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Group Hunts Down Hatred Online

By ASHLEY DUNN
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Hate is booming on the Internet, with Web sites for white supremacists, neo-Nazis and racists already creating a visible electronic community of extremists.

The Anti-Defamation League has waged one of the longest and most persistent battles against online hate and this month released a 75-page report titled “Poisoning the Web: Hatred Online.”

The book can be ordered from the league for $12.95 or can be read for free online at https://www.adl.org. It details the history of computerized hate networks, going back to the Aryan Nation Liberty Net of the 1980s and to Stormfront, the first extremist hate site on the World Wide Web.

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“Poisoning the Web” takes readers on an eye-opening tour of how hate groups have used the Internet to communicate with one another and spread their gospel.

While the report acknowledges that combating online extremism is both technologically and legally difficult, it includes a “frequently asked questions” section that explains what type of material can lead to criminal prosecution, the legal status of hate speech in other countries, and the ability of Internet service providers to ban extremist Web sites.

“Our belief is that air and light will eradicate the virus,” said David A. Lehrer, Los Angeles regional director for the ADL. “It’s a very difficult, new area that is evolving. The best solution we can figure out is to expose and educate good people to the problem.”

The ADL also has a program on its site called the HateFilter, which blocks access to sites that the ADL believes advocate hatred and bigotry. The program can be reviewed for free for seven days and then purchased for $29.95.

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Ashley Dunn

Ashley Dunn is the former weekend editor at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as assistant managing editor in charge of California news. Dunn joined The Times in 1986 as a suburban reporter in the San Gabriel Valley and later moved to the Metro section, where he participated in coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. After a stint at the New York Times, Dunn returned to Los Angeles in 1998 as a reporter and then editor in The Times’ Business section. He later was named to run science coverage. He worked as deputy national editor from 2007 to 2011 and played a central role in the coverage of some of the biggest national stories of recent years, including the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the 2008 election of President Obama. Prior to his career at The Times, Dunn worked at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Dunn is a California native who has worked as a dishwasher in Sacramento, a printer in San Francisco and a bicycle repairman in Walnut Creek. He has lived along the levees of the Sacramento Delta, the Powell-Hyde Street cable car line and the shaded streets of Pasadena. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in English.

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