An interview with Alex Orlowski, spin doctor, political marketing and social media monitoring expert, who has been engaged for four years in a campaign to democratise the web against the far right. His work was the basis on which the latest episodes of Report denouncing the social media strategy of Italian right wing parties have been built on.

1. The antifascist struggle of the "digital partisans"
An interview with Alex Orlowski, spin doctor, political marketing and social media monitoring
expert, who has been engaged for four years in a campaign to democratise the web against the
far right. His work was the basis on which the latest episodes of Report denouncing the social
media strategy of Italian right wing parties have been built on.
The issue of MicroMega due to be released on April 30 will dedicate plenty of space to the issue
of daily fascism, with contributions from Tomaso Montanari, Cathy La Torre, Daniele Nalbone,
Francesco Pallante, Christa Wichterich and Simona Argentieri.
by Daniele Nalbone
«Today the battle against fascism is no longer fought on the hills, at night. The night is the Internet,
the hills are the social networks, and the digital partisans are behind a computer».
Alex Orlowski, spin doctor, political marketing and social media monitoring expert, calls himself a
digital partisan. "We are scattered all over Europe, web experts who, back in the early Internet days,
were called hackers."
Boasting a lengthy experience as director of both music videos from Afrikaa Bambata to
Hooverphonic indie britpop band and worldwide know ommercials, he is today engaged in a
strenuous battle to democratise social networks.

2. From the famous italian state tv “Report’ a multi awarded investigative journalism show, to another
famous tv show ‘Piazza Pulita’, Orlowski collaborates with several journalists with the aim of
exposing extremist groups actively operating on social media networks. “My commitment - he
explains to MicroMega - ends where that of journalists begins. My role is to collect the big-data,
analyze it, and to expose it publicly, to show people how these groups operate throughout Europe”.
How did your battle against neo-fascists and neo-nazis start?
I have always had a passion since the birth of the first darkweb: analysing data. The Internet was
born as a space of freedom: there were no governments on the net, there were no mass media. In
2016, however, with my agency, which mainly deals with marketing, I realized that there were
frightening anomalies in political campaigns.
So I started using the same tools we are developing in our agency (MetatronAnalytics) , that we
normally use for our marketing clients to monitor the behavior of extremist niche online, in
particular those who increased their fans or followers through unethical means. I refer to racist and
xenophobic realities, which push for an extreme polarization of our society. This is how I realized
how the communication of some of these far-right parties, on social networks, is aimed at a specific
target: the most fragile, gullible and easily manipulated people. At that moment I understood that it
was time to act.
Your name in newspaper articles and in television programs only began to appear in 2018,
when you helped to show the true face of what the media then renamed ‘Salvini's Beast’, his
propaganda machine.
After understanding the mode of action of Matteo Salvini's propaganda machine, defined by
messages - the same, identical - repeated by thousands of people, I decided to bring out the first
data.
Pay attention: I’m referring to public data provided by programs that, however, only a few agencies
can use due to the skills needed to operate them but also for the costs involved. These programs in
fact are normally used to analyse marketing campaigns but are also perfect for political ones.
‘They’ used anomalous propaganda techniques, I used big-data analysis to understand where these
anomalies were. In fact, far-right parties applied, and still do apply, these techniques to make the
public believe they have a large following on social networks, thus triggering a domino effect and
exploiting the flaws of the various systems.
If I appear on social media as a ‘viral politician’ it is only a matter of time: sooner or later TV
programs will notice me and transform me into a media phenomenon. From here to popularity it’s
only a short step. This is what happened with far-right parties in Italy: through fake accounts they
retweeted a message from their politician of reference thousands of times, thus increasing his
popularity on social networks.
And, as always, TV shows are indeed attracted to social media popularity. In fact, the ‘web
specialists’ of the far-right have built the perfect trap to achieve prime time exposure.
Another question: which are the phenomena that should be fought online?

3. Looking at the various ‘networks within the network’ I discovered that small niches of extremists
devoted to the reconstruction of Nazi and Fascist parties were getting organised. They spoke to each
other on the dark web with the aim of outlining a common strategy at an European and global level.
Luckily in Italy we have journalists paying attention to these phenomena who immediately
understood the gravity of this thing, and intervened.
What are the most serious cases you have come across?
Dozens. Whenever I see death threats, or attempts to organize attacks to harm people, that's the
worst for me. They range from pictures of different weapons, to people subjecting public figures to
death threats, some of whom I never expected to be targeted, such as Pope Francis.
Surely, one thing that scares you is seeing threats involving attacks on mosques and synagogues,
becoming reality. Then there is a whole strand of social media attacks against, in general,
democratic politicians. One of the things that always impresses me the most is seeing negationist
cartoons that mock the survivors of concentration camps. As happened, for example, with Liliana
Segre, an Italian Holocaust survivor, named Senator for life by Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
What opinion do you have of the online mode of action of right-wing parties and extra-
parliamentary formations?
The ultra-right in general, worldwide, is very well organized on the web. They have many activists
who know how to support their sovereign leaders, who are now increasingly relevant within
democratic institutions. And the Italian case is no exception. Their mode of action is very simple:
they change the context of news and data, use fake news to increase their consensus, organize
attacks aimed at democratic exponents. In addition, the rights have a huge network of blogs and
social media pages in which they organize themselves: they use Facebook and Twitter only for
propaganda, but their organization has moved to social networks such as VKontakte (considered the
"Russian Facebook”) or on other portals where control is less stringent or even absent.
The most impressive element, however, is the amount of funds they can rely on: they have various
ways of financing, starting from funds that come from real digital marketing operations to the sale
of clothing products, owning publishing companies and counting on large donations not only from
the world of entrepreneurship, but also from far right American ultra-catholic foundations. Money
that finances various organizations around Europe which, in turn, redistribute to those who work on
social networks.
The anti-fascist struggle, today, must be (also) online, then?
Today the online struggle is more than anti-fascist: it is against the whole far-right galaxy that it has
absorbed many militants of neo-fascist parties. It is a struggle that takes place with network
monitoring techniques, obtaining data and facts - always in a legal way - and making them available
to the public. Crimes that take place every day, every hour. The goal is to attract the attention of
journalists and of the media who can then talk about it to raise public awareness and politics on the
one hand, and to provide the tools to network users for recognising the traps before falling into
them.
My struggle is to analyze these realities and their virtual behaviors, collect data and make them
public. Obviously you have to be very careful: this fight, as you call it, must never be used to limit
freedom of expression.

4. A political idea I don’t agree with is one thing, but here we are talking about a system based on fake
news or propaganda techniques which, in theory, are prohibited by the same social networks, just
like the use of automated accounts, to give an example, that bounce content with the sole aim of
making it viral. My fight is against online squads, against online hatred, against those who threaten
and attack. My struggle is aimed at making the network and social networks of democratic places.
And in democracy there is no place for fascists and nazis.
(April 24, 2020)