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James Ledbetter and Katharine Mieszkowski

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Surfing for Hitler on the Internet

By Katharine Mieszkowski
Posted Monday, Aug. 9, 1999, at 6:05 PM ET

Hi Jim:

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Your theory that the Internet is the crack of the '90s is a keeper, if not a PhD dissertation waiting to happen. From Columbine to the recent Atlanta shootings, the Internet did it. Or, if it didn't exactly pull the trigger, it sure didn't tackle the gunman and restrain him. So goes the conventional wisdom: Day trading = death, and the like.

For the latest installment of the Internet as crack, see Susan Faludi's Newsweek column, "Rage of the American Male," where the computer is front-and-center in her portrait of the alienation of men in America, as exemplified by the Atlanta shooter, Mark Burton:

That culture holds up a frightening mirror. Reflected there is an image of a man in a room alone--isolated from his fellows, unneeded by his family, staring into a computer screen on which he seeks a disembodied fortune or, if that fortune fails, types a suicide note.

As I sit here in a room, staring into a computer screen (reading Faludi's piece online), isolated from my fellows, maybe I should be grateful that I have the Breakfast Table for a little human connection (or that I have two X chromosomes).

Murderous rampages not enough for you? How about Nazism? The section of the New York Times with Granger's line about how that the Internet is contributing to the demise of magazines also includes an intriguing piece of reporting about how the Internet pedals Nazi propaganda to Germans.

Amy Harmon's story "Internet Sale of Nazi Books in Germany Assailed" relates that Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com are drawing the ire of an L.A.-based anti-Semitism watchdog group for shipping Mein Kampf to Germany, where the book is banned. (In my edition, this story coincidentally appears right above an ad for a 30-day free trial of TheStreet.com, where they are presumably not selling Nazi literature, but may be implicitly promoting day trading, which, as we've seen above, is suspiciously connected to murderous mayhem in its own way, even though we're not sure exactly how.)

The best part of Harmon's story is this priceless detail: "The researcher who ordered Mein Kampf from Amazon received E-mail suggesting that he might also like White Power, by the American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, for instance." And if that isn't enough synergy for you, if you go to the pages for Mein Kampf on Amazon, as I did, you'll also find links to recommended Amazon auctions, including a collectible sign of Hitler photographed with two children and various commemorative stamps. You have to love shopping bots, always thinking ahead to your next purchase. "Gee, I didn't even know I needed a Hitler figurine, until I saw the link right there!"

Maybe the greatest irony of the Kuczynski piece on the declining influence of magazines is that the story is much more magazine-like than what you'd get from a newspaper like the Times, say, 15 years ago. It reads as a reportorial essay, in contrast to the Harmon story, which is much more of a straight newsy item.

Could it be that since there are so many other news sources (Internet, cable TV) newspapers are doing more and more magazine-style stories? Maybe next week's Times business section's lead media article should be about whether newspapers have become more like magazines in their struggle to maintain and build readership in these trying digital times.

In any case, I'm sure it's the Internet's fault.

Until tomorrow,
Katharine