This article groups the rhetoric of hate on the Internet into five generic categories. Although continuous with its ancestral form, we argue that in its discontinuity this cyberspace variant is uniquely harmful to children because of its diffuse textuality, anonymity, and potential for immersive, user-interactivity. This unique postmodern grammar compels us to confront the sacrosanct premises of our paradoxical ethic of tolerance. We conclude that a postmodern ethic that features accountability can be derived by augmenting our conception of critical praxis.

The ethical commitment to democracy requires creating the public space for a rational discourse among real alternatives by the population. In this article, I argue that the Internet fails in this task on 2 fronts. Inspired by the work of Jean Baudrillard, the work argues that the Internet reinforces a structure of passive political agents through its 1-way form of communication. The Internet is designed to deliver political text, not engage the public in dialogue about the direction of collective decision (...) making. Furthermore, the ideal of democratic politics relies on the notion of the "commons" as a real space for political activity, debate, and exchange. Virtual space cannot provide a substitute. Democratic politics must have as its premises real bodies, confronting real problems, in real space. The article concludes by arguing that the Internet is a place filled with political artifacts, largely without discourse and dialogue. As such, it has the potential to undermine democratic practice. (shrink)