Cynics Unlimited

Kate at Small Dead Animals brought attention to an article on a proposal by Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress allowing ISP’s to immediately shut down pornographic and hate websites.

Most service providers are unable to remove objectionable content from their servers unless it has been found illegal through a lengthy court process, Farber said in his speech.

Farber proposed that major Canadian Internet providers devise a protocol based on existing laws that would allow them to remove hateful or pornographic material at their own discretion.

“It doesn’t take a lot to discern what is pornographic and what is hate,” Farber said. “As long as the context is there … they have some expertise to make those decisions.”

Kate is correct about one thing – it is rather surprising that bloggers haven’t latched onto this story to raise a huge fuss about a policy that could be legally devastating to their freedom. Visit nearly any particularly popular political blog and you will find a slight variation of the tried-and-true scapegoat formula:

1. Write about some hardship or fear being faced by the target audience in hopes that they become a client audience.
2. Suggest how much better life would be if {insert philosophy here} were implemented. The morality behind the philosophy is narrowly defined and in absolute terms of right and wrong.
3. Find distinctly different groups (demographic / philosophical / class / occupational) that either benefit from the current system or have registered a moral objection to a complete implementation of the favoured philosophy. Portray target groups as being inherently evil and singularly dedicated to suppressing virtuous people like the client audience.
4. Completely ignore any philosophical variations within the target groups, keeping them as monolithic as possible - hence easier to dismiss en masse. Political victory is measured almost exclusively in terms of destroying “the other side”, regardless of long term consequences or outstanding issues within the client audience

Politicians, preachers and journalists (MSM or blogger) have been thriving on oversimplification and scapegoating for thousands of years, and that model is unlikely to change in the near future. So what makes hate crimes legislation so threatening? Most hate crimes legislation indirectly makes two assertions:

1. The scapegoating of some groups constitutes a criminal offense, while scapegoating other groups does not.
2. The line between criticism and hate (as marked by terms like “libel” and “defamation”) are ultimately decided by the self-appointed activists who make a career of fighting discrimination … as they define it

Removing the legal burden of proof (i.e. the “legislation”) will make the censorship of hate and pornography even more arbitrary. Bloggers, who thrive on scapegoating and rabble-rousing, must contemplate – who can be targeted and to what extent? For example, the recent standoff between natives and police prompted a flurry of angry blogs against all those involved. The blog entries harshly critical of police generally would not qualify as hate because police are not a racial or religious minority – however some criticisms of the native protesters, which quickly became critiques of native people in general, might qualify as hate speech.

I say “might” because a hate crime prosecution generally proceeds via civilian complaint. ISP’s are profit-driven and may similarly wait for bad publicity before physically terminating down a customer’s website –without the burden of proving criminal guilt. Under such malleable conditions, native activists could decide to press hate crimes charges against a prominent blogger for the anti-native rhetoric in the reader comment section of an article - even if the article itself may have just targeted a specific group of protesters rather than an entire racial group.

Thus, bloggers could be charged not only for their own statements, but for statements by readers. Short of turning off the comments section entirely, most bloggers have only marginal control over the content posted by readers and also risk criticism by deleting controversial comments. Activists with strong political agendas may choose to target only those sites they oppose on philosophical grounds. Similarly, demographic groups with weak political representation could still be skewered without recourse.

Society as a whole will not be served by arbitrary definition and application of hate laws. Rather than fighting an un-winnable war against the proliferation of unpopular opinions, groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress would be far better served to counter the negative information found in hate sites with positive information. Most bigoted commentaries are disprovable (otherwise it wouldn’t be bigotry) so why not concentrate on disproving them in the same public arenas? Bernie Farber’s proposal will only benefit political activists who can use the “hate crime” label to suppress opposing opinions – bigoted and otherwise.