Iron March
Type of site
Hate site[lower-alpha 1] and web forum[2]
Available inEnglish, with sub-forums in multiple languages
DissolvedNovember 2017
Predecessor(s)International Third Position Federation
Successor(s)Fascist Forge, Terrorgram
Created byAlisher Mukhitdinov[1]
URLironmarch.org
CommercialNo
Launched2011
Current statusDefunct

Iron March was a far-right[1] neo-fascist[1] and Neo-Nazi[1] web forum.[2] The site opened in 2011 and attracted neo-fascist and Neo-Nazi members, including militants from organized far-right groups and members who would later go on to commit acts of terror.[1] The forum closed in 2017.[1] Subsequently, former users moved to alternative websites and social networking services, such as Discord.[1] In 2019, an anonymous individual leaked the database that hosted all Iron March content.

History

Russian nationalist Alisher Mukhitdinov (who goes by the moniker "Alexander Slavros") founded the online message board Iron March in 2011.[1][3][2][4] Mukhitdinov is a Russian-Uzbek related to Nuritdin Mukhitdinov, a former communist leader of Uzbekistan.[5][6] Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles (ONA), a theistic Satanist organization founded by the British Neo-Nazi leader David Myatt in 1974,[1] have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and Neo-Nazi insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks,[1] most notably the Iron March forum.[1]

Iron March became a platform for militant neo-fascist and Neo-Nazi violent extremist organizations, including the Nordic Resistance Movement, National Action, Azov Battalion, CasaPound, and Golden Dawn.[1] Some of the board's members were later linked to several acts of terrorism and murder,[1] such as the murder of an anti-fascist in Helsinki in September 2016 and the murder of a left-wing rapper in 2013. A group consisting of Serbian Combat 18, "MC Srbi", and Atomwaffen Division also used the forum to traffic firearms.[7][8][9] The forum's users organized a number of violent Neo-Nazi groups, including the Atomwaffen Division, Antipodean Resistance, and National Action. The userbase embraced the accelerationist ideology of James Mason, a Neo-Nazi militant and associate of the serial killer Charles Manson.[2][10] Members of Iron March republished and popularized Mason's book Siege and its brand of explicitly Neo-Nazi terrorism.[2][10] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

[Iron March] became home base for those who were personally invested in Neo-Nazism, Fascism, and organized White extremism on a global scale. [...] through total immersion in Mason's teleology, now, they are challenging the established far-right and far-left with their eagerness to perpetrate violence.[2][10]

In 2016, posters urging students to visit the Iron March website were posted on university campuses, including those of Boston University, Old Dominion University, and the University of Chicago. These posters included racist and antisemitic slogans, including "#Hitler Disapproves", "No Degeneracy, No Tolerance, Hail Victory", and "Black Lives Don't Matter".[11][12][13]

The website closed in November 2017; the reasons for its closure remain unclear as of late 2019.[3] According to an investigation conducted by BBC News Russian, it is suspected Mukhitdinov was pressured by the government of Russia for raising funds for the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which is considered a terrorist group in the Russian Federation.[5] A spokesperson for the Azov Battalion refused to comment on the case.[5]

In February 2018, Iron March-affiliated Discord servers alongside several other hate group servers were removed by the messaging service.[14] In April 2018, a networking site called Fascist Forge was launched; according to a note by its founder, it was meant as a replacement for Iron March. The site continued Iron March's virulent propaganda and grew rapidly until February 2019, when the site was taken offline by its registrar.[15]

Notable users

In February 2015, three people were arrested for planning to commit a mass shooting at a shopping mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on February 14 that year. One of the suspects, 23-year-old Lindsay Souvannarath of Illinois, was found to have been an active member of the Iron March forum, to have been the ex-girlfriend of Iron March founder "Slavros",[16] and to have made many online posts in favor of neo-fascist or neo-Nazi ideologies.[17][18]

Iron March user Devon Arthurs (2018); N. J. Department of Homeland Security and Terrorism Risk Assessment.

Devon Arthurs, an Iron March user and member of the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), killed his two roommates, also members of AWD, in May 2017. Police found neo-Nazi literature, radioactive materials, a photograph of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and explosives in his home.[3] Arthurs' remaining roommate and fellow Iron March user Brandon Russell was arrested in Tampa, Florida, for stockpiling of illegal weapons and bomb-making materials.[2] Russell had been among Iron March's most prolific users, having written around 1,500 posts on the site.[19]

As a result of the Iron March leak in 2019, it was discovered the Latvian national-conservative politician and activist Raivis Zeltīts had posted on Iron March under the handle "Latvian_Integralist". Zeltīts acknowledged in a Facebook post that he had written using this handle, but Zeltīts said that he no longer held those views.[20] Zeltīts remained in contact with Iron March administrator Benjamin Raymond as late as 2015.[21]

Zack Davies, 26, of Mold, North Wales, attacked a Sikh man with a machete and claw hammer while shouting "White Power". Davies inflicted life-threatening injuries; in the judge's view, the victim would have died had Davies not been stopped by passers-by. In 2015, a British court found Davies guilty and assigned him a life sentence (with a minimum tariff of 14 years).[22] Davies had an Iron March account and was a member of the British terrorist group National Action, which was proscribed in 2016.[2][23]

Leaked database and effects

In November 2019, an unknown individual uploaded a database of Iron March users to the Internet Archive; multiple Neo-Nazi users, including an ICE detention center captain and several active members of the U.S. Armed Forces, were identified using information from the leak.[3][24][25]

A variety of individuals and organizations used information from the leak:

