Klanwatch is monitoring the cyberspace traffic of more than
400 extremist organizations and individuals in a move to gauge the quantity and tenor of racist and anti-government propaganda available to millions of Americans with access to the Internet. In a program started
in April, Klanwatch computer expert Brian Youngblood has downloaded hundreds of pages of World Wide Web sites created by Patriot groups, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klansmen and other white supremacists.Youngblood
says many groups merely publish materials attacking government policies and actions. But more radical groups offer on-line courses in all kinds of weaponry, urging preparation for armed battle with the dark forces
of the New World Order which they see as a conspiratorial group secretly preparing for world takeover. Other groups are explicitly racist. Using racial slurs and pictures, they post articles that purport to
show the inferiority of nonwhites and often extol Nazi propaganda. Virtually all of the groups seek to recruit through cyberspace.
The popularity of the Internet, Youngblood points out, contributes to an
alarming trend. Where poorly financed extremists once were limited to fliers and newsletters, they now enjoy inexpensive access to a potentially massive cyberspace audience.
"It's become incredibly easy for
extremist groups to use the Internet," he says. "For $20.00 a month, they get unlimited access to the Internet and to individuals' e-mail addresses. Also, many of them are now using encryption techniques
that allow them to send highly secret messages back and forth."
Like on-line pornography, this often virulent material is easily accessible to children. And that raises issues of how to protect youngsters from
inappropriate material while respecting the freedom of the Internet environment and of Constitutionally protected speech. In a precedent-setting case last year, federal prosecutors indicted a former student at the
University of California at Irvine after he allegedly sent out a computer message threatening to "hunt down and kill" Asians on campus. The case, which has still not come to trial, was the first filed by
the government seeking to prosecute hate speech in cyberspace.
Other countries have stricter controls. In Germany, the government restricts use of the Internet by neo-Nazi groups (Nazi propaganda has been illegal
there since the was. But in the United States, any organization, even those who define themselves as hate groups, can sign on with any of dozens of commercial firms supplying Internet access for a fee.
Klanwatch's Youngblood says he expects increasing numbers of hate groups to use the Internet to post propaganda and to communicate with individuals via electronic mail. Already, he has built files on a large range
of such groups. Some examples:
The neo-Nazi group known as Alpha publishes 16 chapters Of Hitler's autobiographical Mein Kampf
on its Website. Alpha also posts anti-Semitic and racist articles, jokes and ads for groups organizing "White Power" gatherings. Recently it asked for help finding a game called "Concentration Camp," whose object is to imprison as many Jews as possible.
The National Alliance, one of America's leading neo-Nazi groups, uses its Website to post German language material Germans, legally prohibited from printing Nazi propaganda in their own country, are afforded easy
access to it through the World Wide Web.
The Third Constitutional Congress, a militia umbrella organization, offers on-line seminars in intelligence gathering, weaponry, field operations and tactics. The congress portrays itself as a nonviolent
constitutionalist group. But in July, seven of its delegates were arrested in an alleged plot to assault U.S. military bases on Independence Day.
Other groups on the Web include the National Socialist German Workers Party; the long-time white power group known as Stormfront; dozens of Ku Klux Klan splinter groups; the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, based in Hayden
Lake, Idaho; and militias, including the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia, and common-law advocates.
E-mail messages reflect both admiration and repulsion: In a message to Alpha, a 19-year-old related
how he tried to organize a Nazi group when he was 12 years old and is now building a "clean-cut Aryan youth group" to work "underground and anonymous[ly] to spread the word." A 14-year-old asked a
white supremacist group for on-line literature because his parents had forbidden him to order it by mail. Others requested white supremacist stickers and imitation Third Reich SS uniforms.
But a note to one Klan
chapter from a 14-year-old girl was different. "You make me ashamed of my own race," she said. Another message to a white supremacist group read, "If everyone could work together...to fight crime (whether
white or black), to fight for economic issues (start boycotting those damn companies that exploit Third World countries), to work to rebuild die slums, this world would be a better place."
Recently, some commercial
providers of Internet service have developed policies aimed at rooting out offensive groups. But, Youngblood says, such "No Hate" policies are difficult to enforce because of free-speech concerns and the ability
of extremist organizations, rejected by one on-line service, to shift to any of dozens of others.
"The problem of hate speech on the Internet is a difficult one, and I don't expect to see it go away any time soon,"
Youngblood says. "That's why KIanwatch feels it's so important to monitor these activities. We need to know what's happening in cyberspace."
For more information on Klanwatch, contact Mark Potok at (334)
264-0286, ext. 303.
