Internet Comments Turn Violent, Racist After Bombing Suspect’s Arrest: Free Speech or Hate Speech?

When violent and bigoted internet comments start flying in the wake of a highly publicized bombing incident, is it free speech or hate speech?

Following the arrest of alleged New Jersey and New York bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami this week, the 28-year-old naturalized United States citizen became "the most wanted man in America" in a matter of hours once authorities connected him to weekend bombings in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.

When Rahami's identity was released, an army of internet pundits released a torrent of withering comments directed his way, some advocating violence against Rahami and others making unabashedly bigoted statements.

• See related article: Ahmad Khan Rahami: Everything We Know About the NYC Bombing Suspect
• See related article: NJ Man Was Funny, Mysterious Student Who Became Captured Terror Suspect

Below is just a small sampling of some of the comments that surfaced on the internet after Rahmi’s arrest:

• “The cops didn't aim very well. Should have aimed straight for his head.”
• “Exterminate these vermin. There may be a lot of them in this world but it is still a finite number.”
• “No jobs or possessions for Muslims. Force them out.”
• “They got him! Skin him alive ‘till it rats out the rest of the scum.”
• “Making bombs and killing people is part of Islam. I have no respect for those hideous women who wear black rags over their faces. They are complicit in these terror bombings.”
• “Why couldn't they just have shot the animal in the head and be done with it? Or at very least beheaded him on the spot?”
• “If Obama had a set he’d hang him on the White House lawn.”

The violent and bigoted comments made in the wake of Rahami’s arrest have also touched his family, reports say.

The Daily Beast reported that the Yelp page for the bombing suspect’s family – who own a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth – was temporarily locked when internet trolls bombarded the website with calls for “ethnic cleansing” and descriptions of Muslims as “filthy Mohammedan savages.”

VENOM WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE

David Rothenberg, a philosophy professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said that internet comments “tend to bring out the worst in people” because they’re written fast and there is usually little consequence to posting them.

“It would be easy to say they should just be ignored, but the tendency for superficial, misguided, hateful speech is clearly a dangerous rising force at so many levels in our society,” Rothenberg said.

Jessica Henry, an associate professor at Montclair State University, told Patch that the comment sections of news articles have the potential be one of the best modern examples of a “modern day free speech experiment.”

“People from across all sections of society can react and respond to the news of the day, and interact with broad swaths of people who they never could have reached before,” Henry said. “But the comments section is also a perfect storm for aggressive and hateful speech. Armchair anonymity allows people to vent stunningly offensive ideas while never experiencing the impact of their speech on the target.”

Henry opined that this “online disinhibition” effect allows people to spew what she called “venom without consequence.”

“Some researchers believe that the vitriolic comments sections after news articles are eroding our social mores,” Henry stated. “At the individual level, threatening and hateful comments have taken a significant emotional toll on their subjects. Indeed, the unfettered nastiness found in some comments section has resulted in the removal of the comments section from certain media outlets. It also has had a chilling effect on some writers, who have opted to remove themselves and their writing from unmoderated internet spaces.”

• See related article: What It's Like Being Muslim in New York After the 'Ahmad Khan Rahami' Bombings

Of course, there’s always the possibility that internet comments sections are just giving people the outlet to express what they’ve been thinking all along, NJIT humanities lecturer and CBS radio pundit Brandon Robinson told Patch.

“People's thoughts have always been people's thoughts,” Robinson said. “The only difference in my mind is that what folks have always thought is now being unashamedly expressed in real time on public forums.”

FREE SPEECH OR HATE SPEECH?

In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of a man who posted violent messages about his estranged wife on Facebook, deciding that simply using a “reasonable person” standard wasn’t enough to convict.

Instead, prosecutors must show that the person writing the comment must actually intend for the words to be threatening for it to be considered criminal, the SCOTUS ruled.

“The right to remain anonymous is a fundamental component of our right to free speech, and it applies every bit as much in the digital world as it does in the physical one,” the ACLU states on its website. “The ACLU has also closely monitored the occasional efforts to establish verified online identities. If implemented poorly, those efforts could be disastrous for the right to anonymous speech online.”

The ACLU writes:

“In the words of the U.S. Supreme Court in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, ‘Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.’”