The alt-right movement – known for white supremacist views and its overtly racist ideology – has gained traction during the divisive US presidential race. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA.
A Nazi-themed Facebook group that called for the “execution” of Jews and African Americans has led to the expulsion of five Boulder, Colorado, high school students in an unusual case of “alt-right” hate speech spreading to teens in a liberal city.
About 15 students participated in a “4th Reich’s Official Group Chat” on Facebook, according to a Boulder police report, which said members discussed “killing all Jews and [N-words]” and encouraged each other to “recruit more members so they can complete their ‘mission’.”
Members wrote messages championing “WHITE POWER!”, posted pictures of guns, called a firearm a “[N-word] BLASTER”, used derogatory terms for gay people, joked about “rape memes”, declared that they “must lynch the [N-words]”, and mocked Mexicans, copies of the group’s chats showed.
[…]
The Facebook group, first reported by the local Daily Camera newspaper, was discovered after one of its leaders allegedly committed suicide, reportedly to “show his allegiance to the [Nazi] party and the killing of Jewish people”, a police report said. Officers were also investigating reports that a Boulder Prep high school student was being “threatened and harassed” by classmates.
Participants gave themselves Nazi-themed nicknames, including the Fuhrer, Gruppenfuhrer and Sturmbannführer. They wrote of “the final solution” and the goal to “eradicate all lessers [sic]”, with some writing, “Let’s have fun killing jews” and “You can hang Jews on trees, shoot them right in the knees. Gas as many as you please.”
The students come from a number of local schools. Officials from Boulder Prep, a charter school, told police they had expelled five participants. Most of the students’ names were redacted in the report, except for three who are 18 years old.
Police ultimately decided not to press charges after determining that “there is no evidence or documentation to support there being any credible threat to any students”, officers wrote.
[…]
At least one student attempted to play down the seriousness of the group, with an officer saying “he informed me that the whole thing was ‘funny’ and he would not actually ever do any of those things”, the report said.
One mother was “visibly shaken by the conduct of her own son”, the report added.
It is unclear how long the Facebook group was running, whether other users ever reported the nature of group or whether the group was known to the social media company. Under Facebook’s community standards, “hate speech” is banned, including content that “attacks people” based on race, ethnicity, gender or other factors.
Facebook representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Everyone who is surprised by FB’s response, raise your hand! It’s no surprise that Germany is looking into making FB financially responsible for all the hate speech they allow to fester. All countries should do the same, as FB never stops talking about how they don’t condone this, don’t condone that, and never do one fucking thing. One of the 18 year olds involved said:
“They’re sorry that it got to this point,” Reynolds said. “They didn’t mean to hurt anybody’s feelings, it was just a joke that turned sour.”
No, they are not sorry it got to any point. Pretty sure they are sorry they got caught. This sort of open, hateful bigotry is not a game, and it is most certainly not a joke. It’s not fun. It’s young assholes like you who end up not having the spine to stand up and do right, so you just follow along in the wake of evil, being willingly led by the nose. FFS.
Via The Guardian and Atlanta Black Star.
A nice reminder that free speech is a good thing, but like all good things, too much of it is bad for you. I do not understand why USA as a whole has such trouble with grasping the concept of the need for moderating hate speech through laws.
Most (if not all, IANAL) european countries have laws moderating certain kinds of speech. We learned the hard way that without them things can get really ugly really fast. USA is learning now too, with Trump. I wonder if that lesson sticks.
These assholes would face criminal charges where I live. And while it would be nice if facebook stood up to their written principles for real and not only when it hurts their PR, this sort of speech should be prohibited by law. It has zero informative content and is harmful to society.
What? How? Why? Was he Jewish? Where’s the logic?
Because Hitler? Eh?
Related, albeit I don’t think this is the same group of bigots (the confusion is, in part, due to the same(?) photograph being used to illustrate both articles in the Grauniad), How British anti-racist group infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan:
Kinda OT, and kinda not. Seeing blf’s quote mentioning a Hope Not Hate reminded me. We had an anniversary a couple of weeks back; the Battle of Cable Street, for which H N H put up a web site which is worth a read.
and the goal to “eradicate all lessers [sic]”
I often have real trouble seeing anything superior about these self-styled ubermenschen. Usually they seem pretty indistinguishable from run of the mill assholes. I.e: “lesser than what?”
that the group is linked to stabbings of anti-fascists, Holocaust denial
How does that work? “That thing we are in favor of didn’t happen”?!? WFTfascists
At least they’re honest about why they are flying the confederate flag.
