Infecting Society with Hate Speech Exposure

Viral Hate Groups: Infecting Society with Hate Speech Exposure

 

On March 15, 2019, the peace of the gathered faithful at Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand was shattered by violence (“Christchurch”). A man entered the two mosques armed with more than just the five guns he would use to murder fifty-one people; he was also carried a cell phone, with which he would live-stream his vicious attack on Facebook. The videos were later uploaded to an anonymous message board, 8chan, in hopes of receiving accolades and assistance from the other members. His request was simple: “Please do your part by spreading my message” (qtd. in Perrigo). The 8chan community responded with alacrity. By the next day, over 1.5 million copies of the video had been shared on Facebook and YouTube (Perrigo). The killer’s seventy-four page “manifesto” was also shared widely across social media. The speed with which the killer’s message spread demonstrates both the power and size of the hate community online as well as the absence of barriers to their spread. In the years leading up to this attack, the suspect was a regular poster on anonymous message boards filled with racist, hateful posts. It’s clear that social media and message boards played a vital role in incubating and encouraging him in his intolerance through his participation and exposure to hate speech.

 

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Social media has become an integral part of many lives and, regardless of intentions, the

 

content shapes worldviews. As such, it is vital that social media be a space free from derogatory,

 

biased hate speech and those that seek to use hate speech to recruit others to their cause. In the

 

absence of consistent government regulation, it falls to the platforms themselves to develop their

 

own policies for monitoring and eliminating hate speech. The European Commission established

 

a code of conduct for social media in 2016 (Shulze). Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft

 

have all voluntarily participated since its inception “in an effort to remove racist and xenophobic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1. Bar Graph showing percentage of hate speech removed by social media platforms Shulze, Elizabeth. “EU says Facebook, Google, and Twitter are getting faster at removing hate speech online.” CNBC, 4 Feb. 2019. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/facebook-google-and-twitter-are-getting-faster-at-removing-hate-speech-online-eu-finds–.html Accessed 18 Jun. 2019

 

content from their platforms” (Shulze). The graph in Figure 1 shows that while there has been

 

general improvement in the removal of hate speech, there remains a great deal to be done. The

 

situation on Twitter is particularly troubling in that over half of the hate speech posted is not

 

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removed. The fact that a significant amount of hate speech remains on mainstream social media sites despite their removal efforts means that all users are in danger of encountering hate speech shared or interacted with by their friends. The problem is even larger on anonymous message boards such as 8chan and Gab. These message boards proclaim themselves as bastions of free speech and resist all forms of monitoring and redaction, making them a virtual petri dish in which hate groups fester among the abundant hate speech. Sites like 8chan and Gab are frequented by those more likely to be recruited in that they are already prone to objection to political correctness and restraint. The Right Stuff, an alt-right, white nationalist blog, encourages posting of their inflammatory views in mainstream comment sections in order to convince readers of the legitimacy of their ideology (Hawley 71). The failure of the United States government to regulate content on the internet has allowed hate groups to use social media as a means of spreading their message through vitriolic hate speech. The repercussions of the propagation of hate speech by extremist groups online can be seen in hate crimes around the world and increasing levels of intolerance for differences. Equality for minorities and the protection of young, impressionable minds are being sacrificed in the name of “free speech.” The government must join technology sector leaders in condemning, monitoring, and eliminating the spread of violent, extremist ideologies through hate speech.

 

The presence of hate speech on social media and message boards serves two purposes: expression of extremist ideologies and an attempt to recruit others, particularly young people, to extremist causes. A team of psychologists from the University of Sydney and Macquarie University sought to explore the nature of hate group recruitment of young people online. In their study, they extrapolated findings from the data collected by Elissa Lee and Laura Leets of Stanford University regarding the effectiveness of narrative storytelling by hate groups. Lennings

 

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et al. posit that by allowing for the debate of presented material, the effectiveness of both the material itself and the debate are augmented (3). This implies that hate speech on social media and message boards is more effective at converting its observers than that which might be heard in public or read in printed materials. Hate speech online is a more urgent problem than its real-world counterpart in that its power is magnified by the interactivity engendered by social media and message boards.

