Archive/File: orgs/canadian/canadian-jewish-congress/marches-to-modems/mtm-003-00
Last-Modified: 1997/03/30

3. THE TOOLS

The organizers of hatred have traditionally relied on the
same tools used by political activists everywhere - fresh
recruits to provide a pool of cheap labor, and whatever
communication devices are at hand and affordable. In the
past those communication devices have included the flyers
and leaflets delivered anonymously on car windshields or
doorsteps, rallies and demonstrations to attract media
attention and provide members with a sense of identity,
purpose and accomplishment, newsletters, magazines,
newspapers and even books. Hatemongers were quick to seize
on the telephone as both an organi7ing tool (e.g. setting up
"telephone trees" to mobilize membership) and as a
propaganda tool.

In Metro Toronto John Ross Taylor set up a nakedly
antisemitic "hotline" using a cheap answering machine and an
ordinary phone line. Hauled before a Canadian Human Rights
Commission and ordered to cease transmitting hate messages,
Taylor continued and was found guilty of Contempt of Court
and ordered jailed for one year.

By the early nineties hate organizers had seized upon the
spread of a new technology, commercial voice mail, to refine
the hotline propaganda technique - partly to cut costs but
also to hinder host identification.

But now the key propagandists have seized on a new tool -
The Internet. In this section we'll look at some of the
issues raised by the hatemongers' embrace of this new
technology. We'll also examine the recruitment, use and
abuse of one of the hate movement's (former) brightest new
"tools" of the decade, university student Elizabeth Moore.

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