-Caveat Lector- http://www.ctrl.org/">
-Cui Bono?-
from:
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-02-02/feature.html
Click Here: http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2000-02-02/feature.html">S
F Weekly Online - sfweekly.com | Feature | Feb
-
The first snow of the season is falling on New York in big fluffy flakes,
making the city look new again. The offices of the Anti-Defamation League of
B'nai B'rith, located in U.N. Plaza, are stuffy, the windows steamed.
Everyone appears a bit disheveled; rumpled clothes and flattened hat hair
seem to be in vogue. Jordan Kessler, a handsome young man with a beard, sits
at a computer terminal, talking about how he compiles his list.
Kessler is personally responsible for the ADL's HateFilter, a software
program that blocks access to Web sites that, the ADL contends, contain
bigoted or hateful speech. This 25-year-old Columbia grad has accepted the
enormous task of seeking out and cataloging inflammatory language among the
roughly 800 million Web pages available to the public. He has help, of
course. The ADL, a group dedicated to securing "justice and fair treatment
for all citizens alike," has 30 offices around the country tracking
extremists of every different shade, and each office has Kessler's direct
line.
Kessler assembles a list of all the groups his organization deems dangerous;
it's a list that must be constantly updated because, he says, hatemongers
have a tendency to mutate. To be deemed objectionable by the ADL, a site must
be cleared by a committee of the organization's managers before it makes
Kessler's list. He won't say how many people are on the committee, or reveal
the names of the organizations he has labeled as dangerous.
Some of the groups he watches, Kessler says, also watch him. Some revel, just
because their sites have been chosen by the ADL, he says. It's like making
the big time. The Web designers for the white supremacist site World Church
of the Creator, for example, actually promote their work with a quote taken
out of context from a Kessler report in which he grudgingly complimented the
graphics for that site.
"If their Web site gets blocked by the ADL, in their eyes they've made it,"
he says. "They think we are all-powerful, in control of the government and
everything that stands in their way."
Kessler's screen displays a number of yellow file folders. One folder is
titled "Gays," presumably a file on gay-bashers. Another is titled "Arabs,"
presumably a list of anti-Arab groups. He says he takes great care in
reviewing a site before he brings it to the committee. Many sites may be
offensive, he says, featuring anti-Semitic jokes or caricatures, but they
won't make the list of those to be blocked by the ADL's HateFilter. On the
other hand, he says, some sites might be recommended for the list based on
what the ADL knows about the organization rather than the content of the
site. His organization has been monitoring hate groups for more than 85
years, he says, bringing an expertise that stretches far beyond HTML or Java
codes.
The ADL has been fighting anti-Semitism, in its own way, since 1913. The
organization was founded by Sigmund Livingston, a Chicago attorney, hoping to
fight the overt presence of anti-Semitism in American society following the
turn of the century. Livingston began with two desks, $200, and the
sponsorship of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, meaning "Children of
the Covenant." Since then the organization has grown into a national
nonprofit organization that took in $46 million in revenues in 1998 and
employs 200 people in its New York headquarters alone. In the 1960s the ADL
fought stridently for the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More recently it pioneered efforts to
create a model for "hate crime" laws.
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It is an organization with a unique mission, given that its existence is
largely based on the continuance of racism and bigotry. If anti-Semitism had
disappeared from the face of the Earth during the 20th century, the ADL might
have withered away, too. But even five decades beyond the fall of Nazi
Germany, the world continues to be a prejudiced place, and the organization
still regularly denounces anti-Semitic statements made in print, over the
airwaves, and, more recently, over the Internet.
The Web is a new frontier, presenting the ADL with fresh challenges and
opportunities for growth. The medium has given every electronic pamphleteer
the reach of a worldwide television broadcasting network, making it easy for
anyone with a computer to spread his message, racist or otherwise. Because
the Web is essentially unregulated, the ADL believes cyberspace is "a
dangerous place for children," according to the organization's literature.
"There are no parents or teachers standing by to guide and advise a child who
has come upon a site that promotes hate. Without that guidance, there is a
real chance children will simply accept what they read as fact."
In res
