The Alt Right/Left pipeline

I personally have noticed that on the internet a lot of “non political leaders” can tend to push people to radical extremes in their beliefs. For example, Kanye West has been exploited for a long time as a tool to move people towards conspiracy, and I’d believe has fallen victim to the very pipeline he currently maintains. Let me explain

There’s something on the internet known as “the alt right pipeline” where people will start out rational, and by the process of social media algorithms sending them content they like, end up thinking circularly, and falling pray to conspiracy. In the case of people moving to the alt right, someone might see, for example, a meme about how annoying Women are, and like it, and they keep getting more content. Then, they get recommended more mainstream, yet still radical figures like Andrew Tate, and they think that he is just a funny dude. But the Algorithm keeps recommending them more and more misogyny, and at the end of the pipeline you can find people who are just blatant bigots.

This is just one example, but the existence of a pipeline is certain. What concerns me more is how people keep falling into it, seeing as figures such as Andrew Tate, and Kanye are so popular. So how does this happen? Good question.

The real answer is that there are a lot of issues in the world. A lot of Men do face discrimination because they are men, and people like Andrew Tate can take advantage of this to exploit these people, whilst not actually creating a solution. The thing that they overlook, is that hateful extremist content does not help anyone, especially not the people falling down these pipelines. If we want to work together to find solutions to people problems, extremist beliefs and all discrimination from these pipelines will have no reason to exist. For the good of everyone, we should be interested in finding solutions, rather than just try and shout over each other.

In many cases, the creators at the beginning of this “pipeline” are skillfully subtle when it comes down to it. This is because in order to get ordinary people to believe things like white suprematism, they have to find a way to hook them in. This can be seen especially by a tactic used called “Dog Whistling” where creators will use racist euphemisms instead of just saying racist things, so that their real fans will know what they mean, and people who are new will not question them until they’re already hooked in.

There’s plenty to say about the Alt Right Pipeline, there are a lot of people who probably don’t even know that they are perpetuating the cycle. People like Alex Jones, and Ben Shapiro, who maybe don’t even know that they are causing extremism, are still responsible for it. So when things like the Colorado Springs Shooting, or the Quebec Mosque shooting happen, these people are guilty of forcing reactionary content down people’s throats, to push them towards extremism.

Over all, it seems like there’s an epidemic of activity and terrorism, that can be seen to originate from this pipeline. For the benefit and gain of a portion of YouTube creators and political influencers, they have to sell their conscience. I personally know people who have fallen down said “alt right pipeline” and it’s unfortunate to see them fall pray to conspiracy. It’s important for students and people in general to stay educated about these topics, so everyone has the tools to fight the tricks of extremists.

Sources: (Harvard Politics https://harvardpolitics.com/alt-right-pipeline/) (Vox News https://harvardpolitics.com/alt-right-pipeline/) (Wiki graph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline#/media/File:Alternative_Influence_Network_on_YouTube.png) (Vice Article https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywxeyg/here-are-the-far-right-conspiracists-the-quebec-city-mosque-shooter-followed)