The creation of the Internet is the greatest thing to happen to hate groups since the invention of the printing press. Hate groups have re-emerged from the back alleys of the past to take their place alongside those on the front line of leading technologies.
Websites, e-mail and online discussion groups have become powerful recruiting, fund-raising and indoctrinating tools for hate groups. Although the activities of hate groups were once limited by geographical boundaries, the Internet allows even the smallest fringe group to spread hate. Now, hate groups use the Internet as a low-cost medium for disseminating their views to a worldwide audience. Groups that once didn’t have the money to produce materials like high quality magazines, or lacked the respectability to appear on television as legitimate spokespeople, can now very easily express their opinions online.
For years, hate groups have created written networks of every kind to spread their propaganda – books, magazines, newspapers, flyers, pamphlets and graffiti. As communication technology became more sophisticated, so did these groups. First, they used standard-band and shortwave radio, audiotape, videotape and public-access cable television. In the 1950s when mimeograph machines were the technology of choice for personal publishing, hate groups used them too. The Internet came after the spread of fax machines, automatic telephone messages, electronic bulletin boards and cellphones. Now they have online e-mail, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), newsgroups, and listservs.
With time, these online hate groups have increasingly used sophisticated technology. Top of the line software and Web development tools have made it simple for bigots to create sites that visually resemble those of reputable organizations. Many include streaming video and audio files. Consequently, hate groups using the Net can easily portray themselves as legitimate voices of authority.
The Internet has also raised the impact that a single hate-monger can have. Not long ago, a single Klansman would have to go to a great deal of trouble, spend quite a bit of money and find a willing printer in order to produce a pamphlet that might reach a hundred people. Now, the same Klansman can very quickly put up a website that can potentially reach millions.
Determining the exact number of online hate sites is a problem. It is estimated that there are between 300 to 3,000 hate sites. Hate groups are characterized by their radical and overt social or political agenda which reflects a deep animosity toward a selected population based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. There are also “problem sites”, a more expansive term that includes bomb making and Islamic fundamentalist sites, and other sites that work outside the realm of the hate site.
A major debate surrounding online hate is whether or not it can influence one’s beliefs – if it actually plants the seeds of hate, or if it just cultivates them. Experts who believe that online hate propagates offline hate point out that there is evidence showing a correlation between online hate and offline hate crimes.
“These sites can play a part in bringing somebody into the extremist hate movement. Whether someone has a predisposition to that or not is hard to tell; however, I’ve seen again and again people who are members of these groups saying that the Internet is what really brought them in and helped solidify these beliefs, or gave them these beliefs in the first place,”says Jordan Kessler, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Internet monitoring unit, which tracks down hate content on the Web.
One of the concerns for parents is that hate sites aggressively try to influence and recruit children and teenagers.
The World Church of the Creator website has maintained a “Kid’s Page” in the past with colour graphics, crossword puzzles and games laced with racist and anti-Semitic themes. One website includes a game which allows the child to assume the role of a concentration camp commander. Some websites will even use popular children’s characters like Barney the purple dinosaur, and Sesame Street personalities.
Bigotry-laced hard rock and the Net have proved to be a natural match for racist skinheads trying to capture the minds of teenagers. The National Alliance, one of the most dangerous organized white supremacist groups in the United States, revived a hate music label taking advantage of the unsurpassed power of the Internet with a website designed to sell hate music to the masses. The site allows the record label to hawk its wares while spreading the word about the hate movement to a new generation of potential recruits.
Sometimes, young people come across hateful material and believe it. Hateful messages posted on bulletin boards by preteens wondering how they can save the white race are not difficult to find.
A high school student even handed in a paper denying that the Holocaust ever happened based on material found on a Holocaust revisionist’s website.
Depending on what country you are in, the existence of hate sites is either legal or illegal – but either way it is not controlled.
Hate speech is regulated in Canada through both the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act. However, the government is unwilling to pursue hate speech violations, mainly because of the difficulty of identifying the hate-mongers. Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and many other countries have anti-hate laws which can and have been used to close down hate and terrorist sites. However, in the United States, as in many other countries around the world, spreading hatred is a privilege that comes with “free speech”.
The problem with the Internet is that as an international network of computers, no single country can even attempt to regulate it, even though some have tried to.
In 2000, Germany’s Federal High Court convicted an Australian citizen of publishing Holocaust lies and hate speech on a website. Though the site was based in Australia, he was arrested while on a visit to Germany.
A French judge also demanded that the U.S. company, Yahoo, Inc., should prevent some French users, who were selling Nazi memorabilia, from accessing American sites by blocking their IP addresses.
All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have terms of services and acceptable users policies. Some choose to allow or disallow hate sites. Some allow them because they say they support free speech while others prohibit them completely. However, those who ban hate sites have a hard time doing so because of the vast amount of content in cyberspace.
Another problem that ISPs face is that if they punish hate sites by trying to remove them, they can come back under a different name or go to other ISPs.
With all the hate content out there, both online and offline, one would think that there is a united front on how to combat online hate. This isn’t the case. Debates rage that question whether anti-hate sites actually hinder hate sites, or help them by providing free publicity. Some civil rights groups believe that it is better to expose online hate, while others think it is better not to talk about it at all.
Hatewatch.org, the definitive online resource for combatting and monitoring online hate, is one site that has often been criticized for cataloguing hate sites.
Hatewatch’s executive director, David Goldman, believes that exposing these sites is vital in the fight against them. “There is a certain argument out there that says that if I’m exposed to something, I will become it. It doesn’t work that way. There is a whole history that people have to be a part of before they join the Ku Klux Klan, a neo-Nazi group, or anti-gay groups.
“In 1997, 90 per cent of hate sites linked into Hatewatch and claimed that Hatewatch had created the ÔYahoo of hate’. But that fell to less than two per cent of hate sites which linked to Hatewatch in 2000. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that they saw that we were bad for them. We were exposing them to law enforcement, and to moms and dads who were becoming activists against them,” Goldman says.
Kessler says that the Anti-Defamation League strongly supports freedom of speech, so they fight hate speech with more speech. The group has a wealth of information on their site, and they don’t publish lists and links to hate sites because, according to Kessler, “We want to inform, but not advertise.”
While the fight to end online hate rages on, there is filtering software available to consumers. His group has software called HateFilter, which Goldman says is going to be replaced in the near future by free software being put together by the non-profit Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA.org). The ICRA filter will allow consumers to block hate sites free of charge. Though there are other types of filtering software out there, few are free, and HateFilter is the only filter for hate speech currently available.
However, Goldman is skeptical about filtering software. “Technology is not going to solve the problem of human vice. Things like blocking software are illusions. People want to feel comforted that there is some technological solution to this (but) the way you do it is you encourage people to become participants and activists who make a difference.” (djc)
