| Hateland -
Articles |
18/01/02
- Opinion - A new highway for old hatreds
By Medb
The Irish Times
Ruane Resistance Records of West Virginia, USA, bill themselves
as "the soundtrack for white revolution". White
power is where they're at. "Almost heaven, West Virginia,
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River," John Denver
sang. "Life is older there, older than the trees,
(take me home, country roads)."
One day in virtual paradise, Suzanne "Flynn",
a virtual executive with the company, lent her name to
a website designed to make Ireland a nation once again.
With A.L. "Byrne" of Store Street, London, she
put her moniker on to a national socialist site that urges
Irish citizens to "say no to a black Ireland",
or any other colour - except white.
The site is still up. Its original, unwelcome, links to
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael websites were stripped
away late last year, as were links to the Defence Forces
and the FCA that had been billed via a signpost suggesting
opportunities for practical military and weapons training.
"I have removed my page because it was being misused
by a bunch of racists \ try to spread lies about Ireland,"
says Eanna, a webmaster the site abused. "No matter
what your race or religion you are welcome in Ireland.
What we do not want in Ireland is racists or bigots: the
Irish Defence Forces, Permanent or Reserve, do not allow
these racists to enlist."
Racism has risen almost as fast as Internet technology
over the last decade. Every new byte in cyberspace spawns
equal opportunities for speech that is banned on land.
But it's different on-line. Rules and regulations generated
after years of racial and intra-ethnic conflict are shorn
away as though the world never experienced Nazism, Pol
Pot-ism or the evils of apartheid.
It's a new highway for old hatreds on a global scale.
"Flynn" and "Byrne" are not contactable.
Numbers ring engaged or don't exist. E-mail inquiries
to their nsrus site (national socialists are us) yield
a polite automatic reply saying "thank you for your
input".
Yet the site publishes voices that claim to be authentic
Irish stock - or "folk" (volk) as they put it.
The voices speak in words stolen from wider debate. "At
present there is a moral inertia dominating the Irish
Political scene," says an editorial suspicious of
pregnant immigrants and critical of granting citizenship
to babies born in the Irish Republic of non-Irish parents.
"If racially and culturally British 'settlers' were
and are percieved \ as a threat to the Irish Identity,
then what conclusions must one draw from the invasion
of Ireland by Nigerians and others?" Madness leaks
through. Crazy versions of evolutionary theory give the
game away that whoever is running this site is not the
full shilling, although they define themselves as pure
Euro stock.
Paranoid delusions from an "Irish mother" trying
to raise a family in multi-racial London can't but be
sad, as well as bad. Yet millions take them and their
like quite seriously. The number of hits recorded on such
sites is now running into hundreds of thousands annually.
And although the Irish site may be stupid - a racial stereotype
they need to fix? - the sites you get to from it are so
smart they could sound reasonable. These sites lie, of
course, again and again, the way the far right always
does. But the very way they misuse the work of established
scientists and writers - Dawkins, Nietzsche and so on
- gives them a credibility that might impress.
Attempts by police forces or Internet service providers
to close them down are transformed into defences of the
free speech principles that ground Western societies.
Critiques of their anti-social fundamentals are presented
as undemocratic conspiracies fuelled by hypocrisy.
The distinction between harmful and illegal sites is key
to the complex Internet debate, Internet advocate Colm
Reilly told me (contact me by email, see below, if you
want to learn more). You can access watchdogs to protect
your modem from, say, pornographic materials, which are
harmful, especially if children access them accidentally.
But vast differences in how illegality is approached or
understood make it more, not less, likely such sites will
multiply. After being dragged through French courts for
allowing Nazi memorabilia sales on line, Yahoo! asked
a US federal court to declare the French could not hold
it accountable for breaking French law because as an American
company it was subject to American law, chiefly the First
Amendment guarantee of free speech.
Was that what the founding fathers fought for? Different
attitudes to free speech between Europe and the US mean
George Bush's America has facilitated more hate speech
from neo-Nazi groups in a few years than Germany allowed
in four decades. And the post-September 11th dilemma is
whether the US will decide to regulate without abusing
individual rights.
Yet Yahoo! has effectively yielded to French law and public
opinion by banning Nazi memorabilia from its auction sites.
While governments argue with each other and providers
about the legal and ethical morasses, hateful and incitement-based
sites multiply like head lice. Rants pass for analysis,
and one man's truth is valued equally to another man's
lies.
In an age when judgment was never more difficult or more
necessary, the Internet debate strikes at the heart of
the liberal ethos. Free speech for all, no matter who
gets hurt?
mruane@irish-times.ie |
| Contact : bernard.omahoney@bernardomahoney.com |
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