opinion

When online hate speech turns deadly

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution by 39 men on Sept. 17, 1787. This is part of a series of articles relating to hate speech and the Constitution.

Dylann Roof’s plan was simple. The 21-year-old wanted to start a race war, following the same demented path as infamous white supremacists before him.

He bought a handgun with money his parents had given him for his birthday, and practiced shooting in his South Carolina backyard, posing in selfies with Confederate flags.

Then, like an increasing number of extremists bent on racial violence, he decided to be a lone wolf. His violent attack on a black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 left nine dead.

Roof’s storyline may seem like other premeditated acts of racial violence in the United States, but there is one largely new component. Roof wasn’t radicalized by shaving his head bald and joining a neo-Nazi skinhead gang. Nor did he attend Aryan Nations churches or racist events.

Dylann Storm Roof learned to hate entirely online.

He used a computer to research racial crimes committed on white victims. He walked away with the convoluted notion that a race war, initiated by himself, was the answer. And he’s not the only one whose hatred was stoked by the web.

On March 20, James H. Jackson traveled from Baltimore to New York City to kill black men. A reader of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer and a veteran, Jackson killed one man before turning himself in, after which he was charged with terrorism.

That same day, a black college student and commissioned Army officer were stabbed to death at the University of Maryland, College Park. The attacker, Sean Urbanski, was a member of the racist Facebook group Alt-Reich. Urbanski liked a post online claiming the white race was being snuffed out by minorities.

Six days later, Jeremy Christian stabbed two men to death on the MAX train in Portland, Oregon. The men died after coming to the aid of two young Muslim women Christian was harassing.

Christian, too, had extremist beliefs. On his Facebook page, he praised Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, defended the American Nazi Party, and called for a white ethnostate. He was indicted on 15 charges, including aggravated murder.

Like the men described above, white supremacists are increasingly opting to operate primarily online, where the danger of public exposure and embarrassment is far lower, where younger people tend to gather, and where virtually no effort or cost is required to join the conversation.

The major hate forum Stormfront doubled in size after the election of former President Barack Obama, reaching over 300,000 members last year. The site has been adding about 25,000 registered users annually for several years.

These web-savvy extremists have made hate material ubiquitous online. And it’s not contained just to hate sites. So-called mainstream sites—like Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan—are filled with racist and anti-Semitic material.

Since 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been working to draw attention to the dangers of online hate speech and what it can spawn. That year, after we published a list of hate bands selling their wares on iTunes, Apple removed the music from its service.

But most Web companies ignored the issue, often citing the need to protect free speech.

Additionally, in the wake of the killing of a young woman, Heather Heyer, allegedly by an extremist involved in the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month, tech companies seem to have awakened to the threat.

Stormfront lost its prominence on the web after domain host Network Solutions canceled its contract with the site. Daily Stormer has disappeared into the dark web, where it is hard to find. YouTube has changed its policies on displaying hate videos, and Facebook has aggressively been removing pages associated with hate groups. PayPal has ended its accounts with many of the same groups.

As extremism continues to spread its wings across the web, influencing young people with its racist and anti-Semitic demonization, these actions by the tech companies—and more—are necessary if we want to avoid another Dylann Roof.

The web has brought a world of information to our fingertips, but sadly much of it is poison, and its effects have been deadly.

Heidi Beirich is the Intelligence Project director at the Southern Poverty Law Center.