Excerpted from
The New Journal.
1995.
It's your choice:
STAY EXIT
When I came across that disclaimer, I hesitated. But I was curious. I felt drawn in. I clicked on STAY. I found myself plunged into a neon multimedia landscape lit up by splashy graphics and sophisticated color animation. This was the main Web site of the New Jersey Skinheads. "There are ANTI-WHITE FORCES working against us!" the page declared. The site was filled hyperlinks. One link zipped me to a site called The 14-Word Press, a place devoted entirely to the glorification of 14 words credited to a man named David Lane. The 14 words were: "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
I clicked my way back to the Skinheads page and followed a different path, this one whisking me away to a Web page called Heroes of the White Race, with a banner that read, "The time is now to learn and pay respect to our great ancestory!" There were photos and biographies of Henry Ford, Rudolf Hess, and Heinrich Himmler. Another link took me to a place called the Nigger Joke Center. Back at the main page I found a list of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) groups organized by Skinheads, discussion centers where people meet to talk in real time. "There are several great channels established that you should enjoy visiting," it said. "The best channels are #Skinheads, #nazi, #aryan, #whitepower, #kkk, and #racial_identity. The most popular being #nazi and #Skinheads."
Curious, I logged on to the IRC server, joined the channel called #nazi, and waited as my screen went dark. Compared to the bright city-lights feel of the World Wide Web, the Internet Relay Chat is like sitting in an unlit room and conjuring disembodied spirits, hearing only voices in the dark but seeing nothing. The topic of conversation that evening was "Adolf Hitler was RIGHT!" I waited a few seconds. Then a flurry of white pixels appeared on my screen.
<Soldier> So, Jay, a Yale man eh?
I was surprised he could tell where I was logging in from. I typed a message back.
<Jay> Yes. What about yourself, Soldier?
Mentioning Yale caught someone else's attention. <Bruno> Who goes to Yale? <Jay> I do. <Soldier> Jay is dixit@morpheus.cis.yale.edu * Jay Dixit <Soldier> are you wp Jay? <Jay> am I what? <Ravage> shheeeeesh <Soldier> wp <Ravage> white power? <Soldier> yeah <Jay> No. I'm just curious. <Bruno> Yale had no White Power when I was there. <Jay> B: you were at Yale? <Bruno> Jay: I went there for 1/2 semester... <Soldier> is Yale a pretty liberal school? <Bruno> At New Haven Hospital. Yale SUCKS! Its even worse than harvard! <Soldier> true <Jay> In some ways, yeah, it's very liberal. <Basher> Harvard= Jewland <Bruno> harvard has more jews though. I went right to Harvard from High school for 2 years <Jay> Bruno: what wp groups do you belong to now? <Bruno> Jay: no comment there, none <Soldier> are you proud of your european heritage? <Jay> Soldier: why do you assume my heritage is European? <Soldier> natural assumption i guess. can't see non-Whites getting into yale without affirmative action. and I would imagine they are still a minority there <Jay> I don't know. . . there are a lot of non-Whites at Yale. Something like 35%. <Soldier> damn <Bruno> Nigger at yale=aa! <Bruno> niggers can get in med school with C's <Jay> Yale does have affirmative action admissions. <Soldier> but Whites can't? <Bruno> Lots of gooks at Yale <Soldier> educating the enemy... real smart <Basher> Ed-U-Kated Nigger <Soldier> so they can only use it to advance "their communities" <Soldier> at the expense of ours <Soldier> when will it end?
The next day, I went on the chat group again. The discussion topic was "If A Nigger Hangs From A Tree And Nobodys There To Hear It , Does It Make A Sound?" Many of the same people were there, including Soldier.
