Canada Gets It

There are a lot of reasons we Americans might look to north to our Canadian neighbors as role models. In addition to boasting much lower rates of both crime and incarceration than the U.S., of course all Canadians also have access to health care without regard to their job status or income.

Another reason for the U.S. to emulate Canada is their response to hate speech online. The Simon Wiesenthal Center chose the release of its CD-ROM "Report on Digital Terrorism and Hate" to also commend Canada's response to hate speech online.

Part of the way Canada has been aggressive in confronting hate speech online has been to target ISP's (Internet Service Providers) who host websites that feature hate speech. A rabbi quoted in the article above says: “The Canadian Association of Internet Providers [CAIP] has very strong rules and won’t allow this kind of hate material to stay on a Canadian server.” Once a website has been identified as a problem to one of the companies in the CAIP, "it doesn’t take very long for it to be bumped,” the rabbi said.

Taking this approach, aggressively monitoring the internet and then approaching ISP's to remove the sites, is certainly one that could work here in the U.S. if the political will to do so existed. Finding the collective commitment to target such intolerance online is another way the U.S. could follow Canada's example because clearly, Canada "gets it" when it comes to battling hate online.

Truth and Remembrance

I could not let this day go past without noting it, since today marks the tenth anniversary since the Oklahoma City bombing. Given contemporary news cycles, this annivesary gets a fair amount of press, most of it pretty disappointing, maudlin drivel. Yes, it's terrible what these people endured, but the focus is so relentlessly turned on the personal stories that what gets excluded from these reports is any sort of analysis about the white supremacist ideology that spawned Timothy McVeigh. Indeed, the exclusive focus on the personal stories in reporting on this event that it produces a dozen or so in the mix like this one, about Bill McVeigh, father of Timothy who is apparently completely without insight, but with plenty of pain, ten years after his son's crime.

What most of the news analysis fails to do is offer any sense of how McVeigh's crime might be connected to white supremacy or larger systems of inequality, and almost every report refers to what motivated him as "extreme anti-government views." Well, yeah sure, that's true...but it's incomplete and so only offers part of the truth. And, there are still lots of unanswered questions about that day in Oklahoma City that no one in power has any interest in investigating.

Remembering the victims, and the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing is important, but just as important is understanding the ideology that motivated McVeigh, and finding out the truth about who his accomplices were that day.

In My Backyard

When I've presented my work on white supremacy in public lectures, professional conferences, or job talks (for faculty positions) in variably someone will say something to the effect that white supremacy "doesn't exist here." Sometimes, this comes out in reference to where I'm from originally (Texas), and a suggestion that that must be a fertile area for studying white supremacy. And, indeed it is and was.

But then, so is where you live...wherever that is.

Now, I live in New York City and people tend to think that white supremacy in its most extreme expressions doesn't exist here, but it does. Just recently a neo-Nazi from the Bronx, Thomas Zibelli, pleaded guilty to harassment charges for his involvement in vandalizing a Jewish Center in Throgs Neck. He also apparently recruited teens to the white supremacist cause.

The response to white supremacy that says "this doesn't exist in my backyard" is one of the ways white people (and, yes, it's almost always white people who say this kind of thing) keep blinders on about the way racism, white supremacy and privilege work together. Saying "this doesn't exist here" is another way of saying, "this isn't my responsibility."

One of the things I think the internet does, in addition to making white supremacist speech more pervasive and accessible, is it also makes those of us who oppose such speech more accountable for taking action because we can't say "this doesn't exist here." Hate speech exists on the same internet that I use to read the morning paper, download my favorite songs, or post on this blog. And because it does, it's in my backyard.

Filtering Hate Globally?

As the internet makes content easily and widely available globally, the question of how to address online hate becomes increasingly difficult. One response here in the U.S. has been that of the ADL which has developed software they call "HateFilter." The software is free, downloadable, and allows the end-user to filter out a list of hate sites that the ADL works to keep updated with subsequent downloads of the software. HateFilter works like any other filtering software, with a parental (or "master") password that allows the filter to be turned off at will.

