Online, Offline, and Hate Crime

Indoctrination and recruitment in the digital age

An exploration of the features of offline recruitment tactics for organized hate groups, how those existent features change when introduced to digital and online spaces, and what new features arise because of the change in medium.

This thesis was written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts offered by Bard College at Simon’s Rock, completed and published in 2019.

It’s not uncommon for a conversation, comment, or personal article to be shared around without the context of when it was written. A combination of partial anonymity and the shrinking of perceived distance between any two internet-capable people, combined with the longevity of these messages (in that they won’t disappear of their own accord or through natural processes as an analog recording would), is that a very personal plea can be repeated again and again and again. In a page on a personal website, a blog post, or a statement on a more conversational social media platform, the recipient is not always known, as with any offline publication. Where there exist style guides for newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasts, the combination of little-to-no regulation in early digital media and the initial regional limits on online communication meant that other actors online were likely communicating to peers, conversational norms were an act of social consensus constructed much like regional dialects. The standard drifted to anywhere from amicable to hostile, without any quality control serving as barriers to entry. When it came to rhetorical pieces, with the intent to change a mind or draw out allies in any context, word choice and sentence structure were often over-personal. This lent a sense of false closeness between the speaker and recipient; instead of making sweeping statements about morality or ethics pleas were written asking you, personally, to evaluate your position. The rhetoric wasn’t inherently successful, this way, just as in an offline setting no amount of fake camaraderie and false closeness can replace a poorly structured argument, but freely posting it as an individual to an individual still comes across as more personal.

Sabin 2019