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HDF’s influencer scheme

A plan to enlist far-right content creators into a propaganda network

16 Oct. 2024

HDF has launched a project to enlist far-right content creators into a propaganda machine that can push out unified messages that benefit the company. Erik Ahrens is the mastermind of this scheme, and is working on versions of this in both Germany and the UK. Together with Matthew Frost, he has devised numerous ways of bringing extreme influencers into HDF’s fold.

Edward Dutton was the first content creator to join HDF. In exchange for improved production values and a regular salary, Dutton has in effect ceded editorial control over his channel, The Jolly Heretic, to HDF. In conversations with our undercover reporter, Ahrens and Frost described their plans to add other influencers like him to their stable.

“Economics as coercion” is how Ahrens described it to our infiltrator. He outlined a complicated scheme in which HDF will supplement the income of far-right influencers with advertising, and then demand a say in their creative output. The channels of extreme content creators are often demonetised by major social media platforms like YouTube, denying them the chance to earn ad revenue. Ahrens takes advantage of their marginalisation by offering them adverts, which in turn would offer him the chance to dictate the subject of their videos.

Ahrens explained to our infiltrator that he was creating Liegent, a book summary service, which launched in 2024. “Become well-read in under 25 minutes a day with the core ideas from books no one else dares to offer,” reads the website. The first book that appears on Liegent’s website is The Bell Curve, a scientific racism text that heavily references the work of Richard Lynn. In summer 2024, Liegent adverts began appearing on the social media channels of Edward Dutton (The Jolly Heretic) and Thomas Rowsell (Survive The Jive).

Ahrens made no secret that the advertising of Liegent was a tool to manipulate far-right influencers. “When you do this approach — this market economy approach, where you supply them with good products — you can control them,” he said.

A version of this network already exists in Germany, where Ahrens is based. In conversation with an undercover reporter in November 2023, he said:

“Once you are the ad network, once you are providing them with these product placements, you can basically agenda-set. Imagine being able to tell 10-to-15 rightwing YouTubers to talk about topic X, or talk positively about politician Y. This is what we’re doing in Germany right now… When I get them into position, when [we] control all of the German YouTubers, we can make or break a politician. We can set an agenda. This is very, very high leverage.”

The network in Germany now contains 17 far-right influencers, according to the investigative journalism website, Correctiv.

Manipulation of Neema Parvini

The exploitation of far-right content creators is a central goal of HDF’s operation. In order to grow their own audience, they seek to piggy-back off the large followings amassed by other influencers.

Erik Ahrens and Matt Frost outlined a plan to manipulate the disgraced academic Neema Parvini. Also known as Academic Agent, Parvini has 100,000 followers on YouTube. Ahrens and Frost told an undercover reporter in November 2023 that they planned to fly Parvini to Athens, where they were working, with the promise of listening to and perhaps funding his pitch for a think tank. Parvini is an overtly racist author, and has written that Black people are “impulsive and low-IQ” and a “different species”. The recommended reading list on his website features five books by the Holocaust denier Kerry Bolton. According to Ahrens and Frost, Parvini harbours an ambition to be the highly-paid leader of a think tank.

“He’s delusional,” Ahrens told an undercover reporter, insulting Parvini as “comfy boy” and a “doughy boy” who could be easily controlled.

In addition to hosting live streams on his social media channel, Parvini, who used to lecture on Shakespeare at the University of Richmond, now sells courses in economics and entrepreneurship. “The fact that this guy is selling a business course is nuts,” Frost said. “He clearly — when we phoned him — had never interacted with this type of thing before.” He later added: “I don’t like the mumbling, he’s not charismatic. He has no sense of proportion or what’s realistic.”

Both Frost and Ahrens described how they would pretend to fund Parvini’s think tank. They planned a good-cop, bad-cop routine in which Frost would be friendly, telling their target “I think you could be the man for the job”. Meanwhile, Ahrens would be “the stonewall character” that he perfected as Mr Schmitt, making Parvini doubt himself.

“We get his hopes up, and we keep dangling this in front of his eyes,” Ahrens said. The HDF team will have Parvini address their events and accept advertising on his channel, giving them input over the videos he produces. “We say, ‘It’s the one step you need to do, so we can pull this off’. And maybe he’s gonna get this think tank, just not in the foreseeable future.”