The brave new world of e-hatred

Cyber-nationalism

The brave new world of e-hatred

Social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together

Jul 24th 2008

From The Economist print edition

“NATION shall speak peace unto nation.” Eighty years ago, Britain’s state broadcasters adopted that motto to signal their hope that modern communications would establish new bonds of friendship between people divided by culture, political boundaries and distance.

For those who still cling to that ideal, the latest trends on the internet are depressing. Of course, as anyone would expect, governments use their official websites to boast about their achievements and to argue their corner—usually rather clunkily—in disputes about territory, symbols or historical rights and wrongs.

What is much more disturbing is the way in which skilled young surfers—the very people whom the internet might have liberated from the shackles of state-sponsored ideologies—are using the wonders of electronics to stoke hatred between countries, races or religions. Sometimes these cyber-zealots seem to be acting at their governments’ behest—but often they are working on their own, determined to outdo their political masters in propagating dislike of some unspeakable foe.

Consider the response in Russia to “The Soviet Story”, a Latvian documentary that compares communism with fascism. If this film had come out five years ago, the Kremlin would have issued an angry press release and encouraged some young hoodlums to make another assault on Latvia’s embassy. Some Slavophile politicians would have made wild threats.

These days, the reaction from hardline Russian nationalists is a bit more subtle. They are using blogs to raise funds for an alternative documentary to present the Soviet communist record in a good light. Well-wishers with little cash can help in other ways, for example by helping with translation into and from Baltic languages.

Meanwhile, America’s rednecks can find lots of material on the web with which to fuel and indulge their prejudices. For example, there are “suicide-bomber” games which pit the contestant against a generic bearded Muslim; such entertainment has drawn protests both in Israel—where people say it trivialises terrorism—and from Muslim groups who say it equates their faith with violence. Border Patrol, another charming online game, invites you to shoot illegal Mexican immigrants crossing the border.

From the earliest days of the internet the new medium became a forum for nationalist spats that were sometimes relatively innocent by today’s standards. People sparred over whether Freddy Mercury, a rock singer, was Iranian, Parsi or Azeri; whether the Sea of Japan should be called the East Sea or the East Sea of Korea; and whether Israel could call hummus part of its cuisine. Sometimes such arguments moved to Wikipedia, a user-generated reference service, whose elaborate moderation rules put a limit to acrimony.

But e-arguments also led to hacking wars. Nobody is surprised to hear of Chinese assaults on American sites that promote the Tibetan cause; or of hacking contests between Serbs and Albanians, or Turks and Armenians. A darker development is the abuse of blogs, social networks, maps and video-sharing sites that make it easy to publish incendiary material and form hate groups. A study published in May by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human-rights group, found a 30% increase last year in the number of sites that foment hatred and violence; the total was around 8,000.

Social networks are particularly useful for self-organised nationalist communities that are decentralised and lack a clear structure. On Facebook alone one can join groups like “Belgium Doesn’t Exist”, “Abkhazia is not Georgia”, “Kosovo is Serbia” or “I Hate Pakistan”. Not all the news is bad; there are also groups for friendship between Greeks and Turks, or Israelis and Palestinians. But at the other extreme are niche networks, less well-known than Facebook, that unite the sort of extremists whose activities are restricted by many governments but hard to regulate when they go global. Podblanc, a sort of alternative YouTube for “white interests, white culture and white politics” offers plenty of material to keep a racist amused.

Tiny but deadly

The small size of these online communities does not mean they are unimportant. The power of a nationalist message can be amplified with blogs, online maps and text messaging; and as a campaign migrates from medium to medium, fresh layers of falsehood can be created. During the crisis that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, for example, it was often blog posts and mobile-phone messages that gave the signal for fresh attacks. Participants in recent anti-American marches in South Korea were mobilised by online petitions, forums and blogs, some of which promoted a crazy theory about Koreans having a genetic vulnerability to mad-cow disease.

