WE MAY MEET ONE DAY
We May Meet One Day is a visual investigation into the growing presence of extreme far-right ideologies within modern society and their intersection with technology and the internet. It was prompted by the SQL database leak of Iron March, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist online message board in November 2019.
The work investigates the physical and virtual sites of violence connected to Iron March, the ways members engaged with this intangible space and the lengths they went to establish secretive networks worldwide. It highlights the prevalence of extreme and often violent views occupying the spaces just below the surface of our society and encourages viewers to confront the perpetuation and normalisation of far-right ideologies; to actively oppose the violence seeping inward and to question the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Walking among us, hidden in plain sight, they could be our friends, our neighbours, our employers; anyone and anywhere.
TRIGGER WARNING: Below are unedited conversations between members of Iron March selected by a computer at random. They may contain racist far-right propaganda, violent hate speech and threatening language.
By placing the subject closer to home, shifting the investigation to the UK members of Iron March, can we confront the perpetuation and normalisation of extreme far right ideologies? Can we uncover the violence seeping inward and fracture the illusion of separation between us?
While Iron March was a pivotal moment in the momentum of the rise of the far-right online, the landscapes of violence and hate created and fed there were not new, nor did they disappear with the end of the site. Increasing fascist sentiment and visible white supremacy continue to evolve and move to new domains, further hidden from public consciousness while simultaneously intertwined with it.
An in-depth Bellingcat essay about the Iron March network can be found here, and a useful searchable database of the leaks created by The Jewish Worker and The Self Agency can be found here. The full dataset is also available to download from their site.