Posse Comitatus, an extremist movement that recognizes no government authority other than the county sheriff. . Beam hailed Kahl as a brave warrior and declared that the movement was “AT WAR”. He called on the movement to “fight and live, or we will soon die.” The stakes couldn’t be higher: “If you don’t help me kill those bastards who are agents of the federal government, you will have to beg for your child’s life and the answer will be: NO.”
At the convention, Beam met with 12 other white power leaders and movement notables to devise a battle plan. The strategy that followed included his solution to the communications problem: evolving computer network technology. Leaderless resistance combined with computerized bulletin board systems (BBSs) gave the movement the unique advantages of both real-time and covert connectivity, effectively hiding communications from the prying eyes and watchful ears of federal officials.
At a time when typewriters were still ubiquitous, fax machines were just entering workplaces, and computers were rare and expensive, this use of technology was revolutionary and ahead of the curve. For example, the cost of an Apple IIe starter system was $1,260 in 1983; today it is approximately $3,315. And modems that transmit BBS data over traditional telephone lines were still mostly inaccessible at the time.
The “Aryan Nations Freedom Network” created by Beam likely marked the beginning of the exploitation of digital communications by terrorists for the purposes of radicalization, recruitment, funding, and planning and execution of operations. It took Beam a year to get the system up and running, and even then it was text-only and slow. However, in the spring 1984 issue of the magazine Inter-Clan Newsletter and Survival Alert“American know-how may have provided the technology that would allow those who love this country to save it from an undeserved fate,” Beam gushed.
As Beam claimed, computers were solely “the domain and property of governments and large corporations.” But now his system allowed “every patriot in the country” to benefit from the white power movement. Beam provided buyers with helpful advice and detailed login instructions, as well as a phone number and mailbox for those with additional questions.
As later explained in its fundraising appeal, the movement viewed computer technology as “our Aryan technology, just like the printing press, radio, airplane, automobile, etc.”
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The Aryan Nations Freedom Network served many purposes. By appealing primarily to young hackers, he sought to tap into a new demographic and build a broader white supremacist constituency. Like-minded “patriot groups” were also identified across the country to encourage and facilitate further networking. It was also an innovative fundraising mechanism. And finally, and critically, it was a cheap, fast, and easy way to spread the movement’s propaganda without being hindered by government intervention, intervention, or monitoring.
In perhaps the first warning of the exploitation of new online technologies by the far right, the Anti-Defamation League in 1985 warned that networks “[seeking] “To spread hate propaganda among young people who are most susceptible to its influence.” “Even more troubling,” this adoption of computer technology has coincided with “an increase in serious conversations” among some far-right groups “about the necessity of committing acts of terrorism.”
The Aryan Nations Liberty network was the forerunner of later networks such as Stormfront and Vanguard News Network. These platforms enabled instant communication as well as the sharing of huge digital files with media and graphics. Social media then further increased the capacity of the far right because it offered greater immediacy and intimacy. It has also allowed individuals to curate their own communities, where dissenting views are dismissed not with informed and fact-based arguments but with a single click of an “unfollow” or “unfriend” button. The result is the creation of a digital universe in which only one’s own worldview is legitimate, where any discussion or discourse is suppressed, excluded and therefore silenced, whether by the most violent radical or the most innocent teenager.
Such echo chambers have been particularly successful in radicalizing lone actors mobilized by Beam’s strategy of leaderless resistance to violence; His digital disciples have gone from chatrooms to launching attacks in places like Oslo, Norway, and Christchurch, New Zealand. The impact of this revolutionary technology was perhaps best summed up by the gunman in the second case; The attacker’s manifesto stated that he developed his beliefs on “the internet, of course.” You won’t find the truth anywhere else.”
Perhaps as Beam predicted, social media has become the front line of modern terrorism and counterterrorism. Only full-scale adoption of a wide range of countermeasures, from content moderation to algorithm reforms to digital literacy programming, will enable an effective response to the threat.
Bruce Hoffman is a senior fellow on counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University. Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and DeSales University. Together they are the authors of the following book: God, Guns, and Insurrection: Far-Right Terrorism in America.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Read more about Made by History at TIME here. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
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