Posted by Eugene Volokh:
More About Online Racism and Anti-Semitism:
I had an exchange with another lawprof that I thought might be worth
airing, since it deals with the genuinely difficult question of the
proper private, nongovernmental response to evil speech (which as it
happens is the broadest version of the subject of my [1]forthcoming
law review article on "Deterring Speech: When Is It "McCarthyism"?
When Is It Proper?). The lawprof wrote to me:
I read with some horror, and admiration for Eugene's
forthrightness, the exchange with the NeoNazis who began "counting
Jews" on the UCLA law faculty. These fringe nuts are a bit scary,
but I must confess I find the following even scarier, since it
involves the kids who are or may be our students:
[2]http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=jews
Click on a few of the threads that are called up, and you'll see
what I mean. This purports to be a prelaw discussion site, and it
appears a large number of applicants and current law students post
there. If the appalling anti-semitism isn't enough, then try the
racism:
[3]http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=nigger
or more here:
[4]http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=blacks
Perhaps if you called attention to this, the site's managers might
"clean up" the content a bit? And perhaps students might be
encouraged to move to the more mature and civil prelaw sites, such
as [5]www.lawdiscussion.org.
Here's a slightly cleaned up portion of my response, which I sent to
the lawprof by e-mail:
Thanks very much for the kind words, and for the pointer -- these
are pretty appalling posts. But my sense from just a casual look
was that (1) these threads are actually a small fraction of what is
posted on the site (or so it seems from a quick look at
[6]http://xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2 to see the most recent
posts), and (2) in the few threads that I've seen, others are
responding to the neo-Nazis, quite aptly and harshly. This is
probably to the good, since (A) maybe a few of the idiots will be
shaken out of their idiocy -- not very likely, but it happens
sometimes, and it's ultimately the only way of effectively fighting
the problem, it seems to me -- (B) and since decent readers will
realize that these opinions are out there, and that it's important
to respond to them. So it doesn't seem to me to be particularly
wrong for the site managers people to maintain this as an
unmoderated discussion board (I assume that it is).
I should stress again that I find these questions of what is the
proper private response to be quite difficult, and my views on the
subject are generally much more tentative than my views on many First
Amendment questions. Nongovernmental entities may and often should do
things that the government may not; and their ethical rights and
obligations are often more complex and context-sensitive than what
we'd expect from the law.
Also, if the discussion board decided to filter out rude statements in
order to make the discussions more valuable, or even to filter out
evil ideas because they don't want their property used to promulgate
such ideas, I wouldn't object: I think they're ethically entitled to
do this, and there's no reason to condemn that for it.
But I don't think they're ethically obligated to engage in such
filtering, for the reasons in the start of my quote: Providing a forum
for these posts, in a context where they can be quickly responded to,
may actually be something of a public service.
References
1. http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/mccarthyism.pdf
2. http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=jews
3. http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=nigger
4. http://www.xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2&hid=0&qu=blacks
5. http://www.lawdiscussion.org/
6. http://xoxohth.com/main.php?forum_id=2
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