Ever heard of a Belgian student group called ‘Schild & Vrienden’ (Translated: “Shield & Friends”)? Me neither. Until a couple of days ago. The Belgian-based student group sparked a lot of commotion in Belgium after a reporter followed and filmed the group, with their permission, for a period of half a year. The Pano documentary was broadcasted on Wednesday night, 5th of September, with the purpose of discovering the real objective of “Schild & Vrienden”.
The student group presents itself online as a pro-Flemish student-group who “organises positive actions that promote the Flemish community model. From the character Zwarte Piet to helping the homeless and elderly to cleaning up monuments and trash. … we can be the voice of the silent majority.” (Bradshaw, 2018). Some of their public activities include disturbing European pro migration demonstration (by bringing down pro migration banners and replacing it by their own anti-immigration banner) as well as giving speeches on public events.
However, after a few months, the Pano reporters discover that on a secret Facebook page (around 800 members) and in other secret online forums (like Discord), their story is quite different. With up to 1300 members, the secret groups consist of 67.000 posts and memes which discriminate and humiliate people with a different skin color, as well as women, Jews, Muslims and ethnic minorities. The posts include jokes about the Holocaust, rape and starving children.
The student extremism group’s main means of communication is social media. And their language is memes. This way, they want to reach as many people as possible, which is clearly working. In this way, should we consider social media as a means of feeding extremism? And should we consider this as one of the main dangers of social media? I think we definitely should.
Sources:
Bradshaw, L., 2018. Members of white supremacist group expelled from UGent and N-VA. Flanderstoday.eu. Available at: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/members-white-supremacist-group-expelled-ugent-and-n-va [Accessed September 9, 2018].
Pano documentary: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2018/09/05/pano-wie-is-schild-vrienden-echt/
Video pro migration event Gent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXSOC7qwZso
