Red Ice
Red Ice logo.svg
Formation2002; 20 years ago (2002)
Official language
English
Key people
Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren
Websiteredice.tv

Red Ice is a white supremacist[6] multimedia company led by the married couple Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described Red Ice as being important in the YouTube alt-right radicalization pipeline, further radicalizing people tentatively on the far-right and having "a history of embracing white supremacist rhetoric and talking points".[7]

Products and content

From 2002 to 2012, the main focus of Red Ice's content was conspiracy theories such as aliens, 9/11, the Illuminati, and Freemasonry. In 2012, the outlet shifted to concentrate on ideas of race, and especially to the idea of the white genocide conspiracy theory in response to what the couple perceived as "anti-white sentiment" coinciding with the Black Lives Matter movement.[8][1]

As of 2017, Red Ice's main output was its weekly talk-radio-style programs. Interviews make up part of this content; Lokteff searches for personalities on the internet based on viewer recommendations and brings them on the program. Lokteff hosts her own program, Radio 3Fourteen, which highlights white nationalist women and alt-right preferences towards gender roles: men as strong, rational, political, and the decision-making partner, and women as emotional, family-centered, and supportive. These programs are repackaged in additional audio and video formats. Red Ice also has premium, paywalled content. After shifting into the white supremacist space, Red Ice also began producing newscasts.[1][9] Lokteff's guests have included Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy, among others.[10] In April 2018, the SPLC said Red Ice was "exploring white nationalism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, and promoting the myth of white genocide."[7]

Red Ice TV hosted videos for the white nationalist conference 'Awakening' held in Finland.[11]

History

In 2002, Henrik Palmgren started Red Ice in Gothenburg, Sweden.[9]

In August 2017, Henrik Palmgren said that hackers had taken down the Red Ice website and were going to release names of 23,000 subscribing members. This event occurred alongside the hacking of several other neo-Nazi and alt-right platforms. On other hacked sites at the time, the actions were claimed in the name of the decentralized group Anonymous.[1]

In April 2019, comments and monetization were disabled by YouTube on a livestream of a House Judiciary Committee hearing hosted by Palmgren and Lokteff due to commenters' use of anti-Semitic slurs, white nationalist memes, and derogatory remarks about women in the hearing.[12][13]

In June 2019, Red Ice's YouTube account was demonetized due to YouTube's recently expanded policy guidelines, which prohibited videos "promoting or glorifying Nazi ideology," spreading Holocaust denial and rejecting "well-documented events" like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.[14] In October 2019, Red Ice TV's YouTube channel was banned by YouTube for hate speech violations. The channel had about 330,000 subscribers. Lokteff and Red Ice promoted a backup channel in an attempt to circumvent the ban.[15][16] A week later, the backup channel was also removed by YouTube.[17][3]

In November 2019, Facebook banned Red Ice from using its platform.[18]

Influence

In August 2017, Red Ice had 130,000 YouTube subscribers.[1] By April 2019, it had over 300,000 subscribers.[11] In November 2019, it had 90,000 followers on Facebook.[18]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Dixit, Pranav; Feder, J. Lester; Warzel, Charlie; Kantrowitz, Alex (August 14, 2017). "White Supremacist Platforms Are Being Targeted By Hackers And Rejected By Hosts". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved May 9, 2020. On Saturday, Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice, a white supremacist multimedia platform
  2. ^ Willingham, AJ (March 6, 2018). "Middle school teacher secretly ran white supremacist podcast, says it was satire". CNN Digital. CNN. Retrieved December 28, 2020. Red Ice is a white supremacist media company
  3. ^ a b Katzowitz, Josh (October 24, 2019). "Red Ice, a popular white supremacist YouTube channel, has been shut down". The Daily Dot. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  4. ^ Wong, Julia Carrie (November 21, 2019). "White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act". The Guardian. Retrieved June 23, 2022. Red Ice TV is "a group that styles themselves as a news organization when they are primarily a political organization, and the politics are staunchly white supremacist", Donovan said.
  5. ^ Peled, Shachar (November 5, 2017). "Ladies' Night at the Alt-right: Meet the Women Trying to Soften the White Nationalist Movement". Haaretz. Retrieved June 23, 2022. American-born Lokteff... anchors programs on Red Ice, a white nationalist media platform
  6. ^ [1][2][3][4][5]
  7. ^ a b Miller, Cassie (April 19, 2018). "McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to the alt-right". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  8. ^ Bowman, Emma; Stewart, Ian. "The Women Behind The 'Alt-Right'". NPR. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  9. ^ a b Darby, Seyward (September 1, 2017). "The Rise of the Valkyries". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  10. ^ Stern, Alexandra Minna (2019). Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0807063361. As a home for the small but active alt-right sisterhood, Radio 3Fourteen brings together female alt-righters with their followers on social media. Regulars include ... Canadian white nationalists Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy
  11. ^ a b Owen, Tess (April 4, 2019). "White nationalists from around the world are meeting in Finland. Here's what you need to know". Vice. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  12. ^ Broderick, Ryan (April 9, 2019). "Comments Were So Racist On Livestreams Of A Congressional Hearing On White Nationalism YouTube Had To Disable Them". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  13. ^ Alvarez, Alejandro (April 9, 2019). "Lawmakers held a hearing on white nationalism. On YouTube, it was immediately attacked with hate speech". NBC News. Retrieved May 10, 2020.
  14. ^ Broderick, Ryan (June 5, 2019). "YouTube Will Now Block Discriminatory Content, Just A Day After Saying It Doesn't Violate Its Policies". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
  15. ^ Ramirez, Nikki McCann (October 18, 2019). "White nationalist Red Ice TV is promoting a backup channel to skirt its YouTube ban". Media Matters for America. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  16. ^ Gais, Hannah (October 21, 2019). "YouTube Takes Down Red Ice's Main Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  17. ^ Gias, Hannah (October 23, 2019). "YouTube Yanks Second Red Ice Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved October 27, 2019.
  18. ^ a b Wong, Julia Carrie (November 27, 2019). "Facebook to ban two white nationalist groups after Guardian report". The Guardian. Retrieved June 12, 2022.

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