In Russia, a nationalist blogger published names and contact details of students from the Caucasus attending Russia’s top universities, attaching a video-clip of dark-skinned teenagers beating up ethnic Russians. Russian nationalist blogs reposted the story—creating a nightmare for the students who were targeted.

Spreading hatred on the web has become far easier since the sharp drop in the cost of producing, storing and distributing digital content. High-quality propaganda used to require good cartoonists; now anyone can make and disseminate slick images. Whether it’s a Hungarian group organising an anti-Roma poster competition, a Russian anti-immigrant lobby publishing the location of minority neighbourhoods, or Slovak nationalists displaying a map of Europe without Hungary, the web makes it simple to spread fear and loathing.

The sheer ease of aggregation (assembling links to existing sources, videos and articles) is a boon. Take anti-cnn.com, a website built by a Chinese entrepreneur in his 20s, which aggregates cases of the Western media’s allegedly pro-Tibetan bias. As soon as it appealed for material, more than 1,000 people supplied examples. Quickly the site became a leading motor of Chinese cyber-nationalism, fuelling boycotts of brands and street protests.

And then there is history. A decade ago, a zealot seeking to prove some absurd proposition—such as the denial of the Nazi Holocaust, or the Ukrainian famine—might spend days of research in the library looking for obscure works of propaganda. Today, digital versions of these books, even those out of press for decades, are accessible in dedicated online libraries. In short, it has never been easier to propagate hatred and lies. People with better intentions might think harder about how they too can make use of the net.

网络民族主义：网上仇恨的勇敢新世界

“国与国之间必讲和平。”①八十年前，英国国家电台的播音员引用这句格言来表达他们的愿望，希望现代通讯将打破文化、政治界线和地理距离的阻隔，成为人与人之间的新纽带。

对于那些依然坚守这一信念的人来说，互联网所呈现的最新趋势令人沮丧。当然，尽人皆知，各国政府利用其官方网站炫耀成绩；在有关领土、信仰或历史是非的纠纷中寸步不让，通常言辞相当露骨。

令人更加不安的是，技巧娴熟的年轻网上冲浪者利用互联网这个电子奇迹，为国家、种族或宗教之间的仇恨添柴加火，而互联网所解除的恰恰是政府对这些冲浪者所施加的意识形态束缚。有时这些网络愤青的行为就像受命于政府似的——但通常他们发出的是自己的声音，义无反顾地要在传播对某个坏透了的敌人的厌恶方面超越他们的政治导师。

看看俄罗斯人对拉脱维亚纪录片《苏联往事》的反应吧，这部纪录片把共产主义与纳粹主义相提并论。如果此片在五年前播映，克里姆林宫会发表一份表示愤怒的新闻稿，并鼓动年轻暴徒再次袭击拉脱维亚大使馆；亲斯拉夫的政客会被视为大敌。

而现在，强硬派俄罗斯民族主义者的反应比较聪明。他们利用博客筹款，要拍一部从颂扬的角度反映苏联共产党历史的纪录片，与之抗衡。有心帮忙却囊中羞涩的人另有出力的办法，比如把资料翻译为波罗的语或把波罗的语资料翻译为俄语。

同时，美国白人大老粗可以从网上找到一大堆资料来为他们的偏见添油加醋、来让他们沉醉其中。比如，“人肉炸弹”游戏中的打斗对手是蓄着胡子的穆斯林；此游戏同时招来了以色列和穆斯林团体的抗议：以色列人说它弱化了恐怖主义，穆斯林说它把他们的信仰等同于暴力。另一个热门的网络游戏“边界巡逻者”邀你射杀非法穿越边境的墨西哥移民。

互联网初创时期，新媒体就成为了民族主义者争吵的论坛；用现在的标准来看，那时的争论往往比较天真。人们争论摇滚歌手Freddy Mercury是伊朗人、帕西人还是阿泽尔人；日本海应该称为东海还是东朝鲜海；以色列能不能说鹰嘴豆泥属于以色列菜品。有时这类争论进入了维基百科，维基是用户自创自编的资料库，其精心设计的温和型编辑规则对极端的言辞作出了限制。

