Red Ice
White supremacist[1]
Formation2002 (age 24)
Founding locationGothenburg, Sweden
Key peopleLana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren
LanguageEnglish
Websiteredice.tv

Red Ice is a white supremacist[1] multimedia company founded in Sweden and led by the married couple Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described Red Ice as being important in the YouTube alt-right radicalization pipeline, further radicalizing people tentatively on the far-right and having "a history of embracing white supremacist rhetoric and talking points".[2]

Products and content

From 2002 to 2012, the main focus of Red Ice's content was conspiracy theories such as aliens, 9/11, the Illuminati, and Freemasonry. In 2012, the outlet shifted to concentrate on ideas of race, and especially to the idea of the white genocide conspiracy theory in response to what the couple perceived as "anti-white sentiment" coinciding with the Black Lives Matter movement.[3][4]

As of 2017, Red Ice's main output was its weekly talk-radio-style programs. Interviews make up part of this content; Lokteff searches for personalities on the internet based on viewer recommendations and brings them on the program. Lokteff hosts her own program, Radio 3Fourteen, which highlights white nationalist women and alt-right preferences towards gender roles: men as strong, rational, political, and the decision-making partner, and women as emotional, family-centered, and supportive. These programs are repackaged in additional audio and video formats. Red Ice also has premium, paywalled content. After shifting into the white supremacist space, Red Ice also began producing newscasts.[4][5]

Lokteff's guests have included Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy, among others.[6] In March 2018, Simon Roche, a spokesperson for the Suidlanders, a South African Afrikaner supremacist group, claimed in an appearance on Red Ice that it was deadlier to be a white farmer in South Africa than a police officer.[7] Adolf Hitler was also described as "The Great One" on Red Ice's website.[8] In April 2018, the SPLC said that Red Ice was "exploring white nationalism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, and promoting the myth of white genocide."[2]

Red Ice TV hosted videos for the white nationalist conference 'Awakening' held in Finland in April 2019.[9]

In June 2023, Police Scotland launched an investigation into content published on BitChute that directed abuse and threats towards First Minister Humza Yousaf after receiving a complaint from his office. The content included several Red Ice videos featuring Lokteff, one of which called for Yousaf to "go back" to Pakistan and accused him of trying to "infiltrate and destroy white Scottish culture and heritage".[10]

The recording studio is based in the Idaho panhandle.[11]

History

In 2002, Henrik Palmgren started Red Ice in Gothenburg.[5]

In August 2017, Henrik Palmgren said that hackers had taken down the Red Ice website and were going to release names of 23,000 subscribing members. This event occurred alongside the hacking of several other neo-Nazi and alt-right platforms. On other hacked sites at the time, the actions were claimed in the name of the decentralized group Anonymous.[4]

In September 2018, YouTube limited some videos by Red Ice after it posted a video claiming that white women were being "pushed" into interracial relationships.[12]

In April 2019, comments and monetization were disabled by YouTube on a livestream of a House Judiciary Committee hearing hosted by Palmgren and Lokteff due to commenters' use of anti-Semitic slurs, white nationalist memes, and derogatory remarks about women in the hearing.[13][14]

In June 2019, Red Ice's YouTube channel was demonetized due to YouTube's recently expanded policy guidelines, which prohibited videos "promoting or glorifying Nazi ideology," spreading Holocaust denial and rejecting "well-documented events" like the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.[15] In October 2019, the channel was banned for hate speech violations. The channel had about 330,000 subscribers. Lokteff and Red Ice promoted a backup channel in an attempt to circumvent the ban.[16][17] A week later, the backup channel was also removed by YouTube.[18][19]

In November 2019, Facebook banned Red Ice from using its platform.[20][21]

Influence

In August 2017, Red Ice had 130,000 YouTube subscribers.[4] By April 2019, it had over 300,000 subscribers and by October, 335,000 subscribers and 44.7 million total views.[9][22] In November 2019, it had 90,000 followers on Facebook.[20] As of June 2023, Red Ice maintains a social media presence on BitChute, Odysee, Telegram, VK, Rumble and Gab.[10]

