The Web Fuels Hate Speech
By Christopher Wolf, Chair, ADL Internet Task Force
and Chairman, International Network Against Cyber-Hate
This article originally appeared in International Herald Tribune on November 15, 2007
Thursday, Nov. 8th was a depressing, cold and drizzly night in Berlin. Fitting weather for the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the government-sanctioned night of terror against Jews in 1938 that was a major step towards the Holocaust.
Earlier that day, almost seven decades after Kristallnacht, human rights experts from around the world gathered in a reconstructed synagogue in Berlin's Mitte district to discuss a resurgence of anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance. The group observed that the most numerous attacks on Jews and other minorities are now coming in the form of Internet hate speech broadcast worldwide.
And although most of it is not government-sanctioned (with the exception of Iran), the increasing presence of verbal and graphic attacks on Jews and other minorities is serious, and dangerous. While not necessarily visible to passers-by in the way that broken glass on the pavement was in 1938, the hate is widespread if one looks for it.
Organized hate groups and individuals alike are using all the tools available on the Internet to celebrate intolerance, to distort historical facts about the Holocaust, to threaten minorities and, most disturbingly, to recruit and indoctrinate young people to their hateful viewpoint. The haters find expression in chat rooms, on Web sites and in audio files.
And now, with the recent advent of so-called Web 2.0 technologies, there is a proliferation of social networking homepages and uploaded "user-generated" videos designed to foster hatred and violence towards Jews and other minorities. Recycled Nazi propaganda films and modern rock music with hate-filled lyrics are sharing space on the Internet.
There even are online games that celebrate the killing of minorities.
And, of course, radical Islam is using the Internet to spread condemnation of Jews (and by association, because of its support of Israel) the United States. A virtual Jihad is underway.
Just as the Holocaust started with the hate-filled words of Nazis, hate crimes also often follow hate speech. When the hard drives of criminals who have committed violence against minorities are searched, links to derogatory Internet sites are often found.
The group meeting in Berlin heard from experts on ways to attack online hate-filled content. Some advocated using legal restrictions, such as those existing in Germany and elsewhere, to ban certain speech - such as Nazi propaganda - as a matter of law and to arrest those who distribute it. But the limitations of the law in the borderless world of the Internet are obvious; even if content is illegal in one country, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permits all but a very limited category of speech. Content taken down in German one day can be up on the Internet the very next day, hosted in the United States.
Symbolic prosecutions of online hate-mongers to demonstrate a government's outrage may be nothing more than that - symbolic - given modern Internet realities.
Others suggested that the Internet industry should play a greater role in enforcing the Terms of Use that typically accompany the mainstream Internet services and that prohibit intolerant speech and harassing content. Google (and its YouTube service) as well as operators of social networking sites were criticized for not responding as quickly to complaints about hate speech as they do to objections to nudity. Most of the experts agreed that the Internet industry has not taken the issue of online hate speech very seriously.
Likewise, with few exceptions, governments have not made fighting online hate a priority. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe held a conference in 2004 focused on online anti-Semitism and xenophobia, adopting a series of high-minded resolutions, most of which have gathered dust on the shelf, with little government action.
A notable exception is Germany, which finances the Jugendschutz organization to investigate and counter online hate speech with education.
Indeed, the assembled experts in Berlin concluded at the recent meeting that education is perhaps the most powerful weapon against the pernicious effects of online hate. It was the consensus that young people can be taught to filter the messages of hate that they see online and learn the truth about the historical distortions and stereotypes that characterize hate sites.
The Berlin meeting ended with a call for governments and the Internet industry to work with NGOs to expand the education that will help lessen the impact of the virtual Kristallnacht that is occurring online.
Some left the Berlin meeting to travel to Israel for a similar discussion about Internet hate speech there. At the entrance to Terminal C at Schoenfeld Airport where Israel's El Al airline operates, there was an armored tank and soldiers with machine guns to protect the airline and its passengers. Online, the evidence of a threat to Jews is perhaps less visible, but it is just as real.
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