但是网上争论也会导致叫嚣战争。当人们听说宣传藏独的美国网站受到中国网民的攻击，或者听说有人挑起塞族与阿族，或土耳其人与亚美尼亚人之间的争斗时，没有人会觉得奇怪。互联网发展进程中更为阴暗的一面是，博客、社交网站、地图和视频共享站点被滥用来发布煽动性的材料、组织仇恨团体。5月，犹太人权组织西蒙·维森索中心（Simon Wiesenthal Centre）发表了一份研究报告，发现煽动仇恨和暴力的网站数量去年增加了30%，总数达到了大约8,000家。

对于那些自发组织的、分散的、结构松散的民族主义者社区，社交网站尤其实用。仅在Facebook上，就可以加入许多这样的组织，比如：“比利时不存在”、“阿布哈兹不属于格鲁吉亚”、“科索沃属于塞族”或“我恨巴基斯坦”。事情也有好的一面，网上也有希腊人与土耳其人，或者以色列人与巴勒斯坦人之间的友好团体。但另一个极端是，不如Facebook出名的一些小生境网络把许多极端分子联合了起来，这些极端分子的活动在很多国家受到政府的限制，但进入国际领域后则难以控制。Podblanc是一家类似于YouTube的网站，所不同的是，它服务于“白人利益、白人文化和白人政治”，提供大量素材供种族主义者取乐。

规模虽小，效果致命

这些网上社区的规模虽小，但不表明它们不重要。民族主义言论的能量会通过博客、网上地图和短信被放大；当一场运动从此媒体传播到彼媒体，难免以讹传讹，制造一层又一层新的谎言。比如，在今年年初席卷肯尼亚的危机中，常常是由博客帖子和手机短信发布新一轮攻击的信号。最近在南朝鲜发生的反美游行，其参加者就是被网上请愿、论坛和博客动员起来的，其中有的信息宣传了一种疯狂的理论，说朝鲜人的基因决定了他们容易感染疯牛病毒。

在俄罗斯，一个民族主义博主公布了在俄罗斯一流大学读书的高加索学生的姓名和详细联系方式，同时贴了一段视频，内容是肤色较深的少年殴打俄罗斯族人。俄罗斯民族主义者的博客纷纷转贴，使被公布个人信息的学生如历梦魇。

由于制造、保存和发布数字信息的成本锐减，在网上散布仇恨已变得极其容易。从前，高质量的宣传需要有出色的漫画师；现在任何人都可以制作和散发精美的图像。无论是匈牙利团体组织的反罗马招贴画竞赛、俄罗斯的反移民游说团体公布少数民族居住区的位置，还是斯洛伐克民族主义者展示没有匈牙利的地图，网络使散播恐惧和仇恨变得更简单了。

信息汇集的纯粹便利（搜集已存在的资源、视频和文章的链接）是个天赐利器。拿anti-cnn.com网站来说，它由一位20多岁的中国商人开办，汇集了据称是支持西藏之西方媒体带有偏见的言论。它征集资料的请求刚一发出，就有1,000多人提供了样本。很快这家网站成了中国网络民族主义的主要发动机，助燃了抵制西方品牌和街头抗议的行动。

伪史写作也利器在手。十年前，一个狂热分子要想证明某荒谬的观点——比如否认纳粹大屠杀或者乌克兰饥荒，可能需要在图书馆泡上几天，寻找尘封的宣传作品。今天，这些书的数字版本，甚至几十年前就停止印刷的书，都可以在网上专题图书馆找到。总之，散播仇恨和谎言从未如此容易过。心地善良的人们该好好想想他们怎样也能利用网络。

译注：

①源自《圣经》之《撒迦利亚》（Zechariah）9:10 “He will proclaim peace to the nations.”（他必向列国讲和平。）