ACIS Iran-Pulse no. 74

Visiting the Iranian 'Nazi Center' Online

Liora Hendelman-Baavur* 

 


ACIS Iran Pulse no.74 | April 15, 2020

 

August 2015 will mark two years into the presidency of Hassan Rouhani who is projecting a diplomatic image that is diametrically opposed to that of his predecessor. On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel and against the backdrop of the progress in the nuclear talks between the P5+1 and Iran in Lausanne, this review considers if the change of leadership in the Islamic Republic has been accompanied by a change in manifestations of Iranian anti-Semitism on the internet.

 

During his two terms as president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad went further than any of his predecessors and colleagues in making anti-Israeli declarations, and became internationally infamous for his Holocaust denial. His public pronouncements, which often exceeded the boundaries of diplomatic decorum (like his speech at the UN Anti-racism Durban Review Conference, Geneva, 2009), and the aegis he provided controversial events (like the 2006 seminar “The Holocaust: Myth or Reality?” held in Tehran), gave impetus to a surge of anti-Semitic expressions in Iran. One of the highlights of this anti-Semitic trend in the Islamic Republic was the international cartoon contest on the Holocaust announced by the conservative daily newspaper Hamshahri in 2006 and administered online throughout the ensuing year by the Iranian House of Cartoonwhich is sponsored by the Municipality of Tehran. In November 2010, the Iranian news website Tabnak exposed a Persian neo-Nazi and racist internet forum, operating under the virtual domain assigned to the Islamic Republic (irannazi.ir). Following extensive international attention and pressure, the forum’s administrators decided to close it down(ACIS Iran Pulse no. 40).  

 

Seven months later, on July 16, 2011, a new neo-fascist forum named the 'Nazi Center' (forum.nazicenter.comillustration no. 1) was launched online. The forum’s affiliated web portal under the same name became active online less than a year later. Although the 'Nazi Center' cloaks its online activity by operating under a commercial domain (rather than using the country extension .ir), it is registered through the Islamic Republic’s internet domain registration authority (IRNIC). The activities of the visually invested Iranian 'Nazi Center' include publication of the monthly newsletter ANSI, the acronym of the Iranian National-Socialist Association (see illustration no.8). 

 

 

Illustration no. 1: The banner of the 'Nazi Center' forum, April 8, 2015

 

The Center's “About” page specifies that the website “fully operates under the rules and norms of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the topics covered are WWII and the Third Reich. History is the subject of this website, not political debate! And the history of the Third Reich, not the history of the following decades!” The website nazicenter.com is administered by Babak Badrian, a former student of theIslamic Azad University of Najafabad from Isfahan. In his introductory note he mentions his keen interest in history since childhood, his fondness of languages (English, Arabic and German) and movies, and boasts about being active on websites about World War II and Nazi Germany for five years.

 

Two main rationales are presented for the website’s particular focus: first, the importance of WWII as a major historical event, and second, the supposed dearth of “true” information about the war. Racism is prohibited under the rules of the forum and occasionally individual members are even warned about posting anti-Semitic comments, yet the bulk of content displayed on site consists a selective repertoire of accounts, translated into Persian, that mythologize Nazism and revive the cult of the Führer. The website’s guise of being historical research center fades in light of its images, content and the Nazification of web icons, like Google’s double O’s replaced with twin swastikas (see illustration no. 2). Nazicenter.com is filled with pictures of Hitler and other members of the Nazi leadership. The colors (black, red and white) and dominant visual symbols associated with the German Workers National Socialist Party are inserted in the personal profiles of the website’s subscribers and their virtual ranks, which indicate their level of activity. Along with historical reports about the Nazi military operations during WWII, Hitler’s messages to his troops and his affair with Eva Braun, the website contains materials about the Nazis’ racial ideology, for example an article “The issue of race and ability, and IQ differences between different races” (the CJR). 

 

 

Illustration no. 2: The Nazification of familiar web icons by affiliates of the Iranian 'Nazi Center'

 

 

The 'Nazi Center' forum has 4,455 subscribers, of whom only 155 are active users, and 87.8 percent are from Iran (Website.Informer.com). According to available demographic data, the bulk of the website’s members are men in their twenties, students and college graduates in technically-orientated fields from across Iran, whose web activity is based at home (Alexa). Additional data reveals that the core active members of the Iranian 'Nazi Center' are the same group that used to operate the irannazi.ir forum in 2010. Among the Center’s prominent members is Hamid Reza Nikbakhsh, who is responsible for the translation of fascist literature from German into Persian. The website’s library includes a variety of downloadable books in Persian, including Holocaust denial accounts, like Nikbakhsh’s 55-page monograph "The Holocaust: The Great Lie – 63 Queries and Answers Concerning the Holocaust” (published by the Iranian 'Nazi Center', 2009).

 

The operation of the Iranian 'Nazi Center' is shared online for maximum exposure through its affiliatedYouTube channelTwitter account (see illustration no. 3) and Google+ as well as weblogs and pages in Persian social networks hammihancloobfacenama and the video-sharing site aparatHowever, the Center maintains a relatively low level of activity in these popular websites. The most recent posts on its Twitter account and YouTube channel were registered about nine months ago. The Center’s Facebookpage contains only a hyperlink to the web portal. Keeping a low profile is probably designed to draw subscribers to the forum while avoiding suspension.

