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Comment by hawkharris | Hacker News Reader

Hate speech can be a good thing. When someone verbalizes hatred, he or she gives us a chance to push back and question underlying prejudices. This is always better than a heckler's veto of racist or sexist ideas. Drowning out the hurtful speech doesn't address the root causes of ignorance, fear and anger.

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Although I think you're right, that is definitely not what's happening on Stormfront. There's nobody "pushing back", just racist people talking together.

Yeah, I agree with this. On the internet it's so easy to get sucked into an echo chamber and completely cloister oneself in some belief system or another. Then every other perspective is the foolish mainstream media who are only there to feed the sheeple or some agenda of the enemy. I think these echo chambers breed/cater to a sort of messianic paranoia.

"On the internet it's so easy to get sucked into an echo chamber and completely cloister oneself in some belief system or another."

This being posted on Hacker News is pretty breathtaking :-)

> There's nobody "pushing back", just racist people talking together.

Not quite, "... Two weeks ago, the boneheads thought they’d got their man. For a decade, the pseudonym “Andy Fleming” has been troubling Australia’s far right and neo-Nazis – “boneheads” to their opponents – by writing about them. His blog Slack Bastard carries the work of a man who has acquired enormous amounts of intelligence, so much so that it rivals police knowledge. ..." [0]

[0] 'Hunting Australia’s neo-Nazis' Martin McKenzie-Murray ~ http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/society/2014/04/05/h...

I bet there's a handful of good trolls on the site too.

Don't forget that organizations like Stormfront give people purpose, something people often struggle to find in places like Montana.

We all want to be part of something bigger. Some turn to open source, contribute to the community. Others build wild conspiracy theories and focus their energies in that.

> give people purpose, something people often struggle to find in places like Montana.

I'm not sure what this means?

Suburban or rural communities more specifically where finding people to collaborate on projects can be harder, especially for things that are more of a niche interest.

In a place like New York City where literally everything is going on, you can throw a rock and hit something interesting. In rural Montana your options are severely limited, and if you're not happy with the local offering, or what you can sponge off the internet, you're going to be pretty lonely.

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