Concern Widens Over Internet Spread of Hate Speech

Tuesday’s shooting at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills comes at a time of growing concern over the proliferation of hate speech on the Internet.

There is no evidence that Buford O. Furrow, the alleged gunman, developed his apparently racist views online. But experts say there is little doubt that others will.

“I know lots of people whose first contact with our movement was through the Internet,” said Don Black, who operates a Web site featuring a home page emblazoned with the words “White Pride World Wide.”

More than 5,000 people have registered to use the site’s message boards and chat rooms, up from 3,000 a year ago, said Black, a 46-year-old Florida computer consultant. The site gets more than 2,000 visits a day.

The site even has a children’s page filled with games, birthday greetings for white children and a “History of the White Race” that rebuts “the lies of black supremacists.”

Black’s Web site is one of more than 1,400 such sites documented by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles in a recent study. The number has more than doubled over the past two years. Many parents are disturbed by this trend.

“I’m more concerned about hate sites than porn sites,” said Scott Hamling, a Denver resident and father of a 7-year-old girl. “My daughter can never imagine anyone lying to her. For that reason, their little minds can be manipulated.”

Hamling said he supervises his daughter’s Internet use. Other parents are increasingly using software filters that block hate sites and programs that record which Web sites their children have visited.

But Black said the Net is still very effective.

“Before the Internet, our resources were limited to distributing leaflets and holding meetings,” he said. “The Net makes our point of view accessible to anyone.”