Borderless Hate Counter Offensive

Jonathan Vick, International Network Against Cyber Hate, North American Representative 

Hate spreads. It has been famously and accurately described as a virus. Like polio, smallpox, or covid, responding to hate cannot be a local challenge if we expect to succeed. Without a borderless approach to stopping hate, as with any contagious disease, we cannot hope to stop its reemergence and resurgence.

Prior to World War 2 there was a thriving American Nazi Party. It was based on National Socialism, the ideology of Hitler’s  Nazi Party and Third Reich. National Socialism and Nazism was presumed to have been extinguished with the defeat of Germany in 1945. National Socialism  had been resoundingly declared anti-democratic, racist and authoritarian long before the downfall of the Nazi regime. But, in early 1959, a disgruntled and dishonorably discharged Navy Commander re-established the American Nazi Party.

Nazism had remained dormant for less than 15 years after its worldwide refutation.

Today the ideological descendants of National Socialism, the KKK, and an array of White Supremacist and Nationalist ideologies continue an ongoing cycle spread, retreat, hide, and re-emerge to reinfect the society.

Hate is terribly unlimited. It is an International enterprise. The Klu Klux Klan, which was strictly American organization, now has chapters in a several other countries. Combat 18, a British neo-Nazi group, is now a worldwide organization.  These hate groups follow the template that is well established by terrorist organizations for a system of building borderless networks and operations. They exchange information, propaganda, tactics, reading lists within their own group internationally, and with other hate groups. They cross borders, continents, and ideologies.  None of this is new information.

 There are woefully few international anti-hate organizations sufficiently equipped and ideologically   broad enough to currently approach this challenge. Many organizations are limited by geography, audience, community or founding philosophy. Until the anti-hate world can act as borderlessly as the world of haters, this battle may never be won.

Our first assessment of any threat is the immediacy, personal impact, and its proximity to us. This is, of course, rooted in our survival instinct. It is why, for most people, local news is often more popular than world or international events. Our minds even amplify our response to direct or local threats beyond that of more seemingly less significant threats. Even if those seemingly less significant threats ultimately have more dangerous implications.  

Best Screaming Pillows of 2020

 

If you do not need a good screaming pillow, you either have not been actively present, or you may need to consult a doctor. Regardless of where any individual stands socially, economically, or politically, I cannot imagine anyone who does not need a good scream about now. Perhaps many of us have needed a good scream for a few years.

Screaming pillows occupy a time-honored place in society. Likely they have existed as long as bedding has been a thing.

When choosing your screaming pillow you should consider several factors: comfort you desire, scream suppression qualities, your living situation, and nature of your screaming.

Traditional feather and foam pillows have long been the mainstay of screaming pillows. Modern material like memory foam and air-cell products have grown in screaming pillow popularity as their use has increased.

Each option has its advantages. Ultimately, it is a matter of the user’s preference.

Your best bet is to try several pillows around your house. You may find the perfect screaming pillow is right under your nose.

Another option is not using a screaming pillow at all. A full throated, blood curdling, primal howl to the sky, may be just the ticket.

 My ultimate recommendation is work out your options as soon as possible. In the coming days, weeks, and months, there will probably be a lot of need for therapeutic screaming.

Facebook’s Policy Banning Holocaust Denial. Progress Not Victory.

 Jonathan Vick, International Network Against Cyber Hate, North American Representative 

Facebook has announced it is banning Holocaust denial in an apparent extension of its ongoing policy adjustments regarding hate speech and anti-Semitism.  Not surprisingly, a number of organizations who have been lobbying Facebook, each for varying lengths of time, are claiming credit for influencing Facebook’s actions.   Every success in advancing action against hate speech and destructive distortions is progress against hate.  This victory however, lives within a saga of failures.

After years of lobbying, debating, arguing with internet platforms, it is gratifying to have seen many platforms take positions against civil corrosion. It is critical to remember that Facebook’s actions, like Twitter, YouTube, and others, are only the actions of individual platforms. These antihate policies are often characterized by critics as a capitulation to the existing power structures, government, media, banking, or culture. This unfairly throws into question what are genuine efforts to confront a thorny issue.

