Commentary:
IDZ's mission is the documentation of right-wing rhetoric online. Researchers scrape Telegram feeds, tweets and map online-offline violence correlations with scholarly restraint. The findings offer data and analysis to be cited by officials and journalists. But the institute conflates its honorable objectives with dubious political scapegoating of its own. IDZ therefore grouped those skeptical of contradictory and often arbitrary measures during the Covid period with anti-semites and racists in its published factsheet on the topic. Its coverage of the Ukraine war – and attendant pro-Russian campaigns, gaps in platform moderation to stamp it out – was accompanied by suggestion of tighter regulatory oversight, with Russian state-backed information singled out. The institute does not consider the nature of geopolitical conflict as it is reflected in political discourse, but accepts the official line that information threats from Moscow are a priority and must be countered. Nor does IDZ appear to be particularly concerned with the far-right elements populating much of the Ukrainian military, officially and unofficially. It is surely no coincidence that these are the exact positions advanced by Washington, Berlin and Brussels. IDZ's partnership with ministries guarantees funding and access but may blunt the sharpness of its critique of the far right. The result is a curated surface map that often smuggles in a blinkered official view and presents it as morally righteous. Russian and eventually Chinese influence are said to menace domestic audiences, while US foreign policy's influence in Europe, and the extremism it so often backs, as well as pharmaceutical malfeasance, escape scrutiny.