Online bravado thrives despite attempts to curb abundant e-hatemongers

KLAIPEDA - While Norway continues to mourn and investigate the loss of 68 compatriots killed on the island of Utoya, in the extensive coverage of the massacre in the Lithuanian online media, you could have stumbled upon a handful of postings under these stories, marveling and admiring the insanity of the killer, Anders Brevik.

With the numbers of freaks, haters, outcasts and mentally retarded people out there, they are probably no surprise, as Lithuania has been a free country for over 20 years, guaranteeing the greatest right to its citizens, the freedom of speech.
“No, it is not necessarily the commentators that belong to the groups. In most cases of online hate [speech], inadequate reactions and enmity, online hatemongers are respectable white-collar persons that you would never suspect of ever bad-mouthing anything, even online,” says psychologist Vaidas Markauskas.

Freedom of speech, even in the old Western European democracies, is not endless, curbing, as a rule, hatred and enmity, in the digital world as well. Lithuania, in the sense of accountability for the online slander and enmity, reminds one of a lawless, cruel jungle, where everyone, even those able to defend themselves in court if they are mistreated in real life, can be unstoppably trampled, smeared and cursed online. Certainly, in 99 percent of the cases, the faceless slanderers and haters would never be brought to court, or even prosecuted for the online bravado.

Are the malicious and animosity-instigating Internet comments, like those following Brevik’s eerie rampage, lonely and scarce manifestations of Lithuania’s Internet lunatics? If you took a much closer scrutiny to them, you would likely be shocked, realizing that they teem in the online world.

Does anyone need more examples, that often pinpoint not to single lunatics, but, even more terrifyingly, to well-thought out campaigns of hatred to certain social groups? “All Jews are cry-babies. They would shut up if Hitler brought them back to the gas chambers. The world needs Hitler again to do the cleansing job,” says a comment under an article about three Nazi flags that were hoisted in celebration of Hitler’s birthday on April 20th in Lithuania’s second largest city of Kaunas.
“Expel dirty Roma people out of Lithuania. If the Lithuanian government does not drive them away, Lithuanian citizens will do it!” fumes another online commentator.

“All sleazy fags have to be slain like filthy rats. If I saw a homo talking to my son, I would strangle him with my own hands. Queers need to get out of Lithuania and go to Brussels or Amsterdam,” another Web hooligan cries out.
Why is online hate speech flourishing in such a small country like Lithuania? Can these malicious comments be attributed to a post-Soviet society, breathing with anger even in the third decade of independence? Are local criminal justices doing enough to clamp down on Internet hooligans?

The topic in the Lithuanian public and criminal justices often goes unheeded, allowing online slanderers and haters to be flourishing until recently.
“Although the Lithuanian Criminal Codex includes sufficient law provisions to prosecute instigators of hate and enmity, these provisions have been largely ignored by criminal judges,” says former Vilnius County prosecutor Vitoldas Maslauskas. According to Maslauskas, most law enforcement officials, ranging from high-level prosecutors to ordinary investigators, turn a blind eye to the practice of Web hate speech for one simple reason: criminal judges are swamped under real-life infringements and do not have time to chase down Internet bashers who, as a result, go untouched online.

“I am not aware of any prosecutor who, in the defense of public interest, would launch a criminal investigation into illicit activities when there are no obvious victims,” Maslauskas admitted to The Baltic Times.
Psychologist Markauskas says that nasty Internet commentators do not surprise him. “Obviously, they reflect all abscesses of our society. Many people are still stricken by the economic hardships and long unheeded social problems, therefore, they look out for possibilities to vent their anger, choosing some vulnerable social groups like, for example, Jews, gays or Roma people, as their targets. Sadly, Lithuanian authorities unheeding the online assaults encourage a sense of impunity. The haters and slanderers are not necessarily unhappy or psychologically unstable people. Many of them are respectable white-collar people,” Markauskas maintained to The Baltic Times.

However, things seem to be slowly changing for the better, as people who engage in hate speech are being muzzled more often. The Lithuanian non-governmental organization Tolerant Youth Association (TYA) is slowly but surely helping to harness the online bravado. The organization is the first in the country to counter-address the online hate, in most cases, against gay people.

The TYA’s existence is possible thanks to the European Union, whose financing makes up a considerable part of the association’s budget.
Some human rights’ activists, however, argue that its efforts are not enough to tackle the issue, while radicals point the finger at the Lithuanian Constitution: “Brussels’ tolerasts [the word bears a derogatory phonetic resemblance to the word pederasts] need to shut up, as they violate the constitutional right of freedom of speech!”

“Sometimes we are considered wrongly to be a gay-rights organization, because in Lithuania encouraging tolerance is most often related to tolerance towards gay people. However, it is a wrong perception of our organization and its focus,” says Arturas Rudomanskis, chairman of the association. “In reality, we are working in a much larger spectrum of human rights and fighting against anti-Semitism, xenophobia and homophobia. However, gay people are getting more conscious in Lithuania and rebut the online haters more and more often,” he emphasized to The Baltic Times.
The TYA chairman says that the association has been actively carrying out various tolerance-inducing projects since the establishment of the association in 2005, but only in recent years has it been fighting against the practice of online hate speech.

