FASCIST-O-METER: Classifier for Neo-fascist Discourse Online

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Veliz, Rudy Alexandro Garrido, Semmann, Martin, Biemann, Chris, Yimam, Seid Muhie
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Veliz, Rudy Alexandro Garrido
Semmann, Martin
Biemann, Chris
Yimam, Seid Muhie
author_facet Veliz, Rudy Alexandro Garrido
Semmann, Martin
Biemann, Chris
Yimam, Seid Muhie
contents Neo-fascism is a political and societal ideology that has been having remarkable growth in the last decade in the United States of America (USA), as well as in other Western societies. It poses a grave danger to democracy and the minorities it targets, and it requires active actions against it to avoid escalation. This work presents the first-of-its-kind neo-fascist coding scheme for digital discourse in the USA societal context, overseen by political science researchers. Our work bridges the gap between Natural Language Processing (NLP) and political science against this phenomena. Furthermore, to test the coding scheme, we collect a tremendous amount of activity on the internet from notable neo-fascist groups (the forums of Iron March and Stormfront.org), and the guidelines are applied to a subset of the collected posts. Through crowdsourcing, we annotate a total of a thousand posts that are labeled as neo-fascist or non-neo-fascist. With this labeled data set, we fine-tune and test both Small Language Models (SLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs), obtaining the very first classification models for neo-fascist discourse. We find that the prevalence of neo-fascist rhetoric in this kind of forum is ever-present, making them a good target for future research. The societal context is a key consideration for neo-fascist speech when conducting NLP research. Finally, the work against this kind of political movement must be pressed upon and continued for the well-being of a democratic society. Disclaimer: This study focuses on detecting neo-fascist content in text, similar to other hate speech analyses, without labeling individuals or organizations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_10789
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FASCIST-O-METER: Classifier for Neo-fascist Discourse Online
Veliz, Rudy Alexandro Garrido
Semmann, Martin
Biemann, Chris
Yimam, Seid Muhie
Computers and Society
Computation and Language
Neo-fascism is a political and societal ideology that has been having remarkable growth in the last decade in the United States of America (USA), as well as in other Western societies. It poses a grave danger to democracy and the minorities it targets, and it requires active actions against it to avoid escalation. This work presents the first-of-its-kind neo-fascist coding scheme for digital discourse in the USA societal context, overseen by political science researchers. Our work bridges the gap between Natural Language Processing (NLP) and political science against this phenomena. Furthermore, to test the coding scheme, we collect a tremendous amount of activity on the internet from notable neo-fascist groups (the forums of Iron March and Stormfront.org), and the guidelines are applied to a subset of the collected posts. Through crowdsourcing, we annotate a total of a thousand posts that are labeled as neo-fascist or non-neo-fascist. With this labeled data set, we fine-tune and test both Small Language Models (SLMs) and Large Language Models (LLMs), obtaining the very first classification models for neo-fascist discourse. We find that the prevalence of neo-fascist rhetoric in this kind of forum is ever-present, making them a good target for future research. The societal context is a key consideration for neo-fascist speech when conducting NLP research. Finally, the work against this kind of political movement must be pressed upon and continued for the well-being of a democratic society. Disclaimer: This study focuses on detecting neo-fascist content in text, similar to other hate speech analyses, without labeling individuals or organizations.
title FASCIST-O-METER: Classifier for Neo-fascist Discourse Online
topic Computers and Society
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10789