  • Journalistic outlets and anti-fascist groups used the information to reveal the identities of users of the site.[20][24][26]
  • The open-source journalism outlet Bellingcat and online magazine Small Wars Journal performed data analysis on the entire corpus to understand the online radicalization processes of the far-right.[4][19]
  • Brett Stevens, editor of the far-right site "Amerika.org", used contact information from the leak to contact former Iron March users and direct them to his website.[27]
  • In September 2020, researchers at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism used the forum dump as training data for the sophisticated, flexible natural language generating artificial intelligence model GPT-3. They found that GPT-3—or more likely a copy of it, if proper safety and sanitizing protocols are observed by OpenAI—could easily be used for misinformation and radicalization purposes.[28][29]

References

Notes

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Upchurch, H. E. (22 December 2021). Cruickshank, Paul; Hummel, Kristina (eds.). "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the "Skull Mask" Neo-Fascist Network" (PDF). CTC Sentinel. West Point, New York: Combating Terrorism Center. 14 (10): 27–37. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 December 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Poulter, James (12 March 2018). "The Obscure Neo-Nazi Forum Linked to a Wave of Terror". Vice. Vice Media. ISSN 1077-6788. OCLC 30856250. Archived from the original on 9 June 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Wilson, Jason (7 November 2019). "Leak from neo-Nazi site could identify hundreds of extremists worldwide". The Guardian. ISSN 1756-3224. OCLC 60623878. Archived from the original on 18 May 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  4. 1 2 Ross, Alexander Reid; Bevensee, Emmi (19 December 2019). "Transnational White Terror: Exposing Atomwaffen And The Iron March Networks". Bellingcat. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 Soshnikov, Andrei. ""Наполовину русский": история москвича Алишера Мухитдинова и его глобальной фашистской сети". BBC News Russian (in Russian). Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  6. ↑ "How a Moscow man from an Uzbek family started the world's biggest neo-Nazi forum". Meduza. Retrieved 2022-05-26.
  7. ↑ "Fašistička braća (Fascist Brothers)". Novosti (Croatia). November 15, 2019.
  8. ↑ "Canadian Soldier With Ties To Neo-Nazi Terrorist Groups Arranged For Illegal Weapons Sale In Bosnia". Canadian Anti-Hate Network. 14 November 2019.
  9. ↑ "Desničarske i neonacističke organizacije neometano ističu simbole u Prijedoru". BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina. 15 June 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 Hatewatch Staff (16 June 2020). "Atomwaffen and the SIEGE parallax: how one neo-Nazi's life's work is fueling a younger generation". www.splcenter.org. Montgomery, Alabama: Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  11. ↑ Farrell, Brian (28 March 2016). "Fascist, pro-Nazi flyers posted at Old Dominion University". 13 News Now.
  12. ↑ Clauss, Kyle Scott (2 May 2016). "Neo-Nazi Posters Spotted on Boston University's Campus". Boston Magazine.
  13. ↑ Thorp, Adam (5 December 2016). "Militant Neo-Nazi Group Claims Credit for Hanging Hitler Portrait, Swastikas on Campus Building". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on 31 July 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  14. ↑ Alexander, Julia (28 February 2018). "Discord is purging alt-right, white nationalist and hateful servers". Polygon.
  15. ↑ Lamoureux, Mack (15 February 2019). "Fascist Forge, the Online Neo-Nazi Recruitment Forum, Is Down". Vice. Vice Media. ISSN 1077-6788. OCLC 30856250. Archived from the original on 7 May 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  16. ↑ Nighttime. "The Story of Lindsay Souvannarath - 7 - Lindsay, the Internet, and Radicalization" (Podcast). Night Time Podcast. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  17. ↑ Lamoureux, Mack (21 February 2019). "The Woman Who Plotted a Valentine's Mass Murder Shares How the Internet Radicalized Her". Vice. Vice Media. ISSN 1077-6788. OCLC 30856250. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  18. ↑ Neiwert, David (18 February 2015). "Illinois Woman With Neo-Nazi Leanings Charged in Canadian Mass Murder Plot". www.splcenter.org. Montgomery, Alabama: Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived from the original on 31 March 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  19. 1 2 Singer-Emery, Jacques; Bray III, Rex (19 April 2020). "Lingua Ferro Iter: Insights Gained Through Linguistic Analysis of Iron March". Small Wars Journal.
  20. 1 2 "Senior National Alliance figure apologises for "cloud" of far-right messages". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 12 November 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  21. ↑ "De Facto: British neo-Nazi visited Latvian political party office". Public Broadcasting of Latvia. 25 November 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019.
  22. ↑ "Lee Rigby revenge attacker Zack Davies given life sentence". BBC News. 11 September 2015. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  23. ↑ Morris, Steven (15 June 2020). "Nazi-obsessed loner guilty of attempted murder of dentist in racist attack". The Guardian. ISSN 1756-3224. OCLC 60623878. Archived from the original on 26 June 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  24. 1 2 "ICE Detention Center Captain Was on a Neo-Nazi Website and Wanted to Start a White Nationalist Group". Vice News. 15 June 2020.
  25. ↑ "EXCLUSIVE: A U.S. Marine Used the Neo-Nazi Site Iron March to Recruit for a 'Racial Holy War'". Vice News. 15 June 2020.
  26. ↑ Losey, Stephen (13 November 2019). "Airman accused of white nationalist ties loses stripe after investigation—but still in the Air Force". Air Force Times.
  27. ↑ Reed, Jason (8 November 2019). "The neo-Nazi data dump has been a boon to Nazi recruiters". The Daily Dot.
  28. ↑ Wiggers, Kyle (18 September 2020). "AI Weekly: Cutting-edge language models can produce convincing misinformation if we don't stop them". VentureBeat.
  29. ↑ McGuffie, Kris; Newhouse, Alex (9 September 2020). The Radicalization Risks of GPT-3 and Neural Language Models (Report). Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.
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