The association has initiated over 60 pre-trial investigations this year into cases instigating hate and enmity: “It represents a rise of nearly double compared to last year’s figure of 30-plus-something cases,” says Rudomanskis.
“Until last year, we would point out online hate-mongers to prosecutors. This year, however, we changed our tactics by creating an autonomous system, allowing people to file complaints against online bashers directly to the Prosecutor’s Office. This has undoubtedly worked out well, as conscious people extensively report hate cases to prosecutors,” Rudomanskis emphasized.

Thanks to the efforts of the Tolerant Youth Association, the online slanderers mentioned in the beginning of the story have been traced, prosecuted, and punished. Only a few years ago, it is likely that they would have escaped the law. However, the prosecuted haters still make up just the tip of the iceberg.
On a courtroom bench, those dragged out from the online vastness by the Tolerant Youth Association whimper not that much out of shame as of disbelief that they have been nailed. As the psychologist pointed out, they appear to be quite decent people.

The man instigating hate against Roma people turned out to be a 28-year-old manager of a company in the city of Utena in northeast Lithuania. The District Court of Utena ruled that the man incited hate against Roma people and instigated to discriminate against them on the basis of their ethnicity. In his affidavit, the manager admitted the wrong-doing and tried to justify his act by arguing that he had only voiced his opinion. He received a fine of 1,300 litas (roughly 400 euros).
In such cases, local courts often seize the offenders’ computers as the tools of crime. The Utena District Court decided, however, not to confiscate the manager’s computer.

A 36-year-old inhabitant of the town of Anyksciai, who had urged to have “all gays” slain in an online response to a story about the first-ever Lithuanian gay pride parade in May 2010, whimpered at the District Court of Anyksciai, explaining that he had merely intended to express his discontent against the gay march. The judge was not impressed and punished the gay-basher with a fine of nearly 400 euros.

District prosecutor Vigandas Jurevicius admitted the case was the first of “its kind” in his career.
“I launched the investigation following a complaint by the Tolerant Youth Association. To be honest, had it not been for the complaint, I would have not sought prosecution, as it is simply impossible to keep track of the post flow on the Internet,” the prosecutor acknowledged to The Baltic Times.

In the meantime, TYA chairman Arturas Rudomanskis notes that the number of Internet surfers who report online slanderers is increasing and calls for a “more substantial” involvement of Lithuanian criminal justices against online hate speech. “Actually, we have just started the fight,” he says. “We are far from seeing any major breakthrough just yet. However, I see much more support in Lithuanian society and in the media for online perpetrators of hate to be addressed in the full force by the law.”
According to Rudomanskis, online hate speech cases that reach the courts break down as follows: 70 percent of the cases are related to hate against homosexuals, and the rest are equally split between anti-Semitic and xenophobic abuse. “Obviously, Lithuania remains one of the most homophobic countries in the European Union. This is directly reflected in Internet posts,” Rudomanskis notes.

TYA has succeeded in shutting down a gay hate-laden Web site www.antipederastija.info, set up by a member of an ultranationalist Lithuanian organization, as well as its Facebook page filled with anti-gay slurs.
Is there any way to substantially decrease online hatred and promote tolerance? “We can tackle the intolerance by educating our people and carrying out prevention programs,” says Zita Zamzickiene, the Lithuanian ombudsman for Journalism Ethics. “We have to admit that there are many angry people in Lithuania,” said Zamzickiene. “This is partly due to our recent heritage that goes back to the Soviet era. Homosexuals and ethnic minorities, unfortunately, fall in the category of people who most often become a punching bag,” the ombudsman said to The Baltic Times.

Obviously, journalists can play a key role in curbing Internet slanderers by educating the population and promoting universal human values such as tolerance. For a small country like Lithuania that is still suffering from the post-Soviet syndrome, it may be an issue of utmost priority.

For some, Internet comments, even the ugliest ones, encourage one taking a researcher’s stance in trying to understand them and their posts. Aurimas Svedas, a historian by profession, recently published an e-book, “Lithuanian’s Self-portrait and Intellectual Provocation,” which focused exclusively on online comments and their posts.
“Obviously, there is an abundance of negative emotions out there on the Internet,” concludes Svedas.

“We can call our history of the 20th century as a history of constant stress. A man, experiencing stress, as a rule, is not the happiest man. There could be another explanation for the online hate and instigating enmity: we are members of a young state, Lithuania, and young people often experience emotional storms. For some, comments in the public Internet space, alas, serve as an effective self-therapy in deliberately spreading and instigating aggression,” the book’s author says.

Svedas also points out that many commentators not only pour out their anger online, but show themselves as patriots, caring for the country’s destiny and the current life. “When public state authorities and institutions do not respond to their concerns, they go online, trying to defend their values themselves. The line between their expressed opinion and the supposed instigation for enmity and hate is often very slim,” he notes.