Online Hate Speech and Intersectionality: Evidence From the Anti-Muslim Narratives in Italy

The intersection of multiple social inequalities and narratives of discrimination has become a popular topic in various academic elds, including racism analysis, feminist analysis, migration studies, and postcolonial studies. Relying on this theoretical framework, this article aims to show the narratives that characterize the online anti-Muslim discourses in Italy. By analyzing 31 interviews conducted with the volunteers of Amnesty International’s Hate Speech Task Force, the research highlights how Muslim religious identity intersects with other categories that have been historically marginalized, particularly in relation to gender and religion or legal and economic status. Basically, being Muslim seems to be an aggravating circumstance in hatred communication. This specic case study demonstrates how hate speech online against Islam in Italy is situated at the intersection of preexisting conditions of disadvantage and sedimented stereotypes that create a narrative of Islam perceived as an external threat that affects different levels of reality and activates a mechanism of preservation by the “threatened group” to create its common identity in opposition to the “otherness” of the Muslim culture.