Patrik Olsson

Cyberhate: the globalization of hate

Increasingly, scholars are examining the ways in which the Internet allows the hate movement to retrench and reinvent itself as a viable collective. The many electronic means available to the movement – blogs, newsgroups, ’zines, etc. – allow an ease of communication and dissemination of their views never before possible. While there are obvious points of convergence across the various Klan groups, or identity churches, or skinhead organizations, the hate movement has historically been varied and, in fact, fractured. Internet communication facilitates the creation of the collective identity that is so important to movement cohesiveness. Clearly, this has strengthened the domestic presence of these groups in countries like the United States, Germany and Sweden. Yet relatively less attention has been paid to the way in which the Web facilitates the consolidation of a global movement. Internet communication knows no national boundaries. Consequently, it allows the hate movement to extend its collective identity internationally, thereby facilitating a potential ‘global racist subculture’. It is this process that we seek to uncover in this paper, with an eye to thinking about ways to intervene so as to weaken the impact.

Trafficking, Child Soldiers and Globalization of the Legal Field

In recent decades, most societies around the world have undergone a profound transformation, in the form of globalization, involving a dramatic increase in international mobility and transnational interactions, and in the ability to rapidly access information through new and innovative technologies. The impact of the globalization process on former totalitarian states has been enormous from a socio-legal perspective considering that total state control over domestic issues and the rule of law can now be challenged by people and organizations across the globe, and national borders have in a way disappeared given the increasing interaction between people. In the current climate, domestic human rights transgressions gain immediate attention worldwide through the internet or other media in ways that were not possible a few decades ago (Santos, 2002, p. 196).