Ultimately the only commonality for platforms comes from people moving between them to change jobs.   The industry’s lack of a cohesive humanitarian-based baseline set of standards is unquestionably used to exploit the internet for hateful purposes.

Our intuition that the democracy of the internet would create a self-correcting system led us to seemingly reasonable, but ultimately false assumptions. Part of that fallacy is that the internet was the ultimate competitive environment. No need for oversight, regulation, or coordination of any sort. That did not work exactly as planned. The power of truth is real. But supporting the truth is not a spectator sport, and the internet is overwhelmingly a spectator environment. Equally, hate is not spectator pursuit, but it is obvious that a lot more people are willing to play at hate than at truth.

Rather than marshalling the armies of reviewers, acting in collaboration, or accepting some notion of responsibility, everyone’s big bet was technology. Filtering, machine learning and artificial intelligence would allow impartial review, flagging and removal of blatant hate content. Our aspirations for technology are still way ahead of reality. Technology only multiplies human efforts. It does not yet replace them. Massive resources have been diverted to the development of AI and machine learning while the problems and damage from cyber hate continued.

Just as each platform’s efforts are an isolated approach to the issue, so are the definitions, terminologies and measurements applied by each of them. We rarely agree what is defined as hate.  Each faction usually insist their specific interpretation of hate is correct.

There are endless volumes of incredibly useful,  intelligent, relevant documents, studies, and civil society declarations. These are often dismissed  out of political, economic, or business expediency. Often we have seen competing priorities reflecting only the priorities of the stakeholders in the room at any one moment in time.  When looking to take credit or serving a specific agenda is the motivating factor, the result only send a limited message and may only be a limited success.

Holocaust denial will not be disappearing from Facebook, or any platform, any time soon. Facebook correctly points out that it will take time to adjust its processes to achieve any progress in banning Holocaust denial.  Hate is highly adaptive. Chasing hate terminology, including Holocaust denial,  may be an endless job. The real-world impact of reducing anti-Semitism through Facebook’s change may well be marginal. Online hate, once posted, is quickly shared. Once that happens, even if its removal on one platform cannot stop the poisonous content, links and ideas from propagating. Facebook’s commitment and efforts to address Holocaust denial is largely a victory for Facebook.  

With each incomplete effort, even when each effort may indeed represent good progress, there is the reality that time, energy, resources, and hope are left on the table. Every time.

The Holocaust happened. Denying it does not improve our understanding of it. The same is true of racism, bias and xenophobia of all kinds. Until we accept that no group is innocent of hate, or safe from being hated, only then we can begin to scrape the rust off our ideals. Banning Holocaust denial on Facebook is a start, but only a start. Only one facet of much larger questions.

When Zombie Chickens Come Home to Roost

 

Mary Shelley warned us in Frankenstein.  Ralph Ellison told us in the Invisible Man. So often we create our own monsters, but we do not always realize it at the time.

Even before the exploitation of the internet, the toxic rhetoric of the 2016 election, the alarming rally in Charlottesville or a president who spreads more poison than policy,  the mold was cast for all that grief,  and more to come by letting seemingly small bad things find a home, and a place to accumulate.

This road was not paved or monsters created  by any one person, company, organization, or government. Equally, once the problem became obvious, it was not possible for any single entity to address the problem. Deftly, those seeking to undermine the credibility of facts presented to the public, quickly coordinated domestically, internationally, and across agendas to share their own best practices. They exploited the competitive nature of business practices in the internet industry and that anti-hate groups were in their own similarly competitive mode for sponsorship. As a result, early in the internet age, extremist communities became more coordinated and strategic while civil society and industry entities prevaricated.  The mindless and all-consuming zombie chickens of hate had infected each other, flown the coop, were on the loose, contagious, and breeding.

Zombie chickens would seem a ridiculous choice of allusion to illustrate a serious problem.  Chickens are not terribly threatening. Zombie chickens are practically laughable, but not if you were counting on trying to eat one or get any eggs.

