Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:30:54 +0000

Eric Hickey is a professor in the department of criminology, California State University, Fresno.

Unlike the more common mass murderers in American society who usually are individually motivated by mental illness to kill, extremists have their own niche of chaos. To date, acts of hate murder (akin to random acts of hate violence where killing does not occur) are sporadically committed by only a handful of offenders yet they represent groups of individuals who share common hatred toward other groups based upon religious beliefs, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

What can be done to identify extremists who may be preparing to carry out acts of violence? We need to do a better job of infiltrating and monitoring their groups. Police often are aware of such individuals because they are vocal and do not hide their hate, and they often use the Internet or even hold public rallies to espouse their views. It’s during times of economic stress and social and political change that hate groups tend to attract those who feel marginalized or threatened.

In our democratic society we pride ourselves on being allowed the freedom to gather and espouse whatever we wish so long as we do not incite others to commit acts of violence. But we also, as a society, have the right to monitor such groups to ensure public safety.

The problem in doing that is we create a less democratic society. Or, we can provide more security for potential targets and institute gun control measures like those in Canada and England. Neither of these options, however, will do much to stop violent acts, even though they give us a greater sense of security.

Another approach is to create more public awareness of these groups and solicit public assistance in identifying anyone who may be at risk for acting out. But these “big brother” campaigns serve mostly to heighten public fears but ultimately do little to stop hate crimes. Watchfulness and adherence to rule of law is really the only way to keep hate-based crimes to a minimum. One only has to look around the world to see far worse situations.

What Speech Laws Say