Unfortunately, its a less than ideal solution for a number of reasons. First, it does nothing to actually address or remove the websites promulgating hate from the web. Second, even according to the ADL the filter isn't effective at eliminating all hate websites from the browser of unsuspecting web surfers. Third, and in my view most importantly, the HateFilter does nothing to develop any kind of critical thinking that might equip those opposed to such sites with cogent, articulate criticisms of what is objectionable in the sites and what steps one might take to challenge those ideas. And, within the logic of ADL's stance that the "best way to combat hate speech is with more speech" the HateFilter seems, at the very least inconsistent, though ADL argues that it is not.

It seems to me that other western industrialized nations have been more progressive, diligent and thoughtful in their response to hate online than we Americans have been. For example, the Canadian Media Awareness Network has since 1996 been developing a range of education campaigns based on the belief that to be functionally literate in the world today young people need critical thinking skills. Included in their work is a component that critically examines online hate.

European nations have also been more attentive to these issues than the U.S. I recently mentioned the French case against Yahoo for selling Nazi memorabilia. And, the New Council of Europe has attempted to respond to the regulatory challenges posed by the Internet. The main objective of that body is to stirke a balance between freedom of expression and information on the Internet and other rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, such as the protection of children against unsuitable online content, including hate speech.

And, the Australians have also been active in combatting what they call cyber-racism.

One wonders what it would take for Americans to take online racism and hate speech seriously as other western industrialized nations do.

White Supremacy, Globalization & Homophobia

The internet is inherently global, simultaneously a tool of globalization and a symbol of it. And, increasingly white supremacists are using the internet to both organize internationally and to react against the process of globalization and all that it represents for them. This is what Benjamin Barber has referred to as Jihad vs. McWorld.

A case in point to illustrate this: Eric Rudolph. Rudolph plead guilty and was sentenced this week to four consecutive life terms today for bombing the Olympics, an abortion clinic, and a lesbian bar. The connection between these may not make intuitive sense to the outside observer, but once you know that Rudolph is a member of the white supremacist group Christian Identity, then the connection becomes clearer.
Chip Berlet's extensive background piece on Rudolph and the Christian Identity branch of the white supremacist movement illustrates that for Rudolph and other white supremacists, there is a clear link between white supremacy, globalization and homophobia. Their view is that the dominance of whites is threatened by loss of jobs in the U.S. and the more permeable national boundaries brought about by globalization. In addition, the type of modernization that disconnects sex from reproduction leads to the twin evils of abortion and homosexuality, both of which are viewed as threats to the declining proportion of whites in the U.S. population. Thus, the link between white supremacy, globalization and homophobia for people like Rudolph.

Google & Nazis

Google, the search engine that became a verb and also a news service, has been providing its estimated 5.9 million users with news from the National Vanguard a publication of the white supremacist group, the National Alliance. Likewise, Google Germany was providing news to readers from National Zeitung, a neo-Fascist newspaper.

Recently, Internet News reported that both the U.S. Google News and Google Germany would remove the racist and fascist hate speech from its news index service.

The Internet News article goes on to make the case that this is not a First Amendment issue because Google is making an editorial decision,

"The collision of hate speech and automated publishing is a waterloo that other Internet companies have faced."

Other internet companies here is a reference to Yahoo and eBay. In 2000, a number of French organizations, including International League Against Racism & Anti-Semitism sued Yahoo, to get them to stop selling Nazi memorabilia through the French Yahoo portal. Though the French were initially successful, it's Yahoo that looks to be the winner of this battle as the back-and-forth court decisions continue. In 2001 eBay ban any listings on its service that "promote or glorify hatred, violence or racial intolerance, or items that promote organizations with such views (e.g., KKK, Nazis, neo-Nazis, Skinhead Aryan Nation)."

Right-Wing vs. Islamic Terrorists

Justin Rood who writes about (I previously incorrectly noted that he worked at DHS, my bad)s at the Department of Homeland Security writes that right-wing terror groups, such as white supremacists, have been omitted from the DHS terrorist list.

An interesting decision by the DHS given that prior to 9/11, the largest death toll due to a terrorist act in the U.S. was the result of a domestic, right-wing terrorist act.

Interesting, too, given that CNN reports that white supremacist August Kreis is "reaching out" to Al Qaeda to form an alliance.

