Hate Groups In Social Media Essay

670 Words2 Pages

The abundance of social networking websites has created a new frontier in the war on racism. Many hate groups have moved to using code names and symbols to express their hateful message. Neo-Nazi, misogynistic and homophobic groups have all exploited on social media’s expansive reach, easy access, and comparative anonymity to recruit and inculcate a new generation with hate. Whereas earlier generations of hate groups were forced to spread their message in person, the arrival of social media websites has provided hate groups with nearly freed access to millions of potential supporters. They aim at spreading their beliefs and seek to make racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other forms of group-focused hostility seem normal through targeted online posts, videos, and …show more content…

Hate speech containing illegal threats is not protected by the first Amendment. However, to fight against these extremist hateful groups there are website such as partnersagainsthate.org and pbs.org/pov/beyondhatred/take-action/ that are safe space for users who have experience racist or any form of hate to oppose racism and support tolerance and provides information about resources available to victims of hate crime on the internet. Due to the safe space and organizations trying to stop the spread of racism in social media and the media extremist hateful groups are using coded language to use racial slurs out in the open without being detected such as Skittle, Skype, Google, and Yahoo. Skittle is Muslim, Skype is Jews, google is African- American, Bing is Asian, butterfly is homosexuality male and fish buckets is homosexuality female. As you can see above the racist online communities have established a new code for racial, homophobic, and bigoted slurs in an attempt avoid

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