 

Simultaneously, individual forum members openly share personal content on their private Facebook pages along with anti-Semitic content like parts of translated (and often inaccurate) quotes from Hitler's speeches and autobiographical manifesto 'Mein Kampf', depicting the Jews and Marxists as plague-like sickness that should be cured by annihilation. Another status on Facebook that reads “long live Nazism and long live Hitler, down with Israel” is positioned above a doctored photo of Hitler in a white T-shirt depicting the Palestinian flag. Some observers maintain that this convergence of neo-Nazi ideology, pro-Palestinian advocacy and anti-Israeli sentiments may be the reason that the Iranian government does not censor the activity of this association (France 24).

 

  

Illustration no. 3: The Twitter account (left) and YouTube channel (right) of the Iranian 'Nazi Center'

 

Commenting on their activity in 2010, Alireza Amirhajebi observed, “Members of this kind of association come from a small but slowly increasing minority of Iranian youth who are attracted by the notion that ‘pure blooded’ Persians are the true Aryans.”He also suggests that neo-Nazis in Iran do not know much about the atrocities of WWII, but consider the Third Reich “a great infrastructure builder” and this might lead to a concrete form of action in the political sphere or in the street in the long run (France 24). To advance the Center’s agenda, its operators have set up a clear management hierarchy online (see illustration no. 4).

 

Illustration no. 4: The Nazi Center’s hierarchy for online operations

 

More explicit nationalistic Persian sentiments are the focus of a related online forum, launched in August 2014, operating under the title 'National Socialist Studies' (forum.ns-studies.com). Compared to the 'Nazi Center', this recently-established forum currently has only 167 subscribers, of whom 31 are active members (April 5, 2015). It is characterized by ultranationalist Iranian propaganda, which often involves anti-Turkish and anti-Arab sentiments (for example, INSMiranianfront) that are more likely to run counter of the Islamic Republic’s censorship policy.

 

Illustration no. 5: The banner of the Iranian online National Socialist forum, April 10, 2015

 

 

To avoid censorship pitfalls, images on forum.ns-studies articulate an historical connection between pre-Islamic times of the Persian Empire, Zoroastrian symbols, historical figures of modern times (like Amir Kabirand the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (illustration no. 5). The forum’s recruitment poster, however, appeals to subscribers with the following texts: “Do you oppose Zionism? To you want to review the Holocaust? Are you interested in the history of Germany and the Third Reich? [if] so, than you can help us” (see illustration no. 6). The administrators highlight the forum's research activity while simultaneously noting "our sole goal is to expose the lies spread by world Zionism and its allies sincethe end of WWII ". 

 

Illustration no. 6: A recruitment poster on the Iranian online National Socialist forum, April 10, 2015

 

Other pervasive manifestations of anti-Semitism that continue to spread online include websites of Holocaust caricatures and cartoons (also appear as 'Holocaricature/s,' 'holocartoon/s' or 'holokarikature/s'). This initiative is based on an illustrated book by the Iranian cartoonist Maziar Bijani (b. 1973), first published in 2008 and disseminated on the web since 2010 (see also Memri2010). Online activity includes the propagation of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian cartoons by Bijani and others through weblogs, social networks (Twitteras shown in illustration no. 7, and Facebook) and popular file-sharing websites (YouTubeInstagram and Pinterest and tracked in Google images). In recent years, several accounts associated with Bijani’s anti-Semitic illustrations have been removed or suspended following complaints by internet users, but the material is uploaded and displayed pervasively on alternative websites such as roozcartoona bilingual portal of Iranian cartoons, which Bijani co-edits, and on NasrTV, a video-sharing websites where 94 percent of the visitors are from Iran(Alexa). 

Illustration no. 7: The cartoonist Bijani (left) and the suspended twitter account of Holocaricatures, April 04, 2015 (right)

 

 

Notwithstanding the websites reviewed above, it is important to remember that the internet facilitates different channels for multifaceted activities on the part of millions of users in Iran and Iranian expatriates around the world. Although Iranian neo-Nazi displays are disturbing, they are currently a marginal phenomenon online. According to the international survey 'ADL Global 100: An Index of anti-Semitism,' published in May 2014, the largest concentration of anti-Semites in the world today are in the Middle East and North Africa, but Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in this region (Haaretz). Overall it seems that the scope of Iranian anti-Semitic activity and Holocaust denial online has decreased to some extent since President Ahmadinejad retreated to the margins of the Islamic Republic’s politics. Websites and weblogs listed in 2010 have been removed from the web, and others formed since then, like worldwar2.ir (2012), have phased out. However, the relative reduction is not necessarily related to the election of Rouhani or the diplomatic efforts of his administration (the Atlantic2014). Rather, it is more an outcome of international pressure and activity of organizations and individuals that monitor the internet, including the ADL, the SWC and others.

 

 

Illustration no. 8: Covers of the Iranian online Nazi Center’s monthly newsletter

  Hebrew

 


 * Dr. Liora Hendelman-Baavur is a senior research associate at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University and Faculty member of the Lester and Sally Entin Faculty of Humanities‏. 


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Iran Pulse No. 74 ● April 15,  2015

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