Tight Knit Virtual Community of Italian Neo-Nazis

Facebook has always been seen as the ultimate source for social networks. Groups can be made discussing a wide variety of topics from sports, to politics, to random inside jokes among friends. Lately, it seems that Facebook can be used for hateful groups as well. In an article entitled, Facebook Pulls Italian Neo-Nazi Pages After Outcry, it discusses seven different group pages, established in Italy, with names advocating violence towards gypsies that were shut down after a very big up cry by many different sources. Shimon Samuels of the Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center believes that Facebook should create technology to filter out “hate speech.” He said, “It's not a new thing -- it's happened before, it's even happened before on Facebook. We are not surprised this group of really marginal Italian neo-Nazis have taken advantage of it.” Facebook says that they do not prescreen content but they do have a time looking for user violations of racism or other objectionable material.

Many times in class we have discussed social networks and communities. But never in our discussions, not once, was a “bad” social community brought up. Every time we talk about a community, it is always seen as normal people trying to connect to someone else or trying to feel a part of a group. I just found it interesting that there are social communities that people would find objectionable. And yes, these Italian neo-Nazis do fit the description of a viable social community. The members all had a common idea passes among them. Seeing as I never went to the groups homepage I cannot confirm this but there may have been a significant amount of interaction between the members. Probably most of them felt part of a group trying to achieve a specific goal. It is just interesting to think that virtual social communities can be a good thing or they may be a bad thing. The internet is a very open thing that people can virtually create anything on. Who are we to say that there cannot be a nice, social community of neo-Nazis discussing their views? (And yes, there is sarcasm in that statement)