The Online Intersection among Islamophobia, Populism, and Hate Speech: An Italian Perspective

Online radical Islam is a topic widely studied by scholars and notoriously discussed among non- experts as well (Awan, 2007; Von Behr et al. 2013; Gray & Head 2009). Because of its intrinsic characteristics (i.e. accessibility, anonymity, or users’ identity dissimulation), the internet has always been a useful tool for propagandists of Islamic fundamentalism (Fighel, 2007; Stenersen, 2008; Koehler, 2014). However, in the last decade, studies have questioned the real importance and magnitude of Islamic radicalization online (Gill et al., 2017). In fact, while scholars were focused on observing digital Islamic radicalization, a galaxy of new forms of extremism was growing online (Silva et al., 2017; Roversi, 2008) that no longer made Islam an exceptional case study. Today, Muslim people are one of the groups most aggressively targeted by extremist, intolerant, violent, and radical discourses (Elahi & Khan, 2017; Amnesty International, 2019). Anti-Muslim hate speech has spread online throughout Europe and the United States, reinforced by the propaganda and political discourse of populist right-wing parties (Hafez, 2014; Bakali 2016). This paper introduces some large-scale action-research projects developed in Europe and Italy in the last three years (2016–2019) and aims to reconstruct the most updated Islamophobia state of the art in terms of numbers, characteristics, and phenomenology from the offline to the online context.