Academic Papers

Originally appearing in 2019 in the now closed Social Overload Blog, which was formed by a group of feminist journalists. 

 

          Last night, minutes before I logged off for bed, a friend on Facebook told me about the shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. Instead of going to sleep, I searched news sites for information about it and was horrified when I saw that two mosques had been targeted.

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          As I closed off the feeds, I realized that while I was horrified, I was also resigned. My first thought was that this shouldn’t be happening in New Zealand…land of hobbits and beautiful vistas. My second thought was why wouldn’t it. We have entered a phase of our history where hate is spilling over borders and emboldening those radicals that were hiding in fear of being caught out.

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          But why are they being emboldened now? The simple answer is that there is a strong voice feeding their disillusionment. And it is not just hard core, right wingers who are spouting the hate,it is coming from the most powerful man in the free world, Donald Trump.

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          Every day, I am accosted by the anti-immigration, anti-POC, anti-LGBTQ+ that has become as common on social media as a vacation snapshot. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve cited sources calling out lies only to be told that I wasn’t American so I should shut up and stay in Canada.

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          However, there is one problem with this request…the hate that is being spewed in America is spilling over into other countries. And not just neighboring Canada. We see it everywhere in the world where there is access to social media and Donald Trump’s words.

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          Working with statistics, the FBI has seen an increase of hate crimes for the last three years, with an increase of 17% in 2017 (Barret, Devlin/Washington Post/2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hate-crimes-rose-17-percent-last-year-according-to-new-fbi-data/2018/11/13/e0dcf13e-e754-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.710981438735).

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          Worldwide, hate crimes are difficult to track as several countries do not have hate crime laws. In addition, only 40 countries reported their hate crime statistics, and in those 40 countries, not every state/province/etc reported. But what we see is an alarming number of hate crimes, with 5,843 hate crimes reported (OSCE/ODIHR, http://hatecrime.osce.org/2017-data). We are seeing the spill-over effect in countless events around the world, including this shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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          In Canada, my country, hate crimes increased by 47% in 2017; the highest ever seen since reporting began in 2009 (Grant, Tavie/The Globe and Mail/2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-hate-crimes-in-canada-rose-by-47-per-cent-last-year-statscan/).  And I have personally witnessed the verbal assault of many immigrants by white men, although I am positive that white women are also verbally assaulting minorities, I just haven’t witnessed it first hand.

But what does that have to do with Donald Trump?

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          The answer is that his words have emboldened the alt-right supremist and he has emboldened anyone who has prejudiced leanings (White, Jeremy B/Independent/2018, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-neo-nazi-white-supremacist-hate-groups-southern-poverty-law-centre-a8222351.html). In fact, going back to Christchurch, New Zealand, we can identify the spill over in the shooter’s own words. Taken directly from the shooter’s own manifesto, he writes, “Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump? As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure.”  (https://www.msn.com/en-ph/kids/other/new-zealand-shooters-manifesto-praises-trump/ar-BBUNXSE?li=BBr8Mkn).

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          And there it is. Donald Trump is a symbol of renewed white identity. His non-politically correct speeches excite the far alt-right. His slurs against immigrants, Muslims and people of color paint the backdrop of a Nazi rally. His defence of Nazis as “some very fine people” encourages the acts of hate perpetuated in the cause of stopping the “white genocide”, a common mantra spit out by those Nazi groups (Cose, Ellis/USA Today/2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/08/10/white-supremacists-neo-nazis-charlottesville-unite-right-rally-trump-column/935708002/).

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          Everywhere you look, from comment sections on news articles to Facebook pages, you can see the spill over of Trump’s hate. He has become that shining symbol and people over the world, those who are angry about their lot in life, are grasping at his red hat and chanting his name as they make their world white again.

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          But what can we really do about this?

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          The answer isn’t simple. While we need to address the hate crimes and their increase, we also need to hold politicians accountable for their rhetoric. President Trump, while not directly guiding these hate crimes, is throwing gasoline on an already uncontrollable fire. He knows what incites and he uses it very carefully. Politicians need to be held accountable for what they say and the repercussions of it.

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          In addition, it is time that social media sites become accountable for allowing hate speech on  their sites. The people arrested in the Christchurch, New Zealand used social media, and namely Facebook, as a tool to spread their message. Every day, there are hundreds of hate groups active on the social media giant and others like it.

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          However, when things get through, such as the 17 minutes of live footage of the shooting (Lutz, Eric/Vanity Fair/2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/03/how-new-zealand-christchurch-shooter-hijacked-social-media-hellscape-facebook-youtube), Facebook issues an apologetic, “my bad”. The platform that is supposed to bring us together, allows for rampant hate and discrimination. They allow for women to be sexually harassed (The Guardian/2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/05/facebook-bans-women-posting-men-are-scum-harassment-scandals-comedian-marcia-belsky-abuse). But they are not accountable for what they allow.

 

          By holding these two groups accountable, we may be able to curb the rise of hate crimes throughout the world. At the very least, we could minimize the range and speed of which their hate is spread.

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          Because this is not working. And my heart breaks for everyone affected by the shooting in Christchurch…we can do better…we need to do better.