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. As of 2017, Red Ice's main product 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. Red Ice TV hosted videos for the white nationalist conference 'Awakening' held in Finland.
History
In 2002, Henrik Palmgren started Red Ice in Gothenburg, Sweden. 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. 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. In June 2019, Red Ice's YouTube account was demonetized due to YouTube's recently expanded policy guidelines, which prohibited videos "promoting or glorifying Nazi ideology," as well as spreading denial of "well-documented events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary." In October 2019, Red Ice TV's YouTube channel was banned by YouTube 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. A week later, the backup channel was also removed by YouTube.
Influence
In August 2017, Red Ice had 130,000 YouTube subscribers. By April 2019, it had over 300,000 subscribers. The SPLC describes Red Ice as important in the YouTube alt-right radicalization pipeline, further radicalizing people tentatively on the far right.
