Hate being expressed more often

TRUMP’S ELECTION ‘AN ENABLING FORCE’ FOR HATE: U.S. SCHOLAR

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter may have provided the combustion for the explosion of hateful views, but more online policing isn’t the solution, says a leading scholar on the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.

“Policing the internet is extremely difficult because it’s an open source,” says Stephen D. Smith, a professor at the University of Southern California who is also executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation, and holds the UNESCO chair on genocide education.

“It feels like that’s coming a little too late because the behaviour is now established ... We aren’t going to be able to roll that back.”

Instead, Smith believes educators have an obligation to help students develop new skills aimed at recognizing and responding to online hatred.

“A literacy hasn’t really developed within this generation on how to deal with this,” says Smith, who was to deliver a lecture on the topic Wednesday at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “It’s still an experiment. We’re only 10 years into this.”

While the internet can provide a healthy marketplace for ideas, too often it devolves into an ugly echo chamber for like-minded people, he says.

“What we have is a lot of opinion and a lot of online yelling ... but very little dialogue,” Smith says. “That polarization is part of the combustion. The more polarized people become, the more they proliferate that point of view within their own group.”

The election of U.S. President Donald Trump — dubbed the first Twitter president — has exacerbated the problem, Smith says.

“There’s no question that what has happened with the political system in the United States, with the election of Donald Trump, has been an enabling force for those who feel they can now say things that are hateful and hurtful and, in some situations, violent,” he says.

“That’s deeply troubling.”