A “reasonable” and “excusable” violence: The spread of anti-Muslim violence through the machinery of media, social media and trigger events

Anti-Muslim violence and Islamophobic incidents tend to increase during times of crises and tension against Muslims. The role of trigger events in the spread of Islamophobia has been studied, but the coordinated efforts of media and social media by the far-right to demonise Muslims over such events have not been systematically analysed. This chapter explores how the machinery of extreme hate, the coordination of media and social media with trigger events, is used to normalise hate and carry it to extreme levels in public discourse. The chapter uses examples of online threats of mass murder reported to the Islamophobia Register Australia in 2016–2017 to show how violent extremist rhetoric against Muslims is normalised within open and accessible social media channels. The chapter highlights how anti-Muslim violence is justified in the public discourse as “reasonable” and “excusable” sentiments that inspire “executable” plans of attacks in those prone to online radicalisation. The machinery of creating extreme hate through media and social media in relation to trigger events is explained as a compound retaliation, where media and social media dissemination about offline acts of hate further compounds already tense intergroup hostilities, providing permission for expressing hatred online. The chapter argues that hate is not static, does not occur or increase overnight, and the machinery of media and social media, acting upon trigger events, is effectively operated by extremist far-right actors to normalise extreme levels of anti-Muslim hate and incite violence in low-risk, open social media channels.