Banish the Cyber-Bigots?

your illogical silliness is incomprehensible.

Not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. You want your government to intervene in the private affairs of its citizens so that those who claim to be ignored because they are personally unpopular can now force others to hear them? This is one of the more idiotic and laughable contentions you have made here, which is saying quite a lot.

Tags: Demented Misogynist, Internet, Whimpering Troll, Wasted Oxygen, Shorteyes Cries

Klein Drowns in the Ethical Shallows
On Friday, Post blogger Ezra Klein took a short break from Barack Obama’s unpaid policy staff to respond to my last column and dismiss the importance of bigotry and hatred on the Internet. “That doesn’t describe the Internet I know,” he claims, “but the Internet is big, and Gerson might visit parts I miss.”

Sometimes innocence, however, is merely ignorance. You don’t need to trawl the seedier portions of the Internet to be familiar with a growing literature on Internet hate. An education on this topic might include the Simon Wiesenthal Center report, “Facebook, YouTube +: How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate.” Or the Anti-Defamation League’s recent conference, “The Internet Is Making Anti-Semitism Socially Acceptable.” Or the ADL’s report on how mainstream Web sites were flooded with anti-Semitism in the wake of the Madoff scandal. Or a variety of resources on the role of the Internet in promoting Middle Eastern anti-Semitism and the revival of racist ideology in Germany.

In preparing my Friday column, I found an interview with David Goldman by the Southern Poverty Law Center particularly interesting. After monitoring Internet hate sites for many years, Goldman has concluded that the main dangers are now found in chat rooms, comment boxes and email. “In chat rooms,” he says, “which are populated mainly by young people, you can swear and use racial epithets with a certain amount of ease, and that helps to support your own stereotypes and racial bigotry. Unlike hate sites, these chat rooms create a sense of immediacy and community.”

These are the type of sources one encounters while doing extensive research for a column. A blogged response to a column, of course, is free from such archaic, old-media constraints.


One part of Klein’s post is particularly illuminating. He finds it amusing to belittle the threat of a hypothetical someone he calls “jewhater429, the 97th entrant in a comment thread” -- just a few months after an Internet-based Jew hater entered the Holocaust Museum with a gun and killed an African-American guard. Some people have the oddest sense of humor.

The real threat, according to Klein, is not from Jew haters, Holocaust deniers or white supremacists. It is from conservatives who listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. And why? Because Limbaugh interferes more directly with Klein's political agenda. The seriousness of this moral argument is…undetectable. It is a case study in how an excess of ideology can affect the optic nerve -- leading to complete moral blindness.

I have little patience for the hyper-partisan rants of Glenn Beck or Arianna Huffington. But they are not Nazis because I disagree with them. Interestingly, Beck, Huffington and Klein seem comfortable with this same, lazy tactic -- the reductio ad Hitlerum. They are full partners in the same calumny.

This approach is both uncivil and dangerous. We do not avoid comparing our opponents to Nazis merely out of politeness. We reserve this charge for actual racists, for actual incitement to violence, for actual evil, so that the accusation is not diluted and powerless when it is most needed. Those, like Klein, who trivialize evil are actually making its advance more likely. Their cynicism and ideological manias are the allies of genuine bigotry, because they blur its distinctive shape and cover its distinctive smell.

On this topic, Klein wades into the ethical shallows and manages to drown. In the future, it might be less embarrassing to avoid the water entirely

I said that private owners need to voluntary set up places for debate, free speech, to include what is called hate speech or bigoted speech.

“In the course of a few years," writes Michael Gerson, "a fringe party was able to define a national community by scapegoating internal enemies; elevate a single, messianic leader; and keep the public docile with hatred while the state committed unprecedented crimes. The adaptive use of new technology was central to this achievement."

That party? The Nazis. That technology? Talk radio. But Gerson's subject is not talk radio or the Nazis, but the vast expanses of the Internet. "User-driven content on the Internet often consists of bullying, conspiracy theories and racial prejudice," writes Gerson, which is interesting, as I thought it consisted of porn and teenagers holding party cups. "The absolute freedom of the medium paradoxically encourages authoritarian impulses to intimidate and silence others," he continues. "The least responsible contributors see their darkest tendencies legitimated and reinforced, while serious voices are driven away by the general ugliness."

That doesn't describe the Internet I know (unless, for some reason, you don't think Autotune the News is a serious voice), but the Internet is big, and Gerson might visit parts I miss. "The exploitation of technology by hatred will never be eliminated," he concludes. "But hatred must be confined to the fringes of our culture -- as the hatred of other times should have been."

What's striking is that this doesn't really describe the Internet. Hateful voices remain on the fringe. And they stay on the fringe. The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe. Controlling a Web site or a blogspot domain is not like controlling a radio station or a television network.

Gerson's examples, in fact, come from comment threads, which virtually disproves his thesis. But there is a major medium where the hateful voices sit firmly in control of the content, and it's the same medium that begins Gerson's remarks: talk radio. And, to a lesser extent, cable news. That's where society's most hateful conspiracy theories sit and fester, where its most explosive lies are recounted and amplified, where its least responsible elites have control of the means of production. I don't worry about jewhater429, the 97th entrant in a comment thread. I worry about Beck and Limbaugh and Savage

What's striking is that this doesn't really describe the Internet. Hateful voices remain on the fringe. And they stay on the fringe. The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe. Controlling a Web site or a blogspot domain is not like controlling a radio station or a television network.

Gerson's examples, in fact, come from comment threads, which virtually disproves his thesis. But there is a major medium where the hateful voices sit firmly in control of the content, and it's the same medium that begins Gerson's remarks: talk radio. And, to a lesser extent, cable news.

That last post is hilarious. It basically dismisses your thesis

The result of continuing to be unwilling to face reality, and talk honestly about reality, will be revolution.

The law must be reformed, the law is in error.

you militant anti free speech types trying to shout down all other views

Now they’re setting their sights on the United States. “We have established an OIC Group in Washington D.C.,” Ihsanoglu explained, “with the aim of playing a more active role in engaging American policy makers.” This will involve agitating for laws restricting free speech: “And in confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film ‘Fitna,’” (which showed Muslims acting on violent passages in the Qur’an), Ihsanoglu continued, “we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” Ihsanoglu says it’s already working: “As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.”

In other words, “irresponsible” speech -- which is defined as speech he disagrees with -- should be banned.

Ihsanoglu is right that such a “message” has found a receptive audience, even in the West. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey published in mid-June found that while 88% of Americans support the right to free speech (only 88%?), only 53% oppose banning “hate speech.” Significantly, however, only 11% support bans on “hate speech” when they’re reminded that “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder, and that the government would be deciding what constitutes hate speech and what doesn’t. That is, the government, or the OIC making the government dance to its tune.

“Hate speech” is also a tool to prevent the dissemination of what have more of a claim to be called “inconvenient truths” than anything Al Gore has ever been involved with. Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada right now for telling the truth. The renowned Canadian journalist and politician Peter Worthington commented acidly about the Steyn proceedings: “Truth is no defence before a Human Rights tribunal. Steyn’s accuracy is not at issue, just his opinions. Under hate legislation, opinions are punishable if they offend a particular group. If you think about it, this is an abomination.”

hawkeye10 wrote:

you militant anti free speech types trying to shout down all other views

O irony!

It is just hilarious to see this joker portraying himself in the heroic mold. Yeah, right . . . all of us wanna stand shoulder to shoulder with the Rapist Boy.