by David Hipschman
Web Review, 1997
Republished with permission
Some curse the darkness, some light a candle
It's been a good year for hate. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing extremist is the latest case of hate exploding into violence. But this year has also seen a chasm between whites and blacks over the O.J. Simpson trial, numerous attacks by the Unabomber, and the horrific bombing in Oklahoma City.
There's nothing new about hate speech, of course. But in a time when hate seems to erupt into violence with jarring regularity, the Internet strikes many as a disturbingly powerful way to distribute odious messages. Such speech is driven under the rug in "normal," offline society. But what are the most effective ways to deal with it on the Net?
Some universities and Internet providers have dealt with hate by banning certain kinds of speech from their networks. This month the US Congress will consider laws limiting freedom of speech on the Internet -- and some members may make their decisions based on erroneous data about "cyberporn."
This flies in the face of strongly held beliefs on the Net about the free flow of information -- or disinformation, as the case may be -- and may violate the First Amendment. As an alternative to legislation or bans, several anti-hate activists are using the Net to expose such speech, to fight it by shining a light on it.
Cyberspace, no matter what its "citizens" would like to believe, is a part of society. Should we modify our view of freedom of speech in a world where a Web page published by anyone can be viewed by millions, where an email spam can reach thousands? And if you find "hate" -- the kind of slimy racist, anti-Semitic, or uninformed "theology" that you might ignore offline -- if you come across it at all, what should you do?
If anything makes the Internet different from other types of speech it is the relative ease with which the few can reach the many. The Institute for Historical Review, for example, an organization dedicated to denying the Holocaust, says one of its goals in 1995 was to use the Net more efficiently, to "make (revisionist) materials available to millions around the world on the Internet...."
And Web publishers with hateful messages are taking full advantage of those capabilities. Consider the Web page of The Aryan Crusader's Library, which opens with an interesting bit of graphics: A Nazi flag's red background dissolves into a silhouette of the United States, with the words "keeping America White" emblazoned across it. Its Webmaster writes, "I worry about the decline of Western Civilization and the browning of our nation. Liberal assurances that we should bravely enter a global, multicultural marketplace with tolerance and celebration of diversity don't work for me. Maintaining the Aryan Crusader's Library may or may not make our country a Whiter place, but it helps me feel like I'm doing something to help."
Then there's the White Nationalist Resource Page, Stormfront, the pre-eminent site of its kind. Even its detractors grudgingly praise its design, organization and number of links. Stormfront calls itself a "resource for those courageous men and women fighting to preserve their White Western culture, ideals and freedom of speech and association -- a forum for planning strategies and forming political and social groups to ensure victory."
The Florida-based group's Web site contains news items from Stormfront correspondents, commentary, and articles on "New Federal Policy On Deadly Force" and "Clinton Urged To Create Race Relations Commission," as well as reports on Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Oklahoma City bombings. The news items section ends with a sketch of a young couple gazing adoringly at a baby in their arms, captioned, "It is simple reality that... to be born WHITE is an honor and a privilege."
The site also includes David Duke's reflections on his trip to India. Awed by the Taj Mahal, Duke writes in "Racial Realities" that he was moved to tears by the overpopulation and poverty he saw on his visit to the subcontinent. "Every day our nation grows a little darker from the torrential immigration of non-Whites, high non-White birth rates, and increasing racial miscegenation," Duke writes, "and with each passing day, we see the quality of our lives decline. Crime is ever on the increase, drug activity proliferates, educational quality lowers, and the American standard of living suffers. The healthy racial values of our forefathers are ridiculed and replaced by the pseudo-science of egalitarianism..."
Christian Identity Online, "the World's FIRST Christian Identity Website," is the work of the Rev. Ronald C. Schoedel III. Schoedel, a 19-year-old from Ohio, describes himself as an "independent publisher, writer and political dissident."
Christian Identity, the Web site explains, "is not a denomination or an organization, but rather it is a way of thinking... whose roots are firmly planted in the Holy Bible..." A bible, the site says, which "has never changed or been altered by God ... The religion of the Old Testament was not changed by Messiah, but expanded upon. Judaism never was and is still not the religion of the Old Testament... Nor was Jesus a jew... The only faith... in the Bible is the Messianic/Christian faith, not Judaism (which) having come straight out of Babylon, Judaism's blasphemous and God-hating filth is 100% diametrically opposed to all that is right and good. We must have no fellowship with this satanic religion."
