The Freepers and the Electronic Hate Megaphone

Until this morning I was, I have to admit, blissfully unaware of the existence of the Free Republic Web site. Now, I know it is an online message board that purports to be the meeting place for "independent, grass-roots conservatism" on the Web, and, that its members are nicknamed "Freepers" -- which may be the creepiest new media word to enter the lexicon since we the tweeple met Twitter.

I also learned that some of the Freepers have a serious -- and baffling -- problem with 11-year-old Malia Obama wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign on it, and that this sparked a series of incredibly insulting and offensive commentary on the board.

Knowing what to do about hate speech on the Internet is tough. Pay too much attention to it and you risk giving a megaphone to a relatively obscure and not very significant fringe group. (A message board, huh? What, all the bulletin boards already full? All the cool names for your chat room already taken?)

So, maybe the solution is to ignore it -- and it is tempting to just avoid that murky-looking water altogether. The problem, though, is that by and large we already have been ignoring hate speech on the Internet and it hasn't gone away. Instead it's spread, with the number of active hate groups rising from 602 to 926 between 2000 and 2008.

I suppose the best we can do is to condemn the Freepers, but even as we do we risk raising their profile. And, frankly, I have to wonder if -- when some of the Freepers decided to make a child the target of a bizarre, racist attack -- that wasn't exactly what they were hoping for.