Last month, Jeff Schoep, the self-styled commander of one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the United States, took to VKontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, to update his followers about a brewing scandal.

Schoep’s group, the National Socialist Movement, was outraged over his bizarre decision to hand over the reins to a black civil rights activist, and Schoep wanted to set the record straight.

Addressing “Fellow Patriots of the National Socialist Movement,” Schoep wrote in a March 2 post that he had been “deceived” by James Stern who had persuaded him to sign over NSM’s presidency to him in order to shield the group from a lawsuit. Schoep reassigned control to his chief of staff, Burt Colucci.

Schoep chose VKontakte, or VK, for a reason: Russia’s free-for-all Facebook clone is the only major social media platform that still welcomes people like him to post pretty much anything they want – no matter how racially offensive or provocative – with relative impunity.

With U.S. social media companies tightening their content policies in the wake of the recent mosque shootings in New Zealand, some extremist groups are getting pushed to the margins of the internet.

That, researchers say, could turn VK into a safe harbor for an ever greater number of white nationalists seeking to communicate with one another and get their messages out.

“The best thing about VK is it’s not going to throw you off for saying terrible things about Jews or African Americans and so on,” said Heidi Beirich, director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, tongue in cheek.

In recent years, as social media companies have curbed extremist content on their platforms, tech-savvy white nationalists have turned to alternative sites to communicate, organise and recruit members.

While some have been pushed into the internet’s dark underbelly, others have gravitated to websites that still allow extremist content under the guise of free speech.

For Twitter users, Gab, a “free speech” Twitter clone, has emerged as an alternative. For white nationalists banned from Facebook, VK, based in St. Petersburg, has become a favorite destination. Its laissez faire policy allows them to post hate-filled memes, praise Hitler, rail at immigrants and Jews, and doxx – publish private information about their enemies.

•Excerpted from a VOA report.

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