Some people have always looked at cyberspace with suspicion. For these folk, a spurt in technology at this level has meant a sudden proliferation of unmonitored information. They believe that, in the wrong hands, it could be a propagation tool unlike any the world had seen before.
The fear is not unfounded. Given humanity's propensity for hate, technology has been used to promote everything from racism and anti Semitism, alternative religions to hate groups, Aryan supremacy and more. In Jersey City, around a decade ago, a gang called 'The Dotbusters' began a planned attack to drive all Indians from their city. Their name sprung from the dot, or bindi used by Indian women on the forehead. Today, though dotbusters are not a presence online, the chances of an underground system of communication thriving somewhere on the Internet are still huge.
Not all hate groups shy away from publicity. Case in point: the Ku Klux Klan, which grew out of the American Civil War to protect and preserve the white race and ensure what it called 'voluntary separation' of the races, and even the extinction of Blacks, Catholics, and Jews.
The picture of these Klansmen standing in white sheets, with blazing torches burning large wooden crosses in a circle, has become part of urban legend. The Klan is alive and well online, with lots of background information as well as individual groups proclaiming their presence with a website, like the Alabama White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan.
What would you say about a group that strongly believes in Hitler's decree: "All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning"? The Skinheads of the Racial Holy War do. They also blatantly proclaim, on their home page, that if you are a 'skinhead, white separatist, KKK, Neo-Nazi or White Racial Loyalist,' they grant you permission to use anything on their pages. The Skinhead movement began somewhere in the late sixties, in England, at a time when racial, social, and economic conditions were deteriorating. Hardest hit by an open door immigration policy were young, white factory workers. They did what they thought was best, and rebelled, lashing out at all non-whites.
Why do these hate groups harness the power of the Net? Simply because it enables them to disseminate large amounts of material at a relatively low cost, including anything from text and charts, to photographs, audio recordings and video clips. It also makes possible the use of interactive dialogue or discussions and, using all of this to their advantage, are a large number of Anti-Semitic groups.
There are some like The Zündelsite, which deny the Holocaust. The site's central claims are that Hitler didn't give an order to eradicate the Jews, there were no gas chambers, and the number of Jews killed was never as large as what was always claimed. Others like Stormfront White Pride World Pride propagate Aryan racism, while anti-Semites are also a big presence in Usenet newsgroups. These include newsgroups with radical right-wing themes like alt.revisionism, alt.politics.nationalism.white, alt.politics.white-power, and alt.skinheads.
Definitions of what constitute a 'hate' group differ. Some maintain that the Republican National Committee, for one, may be the most dangerous of all American hate groups, campaigning for the elimination of Blacks, Jews, homosexuals, the poor and elderly. It is also heavily funded and has tremendous political clout.
We can go by George Bernard Shaw's opinion that "Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated," but have these sites succeeded, to a certain extent? We would like to think they haven't because, for every hate site online, a number of counter sites begin to make their presence felt.
There's the Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism, which examines how bigotry and terrorism threaten people's human rights on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) works towards the elimination of homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Paragraph175.org has weekly news and information updates concerning bigotry and tolerance from around the world, while Stop the Hate promotes awareness of hate crimes and provides resources for responding to and preventing such acts.
The Internet will survive. And so, one hopes, will we.
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