Weaving a Web of Hate
Source: The Jewish Tribune | July 19, 2001
Weaving A Web of Hate
By Terry Friedmann
Human Rights organizations across Canada have been gathering information and conducting research on hate groups in the country for many years. Recently, author Warren Kinsella worked with many of these Human Rights organizations, including the League of Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, to produce a series of books on right wing hate groups in Canada.
The League of Human Rights was one of the first organizations to promote awareness about the proliferation of hate on the Internet. Kinsella attended B’nai Brith’s International Symposia on Hate Crime on the Internet in 1997 and in 1999, where the ability of Canadian law to deal with the problem was discussed. The second book of the series Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network, was recently updated to include information on the use of the Internet by right wing hate groups to spread white supremacist literature and racial intolerance.
The book provides a strong argument for future regulation of the Internet. Karen Mock, National Director of The League of Human Rights believes that “an important value of the book is that people who are in the criminal justice system itself, not only see the extent of the problem, but also how inadequately they’ve been dealing with it over the years.” Some argue that regulation of the Internet would be an action of censorship and others maintain that any attempts at such a movement are vain due to the versatility of the medium. But, as Mock writes in her chapter “Hate on the Internet,” published in Human Rights and the Internet by Steven Hick, Edward Halpin and Eric Hoskins,“several national and international covenants and declarations recognize the need to balance people’s freedom of expression with their right to be free from hate targeted against them.”