Hate speech has a psychological impact on all casual viewers. A team of psychologists at the University of Warsaw studied the effect exposure to hate speech has on the viewer’s perception of both the offensiveness of hate speech and the minority towards which it was directed. They found that “frequent exposure to hate speech would decrease the perception of hate speech harmfulness and that such exposure would subsequently lead to increased outgroup prejudice” (Soral et al. 2). They also found that the decreased offensiveness of hate speech and increase in prejudice was evident in an exposure as short as six minutes of reading comments (Soral et al. 6). The ubiquity of hate speech on social media serves to covertly desensitize those that encounter it to the vileness of the ideologies from which it springs. As more and more people are desensitized to the power of hate speech and the humanity of its victims, hate groups across the internet grow in both number and membership. An ever-increasing number of acolytes are then taking to social media to spread their message through their own hate speech, thus beginning the cycle anew. This cycle of intolerance fractures our society into splinter groups only concerned with promoting the interests of their own group, often at the expense of others. It generates tension that has grave consequences for minority groups.

 

The aftermath of the increasing presence of hate speech online can be seen in violence carried out around the world. Psychologists Daniel Effron and Eric Knowles studied prejudice in

 

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entitative groups and discovered that members of a group that share similarities and ideals are more likely to express prejudice towards those not belonging to the group (15). Thus, belonging to a hate group rationalizes the expression of prejudice towards others in the eyes of their members because they are defending the interests of a cohesive group, not themselves as

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig. 2. Anti-Regufee Posts and Incidents Over Time

 

Müller, Karsten and Schwarz, Carlo. “Fanning the Flames of Hate: Social Media and Hate Crime.” 30 Nov. 2018 . https://ssrn.com/abstract=3082972. Accessed 18 Jun. 2019

 

individuals. In the case of hate groups, that expression is all too often done through violence. Following the growth of a social media presence of a German right-wing party with anti-refugee beliefs, Karsten Müller of Princeton University and Carlo Schwarz of the University of Warwick sought to discover if there was a correlation between the party’s rhetoric on social media and violence against refugees. Figure 2 shows the nearly direct correlation between the number of anti-refugee posts on Facebook and the number of anti-refugee incidents.

 

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The study also found that anti-refugee posts had a stronger correlation with incidents in areas with higher social media use (Müller and Schwarz 22). Taking these two studies together, it is demonstrated that members of hate groups are more likely to express their views and that those statements, in turn, lead to an increase in crimes against the targeted groups. The commission of these crimes serves to further cement the bonds of the group, creating even more rationalization and expression of their views. The presence of hate speech online is part of a self-perpetuating cycle of developing, expressing, and acting upon intolerant ideologies.

The effort to eliminate hate speech from social media platforms and anonymous message boards encounters great difficulty due to the issue of free speech. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits the government from passing any law that “[abridges] the freedom of speech […] or the right of the people to peaceably assemble.” Thus, any attempt to curtail the spread of hate speech and extremist ideologies online is met with the argument that these activities are protected by the first amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The case of Brandenburg v Ohio involved a member of the Ku Klux Klan being convicted of advocating violence after a hate speech laden address that included implied threats to minorities. In the Supreme Court ruling, the per curium opinion established the “Brandenburg Test,” which states that the government may not “forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite such action” (395). This precedent means that only hate speech that poses an imminent threat that is likely to occur can be prohibited. Conversely, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations after World War II, specifically allows for the proscription of freedom of expression in cases where there is “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or

 

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violence” (Todorova 2). Elena Todorova, Professor of Political Science and Diplomacy at FON University, believes that hate speech presents a “paradox of tolerance” and goes on to explain: “an absolute tolerance may lead to tolerance of ideas promoting intolerance, and the latter could then destroy tolerance” (Todorova 4). Through its promotion of intolerance towards minorities, hate speech undermines the principle of equality and access that inspired the freedom of expression. The online hate speech of extremist groups undermines that principle even further because it is more far-reaching, effective, and dangerous than the fliers, books, and speeches that came before it.

The presence of hate speech on social media and messages boards is serving to desensitize those who come across it to its seriousness and the common humanity of minorities. Recruitment to extremist groups is facilitated by this desensitization, which in turn leads to more hate group members and even more hate speech online. The culmination of desensitization to hate speech and the swelling ranks of hate groups is violence carried out against racial and religious minorities in the name of extremist ideologies. If hate speech is allowed to proliferate uninhibited, young minds will continue to be polluted by extremist ideologies and hate crimes will continue to rise unabated. The value of free speech to facilitate open communication and debate must be balanced with the obligation to protect disenfranchised segments of the population from persecution and violence by extremist groups.