Hate.com
Hate groups lure recruits online.
By Stacey Shackford
The Internet has the potential to change
our world for the better by informing
and connecting people in a way that no
other technological innovation can.
However, as surfers connect online,
building a global community, the dark side
of the Internet is gaining ground.
From the Ku Klux Klan to the American
Nazi Party to sites that advocate rape, mur
der and racism, the Internet is a breeding
ground for hate. Many of these organiza
tions lure visitors with seemingly benign web
sites that don’t reveal their violent under
belly until you get three or four pages deep.
Online hate ranges from groups of
Holocaust deniers to truly frightening pro
pagandizes like the Christian Holocaust,
which advocates the killing of all Christians
to ensure “a clean genetic slate for future of
the human species.” The American Nazi
Party and the American Skinheads sites are
not far behind in recruiting visitors to join
their “battle.”
Mark Potek, spokesman for the
Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty
Law Center (splcenter.org), says the
Internet has made it easier for anyone to
preach intolerance and reach a vast audi
ence. In the past, a Klansman would have
needed to put out a substantial effort and a
lot of money to produce and distribute a
pamphlet that might reach 100 people, says
Potek. But today, that same Klansman can
These organizations lure visitors with seemingly
benign web sites that don’t reveal their violent
underbelly until you get three or four pages deep.
put up a slick web page and potentially
attract millions, with little money or effort.
According to the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the number of extreme hate sites
grew from 254 in 1999 to 305 in early
2000. Other organizations, like HateWatch
(hatewatch.org) or the Simon Weisenthal
Center (weisenthal.com) estimate the over
all number of sites with hate content to be
between 500-800.
Tracking Hate
HateWatch was
formed in 1996 to
monitor and catalog
hate groups that use
the web to recruit
and organize, and
maintains a lengthy
list of hate sites. It
also features inter
views with leaders of
hate groups who
admit that the
Internet has been a
boon for them.
The proliferation
of hate online has
attracted the atten
tion of civil rights
activists and aca
demics alike. At
Emerson College in
Boston, Prof. Robert Hilliard, author of the
book Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical
Right, is teaching a seminar called Hate.com,
which will examine how hate sites market to
youths and other potential recruits.
The bad news about hate online: such
speech cannot be controlled.
Stopping Hate
According to the Anti-Defamation
League (adl.org), Internet speech that is
merely “critical, annoying,
offensive or demeaning” enjoys
constitutional protection. Only
when the activities of online
hate groups rise to the level of
criminal conduct by directly
inciting illegal action or includ
ing speech that is a direct,
credible threat against a spe
cific target, can they be prosecuted.
There have been a few incidents of col
lege students who were convicted of civil
rights violations for sending threatening e
mails to minority groups at their schools. A
California State University at Los Angeles
student, Kingman Quon, was sentenced to
two years in jail for e-mailing threatening
messages to Hispanic students and profes
sors last year. A year before, Richard
Jason Fairchild
Machado was convicted of sending threat
ening e-mails to 60 Asian students at the
University of California at Irvine.
The good news: just as most Internet
users tend to withdraw from social activity,
many individual haters who retreat to the
Internet are not actively engaged in the
movement in other ways, the SPLC reports.
That means that although the propaganda
they are spreading may be offensive to
many, less people seem to be acting on it
outside of cyberspace.
And a new campaign, United Against
Hate (unitedagainsthate.org) is trying to
get legislation passed that would strengthen
the federal hate crimes statute to ensure
less people participate in hate crimes, both
on- and off-line. •
civilrights.org
antiracist.com—an informative Canadian
site with lots of links
ih2000.net/ira/ira2.htm#terror—more
great links