On Friday the Sydney Morning Herald reported on racist blogs targeting Australian minority groups and the stance of FightDemBack!, an anti-racism lobby group that is critical of Google's Blogger service for refusing to remove such blogs:
Racist blogs targeting minority groups in Australia are springing up on the web, but Google's Blogger, the service some are hosted on, refuses to take them offline, says an anti racism lobby group.
"Blogger is absolutely insensitive to complaints about racist and neo-Nazi content," said Brian Stokes, co-founder of FightDemBack!, a group that monitors the activities of racists, fascists and other such offenders operating in Australia and New Zealand.
Blogger, owned by Google, enables anyone to create a blog or online journal, and publish their thoughts online using internet space provided by Blogger.
Mr Stokes said his group had reported numerous discriminatory Blogger journals to Google, both through the "flag" button that appears on each blog and through an email form that Mr Stokes said was "buried in their site, very hard to find".
Mr Stokes said his appeals had fallen on deaf ears at Google.
"Most other outfits [that provide free web space] like Angelfire and Tripod actually do respond," he said.
...
"I think what Google intends is not to restrict people's freedom of speech," Mr Stokes said.
"But we're talking about bashing up brown people and defaming them. This isn't politics, this is terrorism."
Read more here.
Brian Stokes is particularly concerned about these two sites - Patriot Alliance Downunder and Red Watch NZ. And both sites have posted responses to this article - the Patriot Alliance Downunder here and Red Watch NZ here.
While there is quite a bit of content on these two sites that I find offensive and hateful, I do not agree with Stokes that these sites should be removed from the internet. The community needs to be aware that these views exist in Australian and New Zealand society and work to counter them. Simply shutting these sites down and pushing these views further underground doesn't help anyone. I also think that to describe these sites as "terrorism" is an unnecessarily extreme. These sites are many things, but they are not terrorism. This growing trend of labeling anything we don't agree with as "terrorism" does nothing to further debate and discussion in this country.
However, the Sydney Morning Herald is correct in making this observation:
Both blogs appear to violate Blogger's user agreement, particularly Red Watch NZ.
Blogger's terms of service reads: "Member agrees not to transmit through the Service any unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature. Member further agrees not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation."
Accordingly, Blogger is free to make a business decision to remove these sites. Such a decision would not be censorship as has not come from the government. There is nothing that compels individuals, organisations or businesses to allow all speech - and nor should there be - but the state should allow all speech to be heard. It is for that reason that I am concerned by these comments reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:
"The Racial Discrimination Act [federal legislation] and Anti-Discrimination Act [state legislation] both prohibit racial vilification. It doesn't make that a criminal offence, but it does make it unlawful for a person to do an act which is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group. As long as that act is done because of the person's race," he said.
I am not convinced that these sites are a violation of Australian law, but I am of the view that these sites should not violate Australian law. Australian law should not suppress speech; such suppression does nothing to promote the tolerance and understanding we all crave. You don't convince people that they are wrong by trying to shut them up. You need to hear them, talk to them, and allow society to debate the issues.
