Internet lynching grows in power and influence

A Westboro Baptist Church demonstration

The Internet has been one of the great ways of uniting people and events, allowing instant communication around the globe. Doctors can watch each other perform operations and even be guided by one another in the process. Businesses can sell goods. Consumers can buy almost anything. All of this and far more has been brought by the Internet, but even as it has been a force for good, it has allowed the baser influences of the world's cultures to thrive, recruit and influence and become virtually Internet lynch mobs.



The South Poverty Law Center documents the story of Hal Turner. He is described as a neo-Nazi who has used websites to harass, threat and intimidate and developed a following. He is said to have slandered those he considered enemies whom he suggested be killed. In 2007 he gave the names, addresses and phone numbers of the six African American teens in Jeena, Louisiana who were at the time facing punishment involving a fight at a high school. The fight followed an incident where white students had labeled a tree in the schoolyard as whites only and a place for lynching. Turner's website called for “Lynch the Jena 6!" He also wrote that Mexicans should be shot and killed as soon as they cross the border.



When judges in Brooklyn and Chicago were perceived to have upheld local handgun bans, Turner responded by posting photographs of the judges along with identifying information that included addresses and phone numbers and was said to have intimated they be killed. He was arrested, tried, found guilty for making illegal threats, and lost in the Circuit Court of Appeals in July of 2013.



Turner is one among many who has used the Internet to attract attention to topics that are controversial and negative. Others use it specifically to build a following and to recruit members to carry out certain objectives. In the United States, according to the SPLC, right wing militia groups have grown dramatically as a result of the Internet, while “aboveground” groups have diminished in numbers because of the violence people have found in them. But the underground has flourished.



There are also those in the Christian right who have offered terrorist conspiracies and hate speech. One of these is the Christian Identity Religion, with leadership like Robert McCurry, an identity minister. He was reported to have told a crowd of 500 people who came to hear him in a large conference in Missouri that “war rages in America. The enemy is not coming. The enemy is here,” then added later, “God has ordained that his people be a warring people---Lord of Hosts means Lord of a mass of people organized for war.”The Internet had allowed the growth of the Identity Religion so that it continues to flourish.



Social media facilitates communication among groups of individuals in a crisis. It also helps to organize groups all over the world. In fact in Egypt during the Arab Spring, social media allowed protesters to communicate and organize. The same has been true during other demonstrations or uprisings around the world. During times of disasters, social media has allowed victims to contact sources of assistance and for service organizations and community groups to extend outreach efforts to those in need.



But social media also abounds with hate speech. Some hate groups develop, grow and multiply in places like Facebook, Twitter and Google. Although these sites prohibit hate speech and threats, it is not uncommon to see inflammatory speech on comment threads and threats made as well. Right wing groups have grown by more than 66% during the period from 2000 to 2010, so they number in excess of 1000 in the United States.



Dr. Andre Oboler has dedicated great effort to combating online hate. He has fought against online hate against groups of minorities in Australia and established The Online Hate Prevention Institute. He says this about hate speech in social media: “Mainstream social media platforms facilitate hate speech when they don't stop it. Social media networks have a very powerful communication platform and if they allow it to be used for evil effectively, then that puts the public at risk. When it's out there in the public sphere it puts more people at risk to accepting the hate, and also deciding that the hate is just a normal part of the discussion. This leads them to being people who just stand there, accept it and don't say anything, and that sort of harmful behaviour becomes normalized.”



All sorts of media platforms on the Internet are used to spread the message of hate, according to The Leadership Conference. Anti-Semitic rhetoric and racist comments are made in the comment section of online media sites. It is there that readers themselves become radicalized, foster attention to hate, and promote following a violent form of response to those events and individuals who are the targets of hate. This includes not just those groups who argue about handguns, Second Amendment rights, and immigration, the popular topics that arouse hate speech. It also includes radical animal rights individuals and groups who use hate-filled rhetoric to rail against government groups, private organizations and individuals concerning their treatment of animals. The comment sections of online sites allow readers to vent their views in such harsh ways, that some newspapers have had to close down the comments sections.



Video-sharing sites like YouTube are also platforms for hate groups and individuals to offer their ideas and to recruit members.  This way members actually see and hear the information and thereby find some sort of intimacy and connection with those whose ideas seem attractive but who may not overtly reveal the violent nature of their messages.



Oboler's remarks about the development of hate groups on the Web offer us a summary of the risks of the Internet, as a power for good or evil. Just like the mobs of yesteryear, people gather in large groups and are led by opinions that may be wrong and hurtful. The problem becomes, as it has before, that some people join the harsh and negative style, even the hate itself, as others simply ignore it and say nothing. Both, as Oboler reminds us, will make acceptance of the hate behavior as normal and in that fashion will facilitate its growth.