The site links to an article about interracial marriages by Pastor Sheldon Emry, and quotes from Lincoln and Jefferson about how the "negro" and white races should live separately. Emry blasts Billy Graham, the media and Christian magazines that "glorify the negro in America and endorse negro-White marriages... People objecting to such integration are called bigots, white racists, or white supremists. .. White parents often find their children believe God gives approval of Whites marrying other races."
Distasteful as many may find these sites, they share the same protection as other forms of free speech. Consider the Zundelsite, the Web page of Canada's most prominent Holocaust revisionist, Ernst Zundel. The site contains links to many Holocaust denial sites on the Net, as well as long anti-Semitic diatribes. But, ironically, Zundel has become rallying point, not only for hatemongers, but for civil libertarians who believe hate speech should be protected.
Canada has strict laws against hate speech. Zundel was taken to court for his published statements about the Holocaust, and convicted in 1985 and 1988 under Canada's "False News" statutes. However, after an appeal to the Canadian Supreme Court, his convictions were set aside.
The Court held that the rights of a minority to express its view is protected "unless the physical form by which the communication is made (for example, a violent act) excludes protection."
Writing for the majority, Justice Beverley McLachlin stated: "To permit the imprisonment of people, or even the threat of imprisonment, on the ground that they have made a statement which 12 of their co-citizens deem to be false and mischievous to some undefined public interest, is to stifle a whole range of speech, some of which has long been regarded as legitimate and even beneficial to our society." The Zundelsite apparently shares the same protection.
So what is the proper response to these sites? Some governments are passing laws against electronic hate speech. In the wake of the Zundel case, Canada's Justice Department is considering legislation that would make using the Internet to send hate propaganda across the Canadian border a crime. Stiffening existing laws or vigorously applying old ones may not be enough, however, as with pedophilia and pornography cases arising on the Net, enforcement is problematical.
Free-speech sentiments are strong on the Internet, and some would prefer to shine a light on hate sites, to uncover and expose the hatemongers to reason and dialogue. Some of these people are using their own resources to monitor hate on the Net. Others are part of larger organizations. The Nizkor Project, dedicated to remembering the victims of the Holocaust, maintains links to Holocaust denial sites because they "believe it to be important to keep tabs on what propaganda is being spread, both through the Net and otherwise."
Nizkor (which means "we will remember" in Hebrew) is directed by Ken McVay, the non-Jewish Canadian service station manager who came across hate in Usenet newsgroups for the first time in 1991. He started out fighting hate on the Net, and now leads the project and its educational library dedicated to the fight against "the campaign of destruction and disinformation being waged by hatemongers in electronic forums." More speech, the group contends -- not censorship -- is the only way to fight the spread of hateful ideas that incite groups to mistrust and suspect one another.
Others aren't so sure. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles, says he is especially troubled by the use of the Internet by revisionists who claim the Holocaust never happened. Those promoting hate on the Net, he says, "have bought into the technology in a big way and are increasingly investing in using it to get their message across."
Cooper said the center is completely for freedom of speech, but he wants to distinguish between "truth and falsehood, information and disinformation." He says the "free marketplace of ideas" concept is flawed, because "there is a difference between the Flat Earth Society and Carl Sagan... the Internet can give the erroneous impression that all information is of the same value."
While he doesn't advocate "thought police," Cooper says, "we would like to see responsiveness from things like Yahoo to create internal mechanisms" to filter information "so that the American Cancer Society" wouldn't be listed next to a crackpot cancer cure. "Information needs context to be understood, especially by young people."
The Weisenthal Center recently added a CyberWatch section to its Web site, to monitor "the spread of antisemitism, racism and bigotry" on the Internet. CyberWatch contains a hotline where allegations of hate crime may be reported as well as survey where you may register your opinion about "Hate on the Internet."
Judging from the results of the as yet incomplete survey, Steve King of Isis/New Media, the independent company that built and maintains the Wiesenthal Center's site, says they've received "several thousand responses from people who said they have encountered hate on the Net.
"They're not just talking about neo-Nazi sites either," King says, "for instance there was a major spam against Jews," during the Jewish high holy days earlier this fall. "More than 200 respondents to the survey reported having received multiple copies of anti-Semitic stuff in their email. It was purportedly from the National Alliance," he says. (Several Web Review staffers also received the spam.)
"We also get strange stories about neighbors who are racists and have gotten stuff from Chile about former SS guys," King says. But what makes hate on the Net different from offline hate, he says, "is that in the past this (neo-Nazi) stuff was under rocks, now they have a distribution network of unparalleled power."
David Hipschman is Editor of the Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming's largest newspaper, and the author of Cyberland. This article first appeared in Web Review, of which Hipschman was a founding contributor.
