Anonymity Online And The New KKK
Virginia and much of the South were once awash with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Membership in the 1920’s was estimated at 4 to 5 million or about 15% of the nation’s eligible population. My grandfather was a member and my cousin still has his white hooded robe. This was an organization that found its justification in Biblical interpretations and an assumption of righteousness. And in the anonymity of darkness and those hoods, they struck out at those who were different, those for whom they held bias, intolerance, and discrimination. With today’s new culture and technology, there are still those anonymous haters, who now float around the web, posting hate, ignorance, and wrapping their righteousness in the robes of their own type of Biblical interpretation, and spouting their own bias, intolerance, and discrimination – aloof to rational argument – certainly not open-minded, certainly not available to reason or Socratic debate. They ride popular extremism and are emboldened in their...