The Digital Seduction of Evil: Terrorism and Hate Speech on the Internet

The Internet provides cheap, virtually untraceable, instantaneous, and anonymous distribution that can be easily downloaded and posted in multiple places. It became an asset for terrorist organisations, criminals, hate groups and other anti-social individuals who abuse the Internet to transmit propaganda and provide information about their aims, to allow an exchange between like-minded individuals, to vindicate the use of violence, to de-legitimise and to demoralise their enemies, to raise cash, to enlist public support and to promote violent conduct. This lecture focuses on two major concerns: terrorism, and hate speech. In the democratic world, there is a wide consensus that those expressions are illegitimate and dangerous. The United States is exceptional in its liberal stance on hate speech. 

The lecture opens with offering definitions of terrorism and hate speech. It explains the problematics involved in line-drawing of what constitutes hate and the ways by which the Internet has been abused. The lecture considers two important American precedents that restricted speech on the Internet: US Dept. of Housing & Urban Development, Jouhari and Pilar Horton v. Ryan Wilson and ALPHA HQ (July 19, 2000) and United States v. Machado 195 F.3d 454 (9th Cir. 1999) and examine who are the main targets of hate. The lecture considers the connection between hate speech, hate crime and terror, and offer remedies. It is argued that socially responsible people should not stand idly by while others are abusing freedom of expression to discriminate and victimised their targets for hate. He concludes by stating the need to strike a balance between freedom of expression and social responsibility on the Internet.