Published: Sunday, September 27, 2009

By Michael Gerson

THE transformation of Germany in the 1920s and ’30s from the nation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to the nation of Joseph Goebbels is a specter that haunts, or should haunt, every nation.

The triumph of Nazi propaganda in this period is the subject of a remarkable exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which I serve as a member of the governing board.

Germany in the 1920s was a land of broad literacy and diverse politics. There were 146 daily newspapers in Berlin alone. In the course of a few years, a fringe party was able to define a nation by scapegoating internal enemies, elevate a messianic leader and keep the populace docile by using hatred while the state committed unprecedented crimes.

Adapting new technology was central to propaganda’s achievement. The Nazis pioneered voice amplification at rallies, the distribution of recorded speeches, and the sophisticated targeting of poster art toward groups and regions.

But, radio proved to be the most powerful tool. The Nazis worked with radio manufacturers to provide Germans with free or low-cost “people’s receivers.” This new technology was disorienting, for the first time taking the public sphere into private places — homes, schools and factories.

“If you tuned in,” said Steve Luckert, curator of the exhibit, “you heard strangers’ voices all the time.

“The style had a heavy emphasis on emotion, tapping into a mass psychology. You were bombarded by information that you were unable to verify or critically evaluate.”

The Nazis would have found much to admire in the adaptation of today’s Internet to messages of neo-Nazism, white supremacism and Holocaust denial.

But, the challenge of Internet technology is not merely from the isolated subcultures of hatred. It is a disorienting atmosphere in which the rules of discourse are unclear, and emotion — often expressed in CAPITAL LETTERS — is primary. User-driven content on the Internet can consist of bullying, conspiracy theories and racial prejudice.

The freedom of the medium paradoxically encourages authoritarian impulses to intimidate and silence others. The least responsible contributors see their darkest tendencies reinforced, while serious voices are driven away by the ugliness.

Ethicist Clive Hamilton calls this a “belligerent brutopia.”

“The Internet should represent a great flourishing of democratic participation,” he said. “But it doesn’t. ... The brutality of public debate on the Internet is due to one fact above all — the option of anonymity.

“The belligerence would not be tolerated if the perpetrators’ identities were known because they would be rebuffed and criticized by those who know them. Free speech without accountability breeds dogmatism and confrontation.”

This destructive disinhibition is disturbing in itself. It also allows hatred to invade respected spaces on the Internet, gaining for hate-based ideas an aura of legitimacy.

After the Bernard Madoff scandal broke, for example, major newspaper sites included user-generated content such as “find a Jew who isn’t crooked,” and “just another Jew money changer thief” — comments that newspapers would not have printed as letters to the editor. Postings of this kind regularly attack immigrants and blacks, recycle centuries of anti-Semitism and deny the events of the Holocaust.

Legally restricting such content is impossible, apart from prosecuting direct harassment and threats against individuals or incitement to violence. In America, the First Amendment protects blanket statements of bigotry.

But, this does not mean that Web sites, including Facebook and YouTube, are required to provide forums for bullies and bigots. As private institutions, they are free to set rules. This is not censorship; it is definition of standards.

Some online institutions, such as The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, screen user comments before posting them. Others, such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, rely on readers to notify them of objectionable content — a questionable strategy because of the numbness to abusiveness and hatred on the Internet.

Whatever the method, no reputable institution should allow itself to be used as the equivalent of the wall of a public bathroom stall.

The exploitation of technology by hatred will never be eliminated. But hatred must be confined to the fringes of our culture, as the hatred of other times should have been.

Michael Gerson is a syndicated columnist. Write to him at the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071. E-mail: michaelgerson@cfr.org.