The Culture of Critique’s preface (8 of 10)

…

“The Jewish problem is one of the greatest problems in the world, and no man, be he writer, politician or diplomatist, can be considered mature until he has striven to face it squarely on its merits.”

…......................—Henry Wickham Steed

Here I present the eighth part of Prof. MacDonald’s 2002 Preface to The Culture of Critique. The inclusion of images is entirely my own initiative. No images appear in the printed text of MacDonald’s Preface. For the Contents Page and my introduction, click here.

Jewish Organizations and Censorship of The Internet

In CofC (Ch. 8) I wrote, “one may expect that as ethnic conflict continues to escalate in the United States, increasingly desperate attempts will be made to prop up the ideology of multiculturalism... with the erection of police state controls on nonconforming thought and behavior.” As noted above, there has been a shift from “the culture of critique” to what one might term “the culture of the Holocaust” as Jews have moved from outsiders to the consummate insiders in American life. Coinciding with their status as an established elite, Jewish organizations are now in the forefront of movements to censor thought crimes.(40)

The Internet is a major gap in control of the major media, but Jewish organizations have taken the lead in attempting to censor the Internet. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) distributes a compact disc titled “Digital Hate 2001” that lists over 3000 “hate sites on the Internet.” Both the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the ADL have attempted to pressure Internet service providers (ISP’s) like AOL and popular websites like Yahoo into restricting subscriber access to disapproved websites. Recently Yahoo removed 39 Internet clubs originally identified as “hate sites” by the SWC.(41) Internet auction sites have been subjected to protests for selling Nazi memorabilia.(42) Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com have come under fire for selling Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The ADL also published a report, Poisoning the Web: Hatred Online, and has urged the U.S. Congress to initiate a “comprehensive study of the magnitude and impact of hate on the Internet.”(43)

Online services in the U.S. are also under pressure from foreign governments, including France, Germany, Austria, and Canada, where there are no constitutional guarantees of free speech. For example, a judge in France ruled that Yahoo was violating French law by delivering Nazi memorabilia to people in France via the company’s online auctions, even though the service is based in the United States. Yahoo was acting illegally, the judge said, even though the company has created a separate French site that, unlike the broader Yahoo service, follows French law. The company was ordered to use filtering technology to block politically sensitive material from appearing on computers in France or face fines equivalent to $13,000 a day. In Germany, a court found that German law applies even to foreigners who post content on the Web in other countries—so long as that content can be accessed by people inside Germany. In this case, the court ruled that an Australian citizen who posted Holocaust revisionist material on his Australian website could be jailed in Germany. Theoretically it would be possible for Germany to demand that this person be extradited from Australia so that he could stand trial for his crime.(44)

Jewish organizations have been strong advocates of laws in European countries that criminalize the distribution of anti-Jewish material. For example, the ADL pressured the German government to arrest a U.S. citizen who distributed anti-Jewish materials. Gary Lauck was arrested in Denmark and extradited to Germany on the warrant of a Hamburg prosecutor. He was sentenced to four years in jail, served his sentence, and was deported.(45)

This sort of government-imposed censorship is effective in countries like France and Germany, but is not likely to succeed in the United States with its strong tradition of constitutionally protected free speech. As a result, the major focus of the Jewish effort to censor the Internet in the United States has been to pressure private companies like AOL and Yahoo to use software that blocks access to sites that are disapproved by Jewish organizations. The ADL developed voluntary filter software (ADL HateFilter) that allows users to screen out certain websites. However, while AOL—the largest ISP by far—has proved to be compliant in setting standards in line with ADL guidelines, the ADL notes that other ISP’s, such as Earthlink, have not cooperated with the ADL, and independent web hosting sites have sprung up to serve websites rejected by AOL.(46)

The ADL and the SWC have an uphill road because the Internet has long been touted as a haven for free speech by the high-tech community. One senses a certain frustration in the conclusion of a recent ADL report on the Internet:

Combating online extremism presents enormous technological and legal difficulties... Even if it were electronically feasible to keep sites off the Internet, the international nature of the medium makes legal regulation virtually impossible. And in the United States, the First Amendment guarantees the right of freedom of speech regardless of what form that speech takes. As a result, governments, corporations and people of goodwill continue to look for alternative ways to address the problem.(47)

[Note the ADL logo on the jacket's lapel]

Clearly Jewish organizations are making every effort to censor anti-Jewish writing on the Internet. They are far from reaching their goal of removing anti-Jewish material from the Internet, but in the long run the very high political stakes involved ensure that great effort will be expended. I suspect that in the U.S., if pressuring existing ISP’s by organizations like the ADL and the SWC fails, these companies may become targets of buyouts by Jewish-owned media companies who will then quietly remove access to anti-Jewish websites. AOL has just recently merged with Time Warner, a Jewish-controlled media company, and it had already merged with Compuserve, a large, nationwide ISP. As indicated above, AOL-Time Warner has complied with pressures exerted by Jewish activist organizations to restrict expressions of political opinion on the Internet.

I suppose that the only option for prohibited websites will be to develop their own Internet service providers. These providers—perhaps subsidized or relatively expensive—would then fill the niche of serving people who are already committed to ethnic activism among non-Jewish Europeans and other forms of politically incorrect expression. The situation would be similar to the current situation in the broadcast and print media. All of the mainstream media are effectively censored, but small publications that essentially preach to the converted can exist if not flourish.

But such publications reach a miniscule percentage of the population. They are basically ignored by the mainstream media, and they mainly preach to the choir. The same will likely happen to the Internet: The sites will still be there, but they will be out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of Internet users. The effective censorship of the Internet by large corporations does not violate the First Amendment because the government is not involved and any policy can be justified as a business decision not to offend existing or potential customers.

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NOTES [the Bibliography will appear in the 10th entry]

40. Jewish organizations have also been strong advocates of “hate crime” legislation. For example, in 1997 the ADL published Hate Crimes: ADL Blueprint for Action, which provides recommendations on prevention and response strategies to crimes of ethnic violence, such as penalty enhancement laws, training for law enforcement and the military, security for community institutions, and community anti-bias awareness initiatives. In June 2001 the ADL announced a program designed to assist law enforcement in the battle against “extremists and hate groups.” A major component of the Law Enforcement Initiative is the development of specialized hate crime, extremism, and anti-bias curricula for training programs designed for law enforcement.

41. SWC Press Information, July 15, 1999; www.wiesenthal.com.

42. E.g., SWC Press Information, November 29, 1999; January 26, 2001; www.wiesenthal.com.

43. ADL Press Release, September, 14, 1999; www.adl.org.

44. AFP Worldwide News Agency, April 4, 2001; www.afp.com.

[ADL organizations in the U.S.]

45 . ADL Press Release, August 22, 1996; www.adl.org.

46. C. Wolf. Racists, Bigots and the Law on the Internet. www.adl.org.

47. C. Wolf. Racists, Bigots and the Law on the Internet. www.adl.org.