<Jay> So Soldier, do you think the white race is in danger? <Soldier> yes don't you? <Amanda> The white is never in danger. They just get complacent at times. We are still the pure breed. <Jay> Well, there is more intermarriage going on now than ever before. <Soldier> this is not true Amanda: we are facing extinction <Amanda> The race traitors must witer. <Amanda> wither <Amanda> Sorry Soldier. <Jay> Do you think the threat of extinction comes from the government or from other races? <Soldier> government mostly <Jay> So you mean like government programs to aid minorities? <Soldier> the u.s. government is our biggest enemy <Amanda> They shroud the Black and the mongrels in protection. <Soldier> not only that Jay, but to militarily deny White nations, White schools, White neighboroods, etc. <Jay> You mean prevent us from arming ourselves? <Soldier> no <Amanda> The whiteman needs more guns. <Soldier> how about militarily AND econimically? ie S. Africa <Jay> So the government should be giving more money to white countries and less to third world countries? <Soldier> well I say no foreign aid at all, period <Amanda> We give billions to the Jew. Israel. <Jay> Do you think interracial marriage is a threat too? <Amanda> Interracial marriage is a detriment, however it may also purge our kind of bad genetics. <Soldier> in a way, but even though a minority mix, their friends, and associates usually take the side of the minority and thus eventual racial suicide <Jay> How do you think we should go about fighting? <Soldier> any means necessary <Jay> would you ever consider using violence? <Soldier> yes. I feel violence is being commited on my race daily, it's self defence <Jay> You mean like drive-by shootings, and so on? <Amanda> The black kills its own. <Soldier> no, like black on white crime, and forced integration <Amanda> Remember Whitey! The Black and the Jew are using you! (Not neccessarily in that order!) <Jay> Do you think if we segregate, things would be better, or do you want to eliminate other races entirely? <Soldier> and all the while, the endless vilification of the White race Jay. segregation won't work, we must SEPARATE by continents <Jay> So N. America would be for whites, and African-Americans would go back to Africa? <Soldier> africa for black, asia for yellow, s. america for brown europe for White, America. I would like America for White but it almost seems unreal at this point. <Jay> Because it's already so diverse? <Soldier> yeah <Amanda> I blame the Jew for influencing our entertainment industry. <Jay> Do you think that will ever happen? Separation by continents? <Soldier> that's the way it started, why not? I mean, not many whites in asia or africa, but lots of them in our countries <Amanda> The black insists on not using birth control. Its like rats breeding. <Jay> Well, for one thing, the worldwide racial diversity we're seeing now is the result of centuries of immigration. <Soldier> I can't believe that we are around 10% of the world's population and we let them in our countries! that's suicide! <Jay> Have you ever read any Hitler? <Soldier> Meim Kampf was a lightouse in a storm to me.
I was looking at the scene of an execution. In front of me were four men. Three were soldiers, jackbooted storm troopers with iron helmets. The regalia on their shoulders marked them as Third Reich Nazis, soldiers in Hitler's army. The brims of their helmets cast stark shadows in the bright sunlight, obscuring their faces. The fourth man was a civilian. He was elderly, and clad in plain clothes. He looked Jewish, with white whiskers. The soldier on the left was smirking smugly and had a pistol pressed hard into the old man's throat. The old man was in pain. He might have been sobbing. Perhaps he was begging for his life. His muscles were tense. His whole body cringed. He was waiting to die. At the next moment, the Nazi officer was going to shoot him.
Click. I scrolled down. The graphic of the Nazi soldiers carried a caption in white block letters: "god sent us." Below was the German phrase "Juden und Schwarze raus"—Jews and blacks get out. Further down was a statement: "It is simply fact that the White race faces certain extinction in the near future." This site was Northern Thunder, a neo-Nazi page I found while looking for the International White Racialists page, the site Soldier maintained. Something about the way he had talked made him sound more serious than the others.
Soldier's page was another technological marvel—text and graphics on a gray background decorated with engravings of Nazi flags and rows of soldiers, all embossed on gray to look as if they had been carved in a stone memorial. It was as if I had walked into a World War II museum in an alternate universe where the Nazis had won the war. An animation box flashed the words "white revolution is the only solution." I scrolled down to a list of "POWs"; men in prison for violent hate crimes. "Bruce Pierce — 252 years, David Lane — 190 years." I read on. Bruce Pierce and David Lane, I would later learn, were the two white supremacist defendants convicted in the 1984 Denver shooting death of Jewish radio host Alan Berg. The same David Lane who coined the 14 words.
After more wanderings, I came across a Time magazine online feature called "Free Speech on the Internet," based on a TV segment from the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. I clicked to play the ten-minute audio clip. A few seconds later, the crisp sound of a TV announcer's voice was streaming out of my computer. It alternated with the deeper tones of interview clips.
David Taylor is a self-described racist.
"Which means I love my race and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to secure the existence of my race."
He has swastikas on his wall, Hitler's Mein Kampf on his bookshelf, a shotgun by his bed, and a message on his mind.
"My main message is to wake white people up to the genocide that is being taken place against our race right now. "
Through his computer, he also has a connection to the Internet.
"It's helping me get my message across, which is what I am on a mission to do. It's to spread the word of white survival as far as possible."
The rhetoric in the news clip sounded strangely familiar. The phrases Taylor used reminded me of my talk with Soldier. Puzzled, I opened the transcript I had kept of the previous night's IRC chat. At times, people addressed Soldier as "David." I noticed that Soldier's network address was ~dt@209.391.109.113. So Soldier was David Taylor, an outspoken neo-Nazi, willing to publicly advocate violence, and an admirer of convicted murderer David Lane. I went back to the newsgroup, wondering whether I was in any danger. I resolved that it would be my last time there.
