Dr. Bibhu Prasad Routray
Extremist organisations have long tended to use the Internet to emphasise their strengths and gloss over their weaknesses. It is thus not surprising that there is no fixed pattern to the intensity of extremist propaganda. This is true both in the past and current cases of al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In the case of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), however, its online presence—to elicit support, eulogise deceased leaders, comment on global and local developments, and issue calls for action—continues to be linked to its organisational and logistical capacity.
In the CPI-Maoist’s heyday, several dozen websites and blogs had proliferated on the Internet, most of which were mirror sites simply reproducing press releases and other publications to keep the Party alive even as government agencies tried to block them. The strategy was effective: there was always a website or a blog where such publications could be found. These primarily catered to Indian as well as foreign audiences. Intelligence agencies believe that most of these websites were hosted on foreign servers, making the task of taking them down difficult.
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