In that same CNN story, Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that while some U.S. extremists applauded the September 11 attacks, there is no indication that such an alliance exists. Potok goes on to say that "The notion of radical Islamists from abroad actually getting together with American neo-Nazis I think is an absolutely frightening one. It's just that so far we really have no evidence at all to suggest this is any kind of real collaboration."

However, doing some digging for connections between white supremacists and Islamic terrorist groups, there is one name that comes up often, and that is Ahmed Huber. Huber a Swiss-German convert to Islam, was, early in his life, a devotee of Adolf Hitler. Later, he moved on to praising former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who led that nation's Islamic revolution. It's hard to write-off Huber as merely a crackpot. A Swiss businessman who once served on the board of directors of a Swiss bank and holding company that President Bush accused of funding Al Qaeda, so clearly has a level of respectability (the board seat) coupled with some dangerous philanthropic interests (the Al Qaeda connection). And, he's reportedly committed to forging an alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States, and according to one account, Huber
recently helped organize a march of 4,000 neo-Nazis through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Berlin.

So, while the continues to say there's "no evidence" of a connection between these two types of terrorist groups they certainly bear watching. Of course, the internet makes alliances between groups in different countries as simply as sending an email. Too bad the Department of Homeland Security doesn't think these groups merit a place on their watch list.

White Supremacist Sentenced to 40 Years

Matt Hale, a white supremacist from the group World Church of the Creator, was sentenced to 40 years today in the plot to kill a judge, according to the The New York Times. Hale wanted to the judge dead after an unfavorable ruling in a copyright case over the use of the name of his organization.

What the article in the New York Times doesn't discuss is the ideology of the group, and how effectively they've translated themselves onto the internet. The WCOTC preaches a gospel of white racial superiority and purity from all 'race mixing.' Nothing much new or different there from other white supremacist organizations. The unique twist of WCOTC and one that gets it tax-free status from the U.S. government is its claim that 'the white race' is their 'religion.'

Nowhere near the first white supermacist site on the web, the WCOTC website has the distinction of being the one most frequently out-of-the-business of racist hate mongering on the web, thanks in large measure to the efforts of the folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who have effectively shut them down a number of times.

It will be interesting to see what the incarceration of Matt Hale does to the group he leads. My prediction is that it won't slow them down initially, and may even galvanize them for awhile. Over the long term, however, it's got to hurt them.

For more on the history of the World Church of the Creator go here.

Spaces of Hate

Keys and a phone line today, these are signs of progress in the new office. Reading Spaces of Hate (Routledge 2004), an edited volume compiled by Colin Flit a geographer at Penn State. Looks promising.

From the dust jacket: "Though much as been written about hate and extreme right-wing groups in the United States, scant attention has been paid to the ways in which geography plays an active role in the formation of such groups. Hate, like all motivating forces in American society, always has a geographical component at its core -- a restricted space that locks out undesirable 'others.' Hate groups have always idealized exclusivist spaces, from an all-white South to cities rid of gays."

I'll post more about it as I go. At first glance, I see nothing in this volume related to cyberspace or the internet. I wonder how the ideas here about geography might be extrapolated for describing the way hate groups occupy space online.

First Day as Scholar-in-Residence at TMF

Yesterday was my first day at the Third Millennium Foundation (TMF) office as the first-ever Scholar-in-Residence with the Seeds of Tolerance initiative of the International Center for Tolerance Education.

While in residence, I will be finishing my book on hate groups online. (I wrote a previous book, White Lies, about hate groups in print media.) The goal is to get a draft of this finished by June, 2005. Today, I reorganized a bit and got some actual writing done.

After I complete a draft of the book, I will do a small qualitative study with high school students, getting their reactions to some of these websites. The plan is to do these interviews over the summer.

Based on this research, I will develop and pilot a curriculum for high school students that I'm calling "Internet Literacy for Tolerance (ILT)." I'll start work on this in Fall, 2005.

As the projects develop and unfold, I'll write some about them here.

No Hateration

There's a Mary J. Blige song where she sings, "we don't want no hateration." Indeed, that's what I want. This is a place for thinking about 'hate' online and for thinking about ways to combat it.