<Connor14> Jay do you know the 14 words <Soldier> 14 words: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children. <Jay> Yes. I've been surfing the Web. <Tom> the beloved 14 words <Tom> R U national socialist, Jay? <Jay> No, I'm not. Are you, Tom? <Tom> yes, i believe in the wisdom of the great leader <Jay> Tom: By great leader, do you mean Hitler? <Soldier> Heil Hitler! <Ravage> __ <Ravage> /\_\ <Ravage> / / /_ <Ravage> / /_/\ \ <Ravage> _\ \/ \ \ <Ravage> /\ \ /\ \_\ <Ravage> \ \/ \ \/_/ <Ravage> \ /\ \_\ <Ravage> \/_/ / / <Ravage> / / / <Ravage> \/_/ <Ravage> Adolf Hitler was RIGHT!!! <Ravage> Sieg Heil!! <Tom> Heil! Hitler! the great leader of our people <Tom> Jay ping reply 43 sec. <Jay> Reply? What did you ask me? <Tom> oh,.....nothing <Dun> Who hates blacks? <Tom> MEMEMEME!!!!! <BLOOD88> hang um <Wolf> beat um <Wolf> i hate niggers and queers the most <BLOOD88> kill all the shitdick fags <Dun> I belong to a group of black bashing bikers. <Lolagirl> What do red laces on Doc Martens mean? <TomT88> I'm with you BLOOD88 <Tom> are you interested in national socialism Jay? <Jay> Am I interested in it? No, not in the way you mean. I don't agree with national socialism and I'm not interested in joining any national socialist organizations. I am interested in understanding what motivates national socialists. <Lisa88> my children are all the motivation in the world i need Jay <Tom> are you a jew Jay? <Jay> No, I'm not Jewish, Tom. My father is from India, though. <Tom> well, we have a VERY special day for your type, coming real soon <Jay> What do you mean by that, Tom? <Tom> hail the white children, that is what we must fight for our youth's future <Tom> he is a Nigger! <Tom> WP! <meisterK> history!!!! <uber-man> sand nigger! <meisterK> hahahahaaa sand nigger <Dun> Death the Jews and Blacks. They are the same <Dun> HILTER did not finish whathe started <Soldier> Jay, are you interested because you find some things you agree with? <Jay> No, I'm interested because I disagree, and I want to understand why you guys think what you think. <Tom> i think you hsould be relieved of your suffering from all the wondering Jay * Soldier doesn't understand how anyone could disagree *** Mode change "+b *!*@morpheus.cis.yale.edu" on channel #nazi by Skream *** You have been kicked off channel #nazi by Thor (.x -(-Rp0-)- x. (Banned: *!*@morpheus.cis.yale.edu) .x -(-Rp0-)- x.) IRC log ended Thu Oct 17 23:58
And with that, the movement on my screen abruptly stopped. I had been kicked off the chat group and banned from returning. I suddenly became aware that it was midnight and I was sitting alone in a dark computer lab.
Three nights of chatting with real-life Neo-Nazis left me feeling sick. But surfing the Web the next day, I understood why hate groups of all kinds have seized on the Internet as a primary method of advertising. Skinheads, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and Holocaust deniers all find a home on the Internet. Some pages, like the Nigger Joke Center, are merely sickening and offensive. Others are more serious, intended to persuade and recruit. It is impossible to know whether Tom would follow through on his violent threats, but we know that at least some of the denizens of these groups are for real. The White Aryan Resistance Hate Page, for instance, is maintained by Tom Metzger, a former Klansman who quit the KKK to found his own more extreme group, the White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Metzger was later found guilty of inciting murder, after three members of his group beat an Ethiopian student to death in Portland, Oregon.
Many of the pages are infected with a bizarre paranoia about the impending "extinction" of white people. The Aryan Nations page warns that at only eight percent of the world's population, the white race is in danger of genocide at the hands of "the Jew"—a curious reversal. Other pages explicitly denounce this culture of fear. Some try to conceal their racism, proclaiming that they do not hate at all, but merely love their race and are willing to fight for it. The Adelaide Institute, for instance, runs a page that denies the Holocaust. "Why would anyone find this offensive?" the page demands. "We are celebrating the living who were thought dead." Another recurring theme is the metaphor of a great war, and a certain nostalgia for the days of the Third Reich. One page is named "Blut und Ehr," meaning "Blood and Honor"—the motto of the Nazi SS.
Web pages devoted to hate have proliferated to the point where it is possible to stumble across them even if you are not looking for them. A search for the word "holocaust" on the search engine at Lycos yields a link to alt.revisionism—a discussion group devoted to denying the Holocaust. There is nothing to prevent schoolchildren from unwittingly coming across these sites.
Exposing hate on the Internet may be the only solution. Many users agree that to fight Internet hate, we must meet it on its terms, using the same technology to combat it by exposing lies and rhetoric for what they are. It is in this spirit that a librarian at the Harvard Law Library created a Web site called Hatewatch (http://www.hatewatch.org). If the Internet is a landscape of homes, Hatewatch is a watchtower above the village. Hatewatch's mission is to monitor hate groups, keeping live links to the Web pages. Hate-mongers populate the digital landscape of the Internet just as they populate our cities. We can no more wipe out hate on the Internet than we can wipe out the human impulse to hate. But, with vigilance, we can show the users of the Internet why these hate groups are wrong.
Names have been changed.
Read my Salon article about the closing down of Hatewatch, A banner day for neo-Nazis.