Cyber Racism

For this post I would like to highlight the book Cyber Racism by Jessie Daniels and how it relates to my topic of white nationalism in the media. Not only is the book in itself a media tool I believe the contents of the book have a lot to do with the way the internet which is a platform for the sharing of information is also a strong tool for the movement. Jessie Daniels had done a massive amount of research on the website stormfront.org and numerous cloaked websites that are out there to plant that "seed" I have spoken about in many of my posts to this point. I see this as a relevant book to my topic as the internet is now our number one source of information at this point and white nationalists world wide are exploiting people young and old by the use of cloaked websites. I have taken this quote straight from Daniels' website it says, "Cloaked websites are published by individuals or groups who conceal authorship in order to deliberately disguise a hidden political agenda. In this way, these sites are similar to previous versions of print media propaganda, such as "black," "white" and "grey" propaganda." As I said before this world has transitioned from print media to digital media and that has made it easier for groups like white nationalists to make their messages appear to be credible and legitimate. In her book Jessie says, "Given the information glut generated and made available every day on the internet, one could reasonably argue that white supremacists' messages might be lost among the millions and millions of websites on the Internet. Even so, white supremacy online is troubling. Consider (1) its easy access and global linkages, (2) harm it may precipitate in real life, and (3) the challenge it presents to honoring cultural values such as racial equality." After our class had skype meeting with Jessie Daniels it was clear that she genuinely is working for racial equality and has spent uncountable hours trying to understand the world of the white nationalist movement. She also says in her book that  these cloaked site are not effective recruitment tools. While the information backs this statement there is the lone wolfs of the world and this brings me back to (2) above where it says, "harm it may precipitate in real life." This is the part that is troubling to me, that these sites can cause people like Richard Machatto and Timothy Mcveigh to engage in violent acts in real life. As we know the internet is wonderful and powerful tool but in the name of racial equality has it helped us progress or has it cause us to take a step in the wrong direction?