Conspiracy theories and the people who spread them were likewise not taken seriously.  Regardless of who decided conspiracy theories, or their advocates were harmless, that phenomenon began an erosion of our faith in information sources and fed our worse fears. The internet, until very recently, did not elevate the truth, it infected it with a virulent malady.

Now, those apparently harmless chickens we created have come home to roost. Those chickens, like our information channels, which were once a reliable source of enrichment, are now questionable and even dangerous.

The critical mass of stakeholders needed to develop industry wide hate management technology goals, standards, policies, and public education mechanisms did not begin to materialize for almost 20 years.  We can all see the damage that delay has caused. Once the choice was made to not get ahead of the problem of corrosive content, catching up became the only alternative.  Have you even tried catching a chicken? Like catching up with online hate, no simple matter.

Jonathan Vick

Schrödinger’s Internet

Cliffy died in 2010, but I did not know that until last week. Until then he was still alive to me.  I liked him, had not heard from him in many years and, as I have done so many times before, went looking for him online.  The adage holds true, be careful what you ask for. I want to add, be careful what you look for.

I am the North American representative for INACH (International Network Against Cyber Hate),  an accomplished internet investigator and researcher, and usually find what I am looking for - eventually.  We have all searched for people from our past who mean something to us. Helping others in this way, and with other online challenges, is extremely rewarding. When all the digging through endless piles of online manure is done, we sometimes find a pony, sometimes a rhinoceros, and sometimes tears.

People disappear for any number of reasons. There is no way to totally disappear, but with a little effort and time, you can get close. When someone does not want to be found, you should respect that. When they have disappeared, not by choice, you must respect that.  There are always exceptions, but they all come at a price.

Until last week, Cliffy was both alive and dead. Something called superposition.  That is the essence of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. When I found Cliffy, opened the reality of things on the internet, the reality of the two possibilities collapsed. Cliffy was indeed dead.

The internet acts like Schrödinger’s box, holding the truth of different realities but requiring an act of will to open it up and find the reality.

I do not think Schrödinger liked cats. I do not think he gave much thought to the cat. It was all about the box and the experiment.

I do not think the internet industry likes us. It historically has not given much thought to the people inside the internet. Internet users have, for far too long, been secondary to the internet itself and the experiment of all the stuff inside. The internet companies own the boxes on the internet and can decide to collapse the possibilities of information and help determine the reality, if they are brave enough.

This is the great conundrum of science and commerce. What comes first, the experiment or the cat; the totality of possibilities of information or the reality.  

Schrödinger’s cat is not a real cat. Schrödinger’s box is not a real box. It was never meant to be left closed. Superposition may be real, but it is not reality. You only get reality when you open the box and feed the cat or bury it.

I do not like that Cliffy is gone, but that is the reality. To change reality is to fictionalize it.  

Questionable Future for Cat Videos

With Trump doing his best not to get re-elected, and the world in the midst of the covid epidemic,  we must ask the important question…What does this mean for cat videos?

Cat videos are historically the most watched and shared.   Based on the numbers, even people who don’t like cats watch cat videos. There are many different specific reasons people watch cat videos. Research indicates that the bottom line is, in general, they make us feel good.

The number of cat videos, viewers and views has continued to climb for over ten years. This is especially true over the past four years, when just about everyone needed some way of feeling good. Cat videos are a form of escapism.

Lavish big budget, fantasy  movie musicals of the 1930s served a similar purpose for a country in the midst of the great depression and the looming specter of World War 2. Back then the public had limited choices, but the studios, once they figured out the public’s desires, produced those movies at a high volume. With the internet, the public can find, and identify, whatever appeals to them. That seems to be cat videos, not big budget musicals or dramas.

It seems ludacris to compare Fred Astaire with Tard the cat, but here we are.

Movie musical's golden age declined with the end of WW2 and I must say the waning depression. It seems we do not need as much to feel-good when things are good as when they are bad. Our optimism comes mores freely when we do not feel we are mid-apocalypse.

So, as we head for another pivot in history, society, economic or culture, for better or whatever, what is to become of cat videos?

