Racism on the Internet

The internet can be regarded as a mirror of the variety of interests, attitudes and needs of human kind. Propaganda and disinformation in that way have to be part of it, whether they struggle for something good or evil. But the classifications do no longer function.
During the last years the internet opened up a new source for racism as it can be difficult to find the person who gave a certain message into the net. The anarchy of the internet provides racists with a lot of possibilities to reach people which they do not possess in other media, for legal and other reasons.

In the 1980s racist groups used mailboxes to communicate on an international level; the first ones to do so were supposedly the Ku Klux Klan and mailboxes like the Aryan Nations Liberty Net. In the meantime those mailboxes can be found in the internet. In 1997 about 600 extreme right websites were in the net, the number is growing, most of them coming from the USA. The shocking element is not the number of racist pages, because still it is a very small number compared to the variety of millions of pages one can find in this media, it is the evidence of intentional disinformation, the language and the hatred that makes it dangerous.
A complete network of anti-racist organizations, including a high number of websites are fighting against racism. For example:

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x32/xr3257.html

http://www.aranet.org/

http://www.freespeech.org/waronracism/files/allies.htm
http://www.nsdapmuseum.com
http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Racism.asp

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The Catholic Church

In the beginnings of Christianity most people were illiterate. Therefore the Bible had to be transformed into pictures and symbols; and not only the stories but also the moral duties of everybody. Images and legends of the Saints turned out as useful models for human behavior - easy to tell and easy to understand.
Later, when the crusades began, the Christian Church used propaganda against Muslims, creating pictures of evil, pagan and bloodcurdling people. While the knights and others were fighting abroad, people in Europe were told to pray for them. Daily life was connected to the crusades, also through money-collections - more for the cause of propaganda than for the need of money.
During the period of the Counter-Reformation Catholic propaganda no longer was against foreigners but turned against people at home - the Protestants; and against their publications/books, which got prohibited by starting the so-called index. By then both sides were using disinformation for black propaganda about the other side.

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Internet Software Consortium

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the production of high-quality reference implementations of Internet standards that meet production standards. Its goal is to ensure that those reference implementations are properly supported and made freely available to the Internet community.

http://www.isc.org

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Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is Russian President, Boris Yeltsin's. Until his appointment as Prime Minister in August 1999, he was nearly unknown. He had been working for the Soviet Security Service, the KGB. In July 1998 he took charge of the Federal Security Service, FSB. In March 1999 he became secretary of the Security Council. He has no experience in being at all. Where he demonstrated power until now is the Chechnya War. Soon after the beginning of this 2nd war in the region his popularity rose.

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