Marcus, “that thing we’re in favor of didn’t happen” is of course not an intellectually coherent position. It’s not supposed to be intellectually coherent. It’s what happens when bigoted assholes try to have their cake (“we hate lessers!”) and eat it (“but we’re nothing like those people who actually, you know, murdered lessers on a literally industrial scale! honest we’re not!”). It’s purely a propaganda gambit, never intended to ‘work’ on a rational/intellectual level.
Facebook doesn’t support its own community standards?
BIG surprise…
They’ll allow misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, racist groups to post ANYTHING, but the second you joke about someone being a “fake goth” — and I think we all know who I’m referring to, here — you get banned.
“Community Standards” are a joke.
Only that Facebook thinks those rules don’t apply to them. Someone in a German magazine recently wrote an article about this and said we should just copyright the Holocaust and Holocaust denial. Because when Prada writes to FB that someone used their logo without permission, FB is quick to act. When someone reports Holocaust denial, that’s not against community standards, laws be damned.
I think countries need to hold FB accountable. A commercial webpage is liable when someone illegally posts copyrighted material, so they should be liable when someone posts something illegal and they don’t remove it as soon as it is reported.
rq #3
I’m now imagining all neo-Nazis doing a mass-suicide a la Judea People’s Front crack suicide squad to mark their loyalty to Hitler.
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Giliell #11
That’s a bit of a slippery slope. Imagine the Muslim countries demand to block all heresy on FB. FB could apply that rule within each country based on the location of the user as Google does, but that’s can be bypassed.
Essentially asking FB to be accountable is asking FB to dismantle all of its operation in any non-Western countries and be nationalized by the EU.
WMDKitty @10
I’ve often felt that expressing racist opinions is part of the actual community standards in many places. Not here, though. I don’t do Facebook, so no first-hand experience about it.
Comedy rule of thumb, ya little pissant: IF YOU HAVE TO SAY YOU’RE JOKING, IT’S NOT FUNNY!
Alexander Z
No, it’S asking FB to heed the laws of the countries it operates in.
Autocratic regimes and tyrannies already do what you’re afraid of. They simply shut down FB whenever they want to. The fight for freedom of speech and right to apostatsy are not going to be won by FB bravely defending rape threats, Holocaust denial and calls for the extinction of black people.
Seriously, why is “when you operate in a country and make money in a country you have to obey the laws, especially when the country in question is a democracy where said laws are the result of a democratic process” even controversial?
If FB gets informed about Holocaust denial in Germany and refuses to do anything about it then FB should be treated same as the publisher of a newspaper that prints Holocaust denial*.
*Outside of the frame of reporting on it, of course.
I’m with Giliell here. I think Germany is doing the right thing by considering financial penalties when FB refuses to apply their supposed standards, and breaks the law of that land.
I’m sick to death of hearing whatshisface talk about FB standards, because that’s all it is -- talk. They flat out refuse to do jack shit about hate speech, or death threats, or rape threats. Want to see them get upset? Post a photo of a mammogram, or a woman breastfeeding. Oh, then they’ll get off their arse. Or, you can call a known anti-transgender idiot a fake goth and have all the wrath of FB descend on you, but all the horrible, harmful damaging shit said about trans* people? Oh, that’s fine.
If the only way FB will actually apply their standards and obey laws is to penalize them financially, I’m all for it. It’s the only way they will listen, to hurt them in their money belt.
Giliell #15
That’s the point! Even with FB’s quisling attitude towards evil they still ignore local laws and the only thing a dictatorship can do is to ban FB entirely.
Can Germany, or any Western country, credibly promise that it will do likewise? Will the electorate accept that to ensure the rights of women and minorities the entire social network must be shutdown, if only briefly? Will politicians take that risk?
I’m not sure.
Why should Germany have to? Hit them financially until they comply with the law, just like we do with any other company.
I’m with Giliell and Caine on this. HOLD FACEBOOK ACCOUNTABLE.
Giliell #18
Yeah, about that:
Google once pissed off the Belgian newspapers with its Google News. The newspapers claimed that most people read only the excerpt, and by putting the excerpt in its news results Goggle was hurting the newspapers’ income. The local court sided with the newspapers and presented Google with the option of either removing the excerpts or paying the newspapers.
Google chose a third option -- to remove the Belgian newspapers entirely from its search engine. Clever, ain’t it?
This is why treating FB like any other company isn’t that easy. If you want to fight FB you better be prepared to live without FB entirely because it may be cheaper for FB to ditch Germany completely than to create a precedent.
BTW, the above mentioned Google thing ended after five years with a settlement of an (alleged) one-time payment of 5m€, Google keeping its news as is and the newspapers integrating AdSense into their websites.