With all the comment surrounding the potential misuse of virtual worlds by terrorists there still remains an actual dearth of evidence regarding any actual terrorists discussing or using a virtual world. However, throughout 2007 there was a considerable amount of activity within Second Life relating to ‘White Hate’ groups. Following the opening of a virtual office by Jean Marie Le Pen‘s Front National in late 2006, other extremists saw an opportunity within Second Life and migrated into the world.
This activity provides an interesting template for how extremist groups may seek to operate with virtual worlds and how they would connect to already establish virtual-forums. The virtual communities of Stormfront and Vanguard have enabled white hate groups to continue operating in the US, much as the Internet has become the home of displaced Islamic extremists.
What was particularly interesting about White Hate groups adventures in Second Life was the resistance they faced from residents of the virtual world and in fact, the best piece written about the move into Second Life by the FN was by a group, which had formed specifically within Second Life to combat them – Anti-FN Second Life. Maybe this will the the future of counter-terrorism! The Anti-FN white paper on Second Life can be downloaded here. This paper should be required reading for anyone interested in this particular dimension of virtual worlds. It makes some interesting connections between real world extremists, other cyber-white hate sites and then Second Life. The antifn-sl blog site seems to now be closed down but the group still exists within Second Life.
This whole phenomena does merit more attention than it has received as it provides a lot of potential landmarks relating to the potential operation of extremists in virtual worlds. There is also some interesting commentary available across various Second Life blog sites : New World Notes and the Second Life Herald to name just two.
Channel 4 News in the UK also did a brief documentary piece on this phenomena in 2007. Shown below:
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