arts & entertainment
The Internet's Dark Side
In a new book, ADL's Abraham Foxman analyzes
the intersection of online hate and free speech.
(00ett
Alina Dain Sharon
JNS.org
A
braham H. Foxman, national
director of the Anti-Defamation
League, recently released a new
book, Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread
on the Internet, co-written with attorney
Christopher Wolf, a pioneer in Internet
law.
The book discusses how racists and
anti-Semites are using the Internet to dis-
seminate their hateful information and
poses tough questions about the respon-
sibility of the public to fight against this
phenomenon in the U.S., whose laws
highly protect free speech.
Foxman gave the following exclusive
interview to JNS.org about the book:
Q: Why did you decide to write about
this topic now?
A: In the last 10 years, we've seen a
communication revolution in terms of
the Internet changing the way we talk to
each other. It's had magnificent impact,
but it also has provided a super highway
for communicating hate. That's why we
decided to do a book — to analyze this
and to alert people out there that, yes,
it's a wonderful addition to the way we
communicate, but be aware that it's also a
very serious, threatening vehicle for big-
ots, racists and anti-Semites.
Q: Has hate speech online been iden-
tified and appropriately defined?
A: We live in the United States, where
the First Amendment and freedom of
expression is of a high social, democratic
and moral value. But now we're finding
a situation where this new freedom is
destroying privacy, even destroying civil-
ity, so at what point does it cross the line?
Look at the issue of bullying. Bullying
is an expression of free speech, if you
will, in the school yard, on the sports
field, [but] ... bullying is bigotry. [It is],
"I don't like you because you're tall:' [or]
"I don't like you because you're Jewish."
We've lived with it and almost tolerated it
for many years.
Now comes the Internet, and bullying
becomes cyber-bullying, and now we're
seeing kids killing themselves. It is one
thing to manage bullying in a school
yard, and it's quite another if you're being
projected globally in this manner.
In the book we're trying to say that first
and foremost we need to better under-
52
September 26 • 2013
JN
441gW
4,
4
,
try, more than what happens globally, is
that there are consequences for being a
bigot.
Mel Gibson at one point in his life
was the No. 1 celebrity in this country.
He was exposed to be a bigot and paid a
price. It wasn't the laws that were used
against him; it was social ostracizing. I
think in terms of the Internet, that really
is our first line of defense.
Q: You discuss the fact that websites
Abraham Foxman
stand [Internet hate's] impact and take
responsibility for it. A lot of people have
responsibility: parents, schools and, prob-
ably more so, the providers, the people
who disseminate this stuff.
Hopefully the book will open up a
vibrant debate as to where respon-
sibility lies before we
rush to legislation or
litigation.
Q: How does
the U.S. treat hate
speech differently
from other countries?
A: The U.S. is
unique in terms of our
Constitution and First
Amendment. I don't
think there's any country
in the world that has
such a broad, encompass-
ing protection of freedom
of speech.
In Europe, there are
laws all over the place,
especially after the Second
World War, against hate speech. There
are laws against Holocaust denial, laws
against racial epithets, etc.
It creates a problem because if you can-
not buy Mein Kampf, which is a hateful
book, in Germany, you can order it on the
Internet from a U.S. website. Ironically,
while they have laws against hatred and
we do not, the level of intolerance in
Europe is much higher.
Our constitution says, "You have a right
to be a bigot," but also it says, "You need
to take responsibility for bigotry:'
Therefore, what happens in our coun-
run by extremists often are ranked
among the leading search results for
a topic on Google, such as Jewwatch.
com for the search "Jew." Has ADL ever
tried to take up this issue, and what has
been the response or result?
A: What we found is that bigots oper-
ate 24-7. They're out there all the time
sending their messages of hate or defa-
mation, and due to this [search engine]
algorithm process, when you press the
[search] button on "Jew," first you're
going to get anti-Jew [content]
because the "Jew" word
is being bombarded
by bigots rather than
being embraced by
friends and loving
people. You have
the same thing with
Holocaust denial.
The Google and
Yahoo people's first
answer [is], "Why
don't you tell your
community to
bombard Google
with good stuff?"
and, in fact, about
two years ago
we did that. The
Jewish commu-
nity sent out word
to "go out there and bombard with 'I love
Jews' and nice stuff about Jews:'
It worked, but it's crazy. You can't
expect to wake up in the morning, and
your job becomes to defend the Jewish
people, the African-American people, the
Hispanic people. So far, what happens
is that when there are egregious abuses,
I would say seven out of 10 times, the
major companies that run these websites
do respond and do remove "the content:'
But there is another problem: That stuff
never dies on the Internet. You can take
it off, but it finds its way back, and it
always exists somewhere in the strato-
sphere.
Q: What can regular Internet users
do to mitigate the prevalence of anti-
Jewish material?
A: They should be alert to it, complain
to us [at ADL], to the providers, share
with the legislators. First of all, it's aware-
ness. No. 2 is to use the [online] vehicle
for good speech. We can also ask the pro-
viders to put disclaimers on some of the
stuff out there.
A few months ago, a [Facebook page]
appeared about the "Third Intifada." The
providers said, "This is like a conversa-
tion; it's freedom of speech:' and we said
to them, "Intifada is not a conversation
piece; it's a call for violence, and therefore
you should not permit it:'
We complained to Facebook, Facebook
analyzed it and came back to us saying,
"You're right:' and they removed it.
Q: What are some unusual examples
of online hate, or examples that people
might easily recognize?
A: There are some websites — one
called Martin Luther King Jr. — that
masquerade [as harmless websites].
Innocently, you may want to find out
what Martin Luther King said, what he
was about, and you log on and all of a
sudden, you realize — or you may not
realize — that it's a white supremacist
website.
What many of the hate organizations
did early on was to purchase and protect
website domains. Many people in the
beginning of the Internet weren't aware of
the value of this. If you buy a domain for
the Holocaust Institute, it could become
anything, but it becomes Holocaust
denial.
You have to be aware. Every great inven-
tion in our history had two sides to it.
There also is a dark side, and we need to
understand it. That's basically what [my
new] book says.
❑
Abraham Foxman will be part of
the ADL Centennial Gala honoring
Mark Reuss, Vice President, GM and
President, GM North America, from
6-9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, at the GM
Heritage Center in Sterling Heights.
Details and tickets: (248) 353-7553;
www.adl.org/michigan.