Will decreased stress and strife lessen our appetite for cat videos the same way it happened for movie musicals? Will the post-Trump era leave us with a PTSD craving for more cat videos? Perhaps current events will have no impact at all.

Whatever change happens in our cat video watching habits, it may signal something important. I hope it is in some way an indicator that we have grown, and the world is a bit better.

Losing Track of Hate

We can never completely stamp out hate. Taking Mein Kampf off bookshelves, banning the swastika, or the Rebel Flag will not stop hate, it will only hide it. When we hide hate in that way, we make it harder for future generations to recognize the symbols of hate and easier for hate groups to operate and grow with impunity.

Do not get me wrong. The Rebel Flag should never fly over a public space. Klan robes should never be worn in public ever again.  No parade should ever be led by a swastika or anyone wearing one.  This goes for blackface, or any other racist caricature or stereotype. But we cannot pretend these things did not exist, do not still exist, and may surface from neglected boxes in attics or may even be prized by some people.

As much as a picture of Klan rallies are horrific, it is just a picture.  To see a real-life size Klan robe is completely different.  To see full Klan uniform face to face is to begin to understand, as in no other way, the fear it is meant to instill.  The same for any racist, bigoted, hateful, ignorant vestiges of our past.

We do not need to see these things constantly, nor should we. We should work to move such icons of hate to safe spaces where the context, truth and resolution of their existence can be addressed.  There are those who advocate hate. They try their best to desensitize us to the pain and revulsion such things should naturally elicit. These academic hatemongers argue that the expression and display of a racist heritage is their right. It is time we say, no. The intentional perpetuation of historic distress and intimidation is not part of free speech. There is no such thing as casual or harmless display of hate symbols.

In that spirt, we should work to drive hate out of public spaces.  We must come to terms that as we are progressively driving it offline, to whatever extent is possible, there is a responsibility to archive it. We also need to take measures that it will only manifest itself appropriate places.

The great catch-22 in empowering people to recognize hate is the need to discuss it and to teach about it. To know the symbols of hate you need to see the symbols. To know the language of hate you need to be hear hateful terminologies, see stereotypes, and learn bigotries destructive power. To make a better world we need to teach the ugliest of lessons.

 For years displaying hate online has been part of the educational process in fighting hate.  This has posed significant challenges. On every platform, accounts run by educational and informational organizations have been flagged and suspended for the offensive content they have post as examples of hate. Some websites have been suspended for posting examples of terrorist, racist or propagandistic content meant to target people belonging to ethnic, national origin, religious, sexual identity or social groups.  Sometimes these websites are flagged by people who do not understand why the material is being displayed. In other cases, the haters being exposed try to suppress the exposure of their truth.

Some civil rights advocates promote the unilateral removal of all symbols of hate. It is important to remember that symbols, slogans, acronyms, hand signs, and the like, are not just about intimidation, but also about communication within a group.  Removing all hate group references, and iconography from public exposure is dangerous.  If you saw a bumper sticker that said just “AKIA”, would you think twice about it? AKIA is one of the ways KKK members signal their identity to each other. It stands for “A Klansman I Am.” This is bad enough under any circumstance, but worse when it, or some other identifier for a hate group goes unrecognized.

Exposing hate is one of the most powerful tools in defeating it. Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan in post WW2 America. He then worked with producers of the Superman Radio Show to use what he had learned to create content for that radio show. Klan symbols, identification phrases and passwords were all exposed by the Superman Show to the world.  The Superman producers and Kennedy knew that to know hate, expose hate, teach how to recognize, and track it was the best weapon against it.  The damage to the Klan was profound.

The 2016 election showed us that deep systemic hate was very much alive in the United States. It had not been defeated. It had simply learned to hide. It appears we were happy to let it hide. That did not work out well.

Hate will always find a way.  By far the first, best  thing we can do to oppose hate is to keep track of hate and teach about its many forms - the symbols, language and ideologies of hate, and the people who make it their job to perpetuate hate.

The true nature of hate and haters becomes obvious on close scrutiny.  If we lose track of hate, that is what hate needs most to survive.

Jonathan Vick

International Network Against Cyber Hate, North America Representative