Red Ice

Red Ice is a far-right multimedia company led by the married couple Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren. It has been described as being white supremacist and white nationalist.[1] The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Red Ice as important in the YouTube alt-right radicalization pipeline, further radicalizing people tentatively on the far-right and having "a history of embracing white supremacist rhetoric and talking points".[2]

Red Ice
Formation2002 (2002)
Official language
English
Key people
Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren
Websitewww.redice.tv

Products and content

From 2002 to 2012, the main focus of Red Ice's content was conspiracy theories such as aliens, 9/11, the Illuminati, and Freemasonry. In 2012, the outlet shifted to concentrate on ideas of race, and especially to the idea of the white genocide conspiracy theory in response to what the couple perceived as "anti-white sentiment" coinciding with the Black Lives Matter movement.[3][4]

As of 2017, Red Ice's main output was its weekly talk-radio-style programs. Interviews make up part of this content; Lokteff searches for personalities on the internet based on viewer recommendations and brings them on the program. Lokteff hosts her own program, Radio 3Fourteen, which highlights white nationalist women and alt-right preferences towards gender roles: men as strong, rational, political, and the decision-making partner, and women as emotional, family-centered, and supportive. These programs are repackaged in additional audio and video formats. Red Ice also has premium, paywalled content. After shifting into the white supremacist space, Red Ice also began producing newscasts.[4][5] Lokteff's guests have included Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy, among others.[6]

Red Ice TV hosted videos for the white nationalist conference 'Awakening' held in Finland.[7]

History

In 2002, Henrik Palmgren started Red Ice in Gothenburg, Sweden.[5]

In August 2017, Henrik Palmgren said that hackers had taken down the Red Ice website and were going to release names of 23,000 subscribing members. This event occurred alongside the hacking of several other neo-nazi and alt-right platforms. On other hacked sites at the time, the actions were claimed in the name of the decentralized group Anonymous.[4]

In April 2019, comments and monetization were disabled by YouTube on a livestream of a House Judiciary Committee hearing hosted by Palmgren and Lokteff due to commenters' use of anti-Semitic slurs, white nationalist memes, and derogatory remarks about women in the hearing.[8][9]

In June 2019, Red Ice's YouTube account was demonetized due to YouTube's recently expanded policy guidelines, which prohibited videos "promoting or glorifying Nazi ideology," as well as spreading denial of "well-documented events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary."[10] In October 2019, Red Ice TV's YouTube channel was banned by YouTube for hate speech violations. The channel had about 330,000 subscribers. Lokteff and Red Ice promoted a backup channel in an attempt to circumvent the ban.[11][12] A week later, the backup channel was also removed by YouTube.[13][14]

Influence

In August 2017, Red Ice had 130,000 YouTube subscribers.[4] By April 2019, it had over 300,000 subscribers.[7]

References
  1. Willingham, AJ (6 March 2018). "Middle school teacher secretly ran white supremacist podcast, says it was satire". CNN Digital. CNN. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  2. "McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to the alt-right". Southern Poverty Law Center. 19 April 2018. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  3. Bowman, Emma; Stewart, Ian. "The Women Behind The 'Alt-Right'". NPR. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  4. Dixit, Pranav; Feder, J. Lester; Warzel, Charlie; Kantrowitz, Alex (14 August 2017). "White Supremacist Platforms Are Being Targeted By Hackers And Rejected By Hosts". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  5. Darby, Seyward (1 September 2017). "The Rise of the Valkyries". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  6. Stern, Alexandra Minna (14 July 2019). "Alt-right women and the 'white baby challenge'". Salon. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  7. Owen, Tess (4 April 2019). "White nationalists from around the world are meeting in Finland. Here's what you need to know". Vice. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  8. Broderick, Ryan (9 April 2019). "Comments Were So Racist On Livestreams Of A Congressional Hearing On White Nationalism YouTube Had To Disable Them". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  9. Alvarez, Alejandro (9 April 2019). "Lawmakers held a hearing on white nationalism. On YouTube, it was immediately attacked with hate speech". NBC News. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  10. Broderick, Ryan (5 June 2019). "YouTube Will Now Block Discriminatory Content, Just A Day After Saying It Doesn't Violate Its Policies". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  11. Ramirez, Nikki McCann (October 18, 2019). "White nationalist Red Ice TV is promoting a backup channel to skirt its YouTube ban". Media Matters for America. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  12. Gais, Hannah (October 21, 2019). "YouTube Takes Down Red Ice's Main Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  13. Gias, Hannah (October 23, 2019). "YouTube Yanks Second Red Ice Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved October 27, 2019.
  14. Katzowitz, Josh (October 24, 2019). "Red Ice, a popular white supremacist YouTube channel, has been shut down". The Daily Dot. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
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