References

  1. ^ [4][23][19][24][25]
  2. ^ Miller, Cassie (19 April 2018). "McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to the alt-right". Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived May 7, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  3. ^ Bowman, Emma & Stewart, Ian. "The Women Behind The 'Alt-Right'". NPR. Archived October 17, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  4. ^ Dixit, Pranav; Feder, J. Lester; Warzel, Charlie; Kantrowitz, Alex (14 August 2017). "White Supremacist Platforms Are Being Targeted By Hackers And Rejected By Hosts". BuzzFeed News. Archived July 9, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 May 2020. On Saturday, Henrik Palmgren of Red Ice, a white supremacist multimedia platform
  5. ^ Darby, Seyward (1 September 2017). "The Rise of the Valkyries". Harper's Magazine. Archived December 20, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  6. ^ Stern, Alexandra Minna (2019). Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0807063361. Archived April 4, 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 21, 2023. As a home for the small but active alt-right sisterhood, Radio 3Fourteen brings together female alt-righters with their followers on social media. Regulars include ... Canadian white nationalists Lauren Southern and Faith Goldy
  7. ^ Gedye, Lloyd (2018-03-23). "White genocide: How the big lie spread to the US and beyond" (in en-ZA). The Mail & Guardian. Archived April 5, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  8. ^ "The Kalergi Plan for European Genocide". Red Ice. March 22, 2016. Archived January 4, 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved March 7, 2023. With the rise of Mussolini in Italy, The Great One in Germany and Franco in Spain...
  9. ^ Owen, Tess (4 April 2019). "White nationalists from around the world are meeting in Finland. Here's what you need to know.". Vice. Archived March 13, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  10. ^ McLaughlin, Martyn (3 June 2023). "Police Scotland launches investigation into racist abuse and threats aimed at Humza Yousaf". The Scotsman. Archived 3 June 2023 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  11. ^ "Can White America Be Reclaimed? - Thomas Rousseau". Rumble. May 1, 2025.
  12. ^ Sommer, Will (2018-09-06). "YouTube Won't Ban 'They Want You Dead, White Man!' Channel". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  13. ^ Broderick, Ryan (9 April 2019). "Comments Were So Racist On Livestreams Of A Congressional Hearing On White Nationalism YouTube Had To Disable Them". BuzzFeed News. Archived June 13, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  14. ^ Alvarez, Alejandro (9 April 2019). "Lawmakers held a hearing on white nationalism. On YouTube, it was immediately attacked with hate speech.". NBC News. Archived June 2, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  15. ^ Broderick, Ryan (5 June 2019). "YouTube Will Now Block Discriminatory Content, Just A Day After Saying It Doesn't Violate Its Policies". BuzzFeed News. Archived October 27, 2020 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  16. ^ Ramirez, Nikki McCann (October 18, 2019). "White nationalist Red Ice TV is promoting a backup channel to skirt its YouTube ban". Media Matters for America. Archived October 20, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  17. ^ Gais, Hannah (October 21, 2019). "YouTube Takes Down Red Ice's Main Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived October 22, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  18. ^ Gais, Hannah (October 23, 2019). "YouTube Yanks Second Red Ice Channel". HateWatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived October 25, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved October 27, 2019.
  19. ^ Katzowitz, Josh (October 24, 2019). "Red Ice, a popular white supremacist YouTube channel, has been shut down—again". The Daily Dot. Archived May 9, 2024 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 25, 2019.
  20. ^ Wong, Julia Carrie (November 27, 2019). "Facebook to ban two white nationalist groups after Guardian report". The Guardian. Archived June 12, 2022 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved June 12, 2022.
  21. ^ "Facebook bans two prominent white nationalist groups after Guardian report". Engadget. November 27, 2019. Archived November 21, 2022 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-11-21.
  22. ^ "Red Ice TV's YouTube Stats (Summary Profile) - Social Blade Stats". socialblade.com. Archived December 26, 2022 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-12-26.
  23. ^ Willingham, AJ (6 March 2018). "Middle school teacher secretly ran white supremacist podcast, says it was satire". CNN Digital. CNN. Archived January 18, 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 28 December 2020. Red Ice is a white supremacist media company
  24. ^ Wong, Julia Carrie (2019-11-21). "White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won't act". The Guardian. Archived June 23, 2022 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-06-23. Red Ice TV is "a group that styles themselves as a news organization when they are primarily a political organization, and the politics are staunchly white supremacist", Donovan said.
  25. ^ "Hate Beyond Borders: The Internationalization of White Supremacy". Anti-Defamation League. March 5, 2022. Archived September 27, 2019 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2022-11-21. He has ties to a number of white supremacists in the U. S., and wrote articles for Altright.com., the now-defunct site headed by white supremacist Richard Spencer, as well as Red Ice, a white supremacist media outfit.