Michael McDowell: Online anonymity propels poisonous opinion

Louis Theroux has started a series on BBC TV on the current wave of political extremism in the United States called “Forbidden America”. His programme on Sunday was as shocking as it was compelling. It featured rabid racism being propagated across American social media, and overt online hate mongering of a kind and intensity that is difficult to credit.

Theroux’s laid back and almost disengaged laconic interviewing style may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I rather like it because by refraining from confronting and challenging his interviewees, Theroux puts bigots and racists at their ease and encourages them to drop their guards and inhibitions.

Then the horrible truth emerges from the mouths of young men who are spreading a supremacist gospel of hatred and fear. Anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia and race hatred are the coinage of a new and hyperactive Alt Right movement that has real traction among young white middle-class males.

They believe that the real America is white America and is under an immediate and existential threat from a coalition of Jews, Blacks, liberals, Muslims, immigrants, gays and leftists. They do not encourage women to join them because women spell trouble for movements such as theirs. They are strongly of the view that women’s place is at home, and even wonder whether it is right to afford women a vote.

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Taken in conjunction with another recent BBC production, a podcast entitled The Coming Storm which examines the Q-Anon conspiracy network which has gained traction with an alarming number of Americans, a pretty toxic picture is emerging of the current US political scene.

Internet communication

Admittedly, Theroux’s main interviewees on Sunday’s programme, one Nicholas Fuentes and one Anthime Gionet (aka “Baked Alaska”) are off the Richter scale of extremism compared with known members of Europe’s far-right. But the amazing thing is the ease with which they can freely disseminate their hatred, using a combination of First Amendment freedom of speech rights and the darker sides of internet communication. In effect they have their own America-wide TV channels.

They can freely disseminate their hatred, using a combination of First Amendment freedom-of-speech rights and the darker sides of internet communication

The Alt Right is on the march. And the January 6th, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill seems like a harbinger of worse to come. Trump is well on the way to seizing outright control of the Republican party with the support of its National Committee. He has committed to pardoning the Capitol insurrectionists if re-elected. Senator Mitch McConnell is mounting last-ditch resistance to a Trump takeover of the GOP but there are good reasons to doubt his political and financial capacity to succeed.

Slightly less extreme bodies such as the Trump-supporting Turning Point USA are organising among young white Americans and building a large network of Alt-Right students on campuses right across the US.

President Joe Biden is in political trouble at home and abroad. The Democrats seem set to lose control of both Houses in Congress in the forthcoming mid-term elections, barring some political miracle.

America has been here before. One need only read Pegram’s One Hundred Per Cent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s to appreciate that white supremacism and racism is historically ever-present like volcanic magma beneath a thin crust of what passes for American normality.

Threats to liberty

Klan membership is reasonably estimated as being between two and four million in the early 1920s according to Pegram. Catholics, Jews and Blacks were the targets then. Oddly, conservative Catholics and Jews are now frequently aligned with Trump.

Even attempts by social media to prevent their misuse as platforms for racism, disinformation and extremism are portrayed as threats to liberty.

Trump's proposed visit to a Viktor Orban-supporting body in Hungary hardly augurs well for moderation in central Europe

So far, that kind of extremism has not caught on to any significant extent in Ireland and it is hemmed-in in most parts of Europe. But can we be confident that the politics of polarisation will not spread here? Trump’s proposed visit to a Viktor Orban-supporting body in Hungary hardly augurs well for moderation in central Europe.

The internet is like a nuclear reactor; it needs control rods to contain the powerful chain-reaction that lies in its core. Left to itself, it will bring breakdown and deadly contamination. When information and misinformation become indistinguishable, social consensus and cohesion are greatly imperilled.

This newspaper doesn’t print anonymous letters on the Letters Page. The old signature formula “Name and Address With The Editor” is generally prohibited. Does it make sense to freely publish anonymous online comment and disinformation, frequently puerile and/or extreme, in terms that a self-respecting newspaper simply would not permit in its print edition’s letters to the editor?

There is a case for ending anonymity in access to publication online. The ballot box is the appropriate constitutional place for democratic secrecy and anonymity. Elsewhere, should we not exercise our freedom of expression publicly and accountably?