Sunday, May 27, 2018

Keeping One of Hitler’s Promises



Seems insane to be writing that something Hitler said has value. The historic value in the totality of what he said is about how deep the darkness of humanity can actually become and how seductive it can be. The single thing Hitler said that has true value ultimately has nothing to do with what he meant. Delusional rantings often work that way. 

The promise of a Thousand Year Reich (Thousand Year Realm, Kingdom) was uplifting to his followers and chilling to his enemies. It was Hitler’s attempt to usurp the legacy and legitimacy of the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806 AD) which has been called “The First Realm” or First Reich.   Now, mere decades after Hitler's promise of the Thousand Year Reich has been destroyed, we are faced with the sad reality that most of the world has forgotten how close we came to seeing that promise fulfilled. And so the problem – to ultimately defeat Hitler’s Reich and insure its like never returns, we must keep the truth, the reality, the nightmare alive - however long it is necessary.

According to an April article in the New York Times, over 40% of adults in the U.S. could not identify the significance of Auschwitz. In 70 years we have lost major pieces of important, tragic, instructive history.

 For a generation children have learned about Nazis from The Sound of Music. Bad Nazis, not the murderous, genocidal reality; so Nazis become less true to fact. Recently a generation has learned about Nazis form video games, where Nazis are just like any other game enemy; less real.  To the current generation, the historic videos on YouTube have no more gravity than cat videos. They are not seriously taught that Hitler drove the pageantry and adulation they see into horror.

Jews are often criticized for not "getting over" the Holocaust. History is not meant  to be gotten over. It is a learning tool, a way to benefit from our successes and our failures. Andersonville, Guernica, Ottoman genocides against the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and the treatment of Native Americans are all defining moments in their own time, but have historic value beyond their era. The difficulty in facing the facts of all those events is testimony to how important they are. The Holocaust stands out, but does not stand alone.

It is not hard to understand how some people cannot get their heads around these things. The rational mind wants to reject the implications of the horror unleashed during World War 2 by the Nazis.  In the age of computer generated images though, they let themselves believe these are just images, somehow other, unreal or manipulated.

My astoundingly unfair obligation is fostering this history into the future in whatever way I can.  If it takes a thousand year reich of teaching and memory, so be it. If it takes a  thousand years of nightmares for future generations, better that than anyone, anywhere actually living through such things again. 


Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Would You Stop Hate Online If You Could?




If you could stop most of the hate on the web, why wouldn't you? I know who you can ask.

Most hate online does not start on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, but that is where it finds its legs. I am not just talking about sexism, racism, ableism or other hates, but instead the ability to casually create and stigmatize any "other".

If the major platforms had put as much effort into user safety as they did into revenue streams, things might be very different.

I have seen the worst of online hate over the last decade in the Western World. It's my job. The calls for an uprising against the enemies of "civilization" (e.g. the world of white European descent) is nothing new. That a critical rhetorical mass has been reached which emboldens such things to action, that is new. It was also inevitable.

The platforms were well aware of the phenomenon of hate speech, but elected to let it remain in order to spur dynamic and heated exchanges on their services. Safety of users was not totally disregarded, but there was a gamble. All of us now know that bet was a bad one. Hate won.

The companies chose to err on the side of allowing more instead of  action that might over limit content. Hateful protagonists were quick to exploit the opportunity. Normalizing hate, camouflaging hate and encouraging hate became the order of the day.  That sliver of hate, allowed by the platforms in an earnest attempt to accommodate free speech,  was used to wedge open  the internet for seeds of  malicious content that are now a vast root network of evil.

Many argue that good and creative content would have suffered from more stringent policies. There is no question that innocent content might have been removed under such a policy. However, now that we are suffering seemingly endless online abuse, more content, innocent and otherwise, is being removed. When good content is removed people appeal to the platform. That's what they do now, that is what they would have had to do 10 years ago. The companies bought time, not progress.

It can also be said that the progress we have seen in controlling online hate, advance algorithms, fledgling A.I.s and armies of moderators, could have begun long before now. Improving the internet environment sooner was possible. In the time we waited, we lost ground to hate and incivility.

If you could stop hate online, why wouldn't you? I don't know. 

Thinking Faster than the Speed of Hate

  Jonathan Vick, Acting Deputy Director, International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH)  Why can’t the internet get ahead of hate? Why h...