Essay 4709

From The Chicago Tribune…

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Illegal abroad, hate Web sites thrive here

1st Amendment lets fringe groups use U.S. sites to spread their message around the world

By Russell Working, Tribune staff reporter

It might come as a surprise to the soldiers who defeated fascism in World War II, but the United States has become a refuge for Nazism and other brands of extremism over the last decade.

On the Internet, that is.

Hundreds of foreign-language Web sites -- some tied to the Chicago area -- are using U.S. servers to dodge laws abroad that prohibit Holocaust denial or racist and anti-Semitic speech. Run by hosts in the United States, they thrive out of reach of prosecutors in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.

Locally, the connections range from Radio Islam, a hate site inspired by a Moroccan exile in Sweden, to a site created by a former Cicero man who was extradited to Germany for Holocaust denial. One Chicago server company is home to as many as 17 hate sites, eight of them European, a watchdog group said.

In the past, Berlin has estimated that computers in the United States host 800 such sites in the German language alone, although its embassy in Washington says no current count is available.

The noxious sites, often filled with anti-Semitism or crude ranting about blacks and immigrants, spotlight a trans-Atlantic divide over hate speech. Many European countries have criminalized Holocaust denial or racist speech, while the 1st Amendment grants Nazis and other fringe groups the freedom to spread their message in the U.S.

“Essentially, our view is it’s better to be able to confront their ideas and see what they’re up to,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization. “But most Europeans regard the Americans as insane on this point. They really do.”

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