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September 13, 2004 -- TWO kinds of "proph ets" are always wrong: Those who predict that America is in decline and those who believe that some new development, whether the end of the Cold War or the brief apparition of Howard Dean, means that the Age of Aquarius is finally at hand.
In the 1990s, the Internet was destined to bring the world together, to the immeasurable benefit of humankind: Once we all were able to communicate cheaply and swiftly across borders and cultures, we would learn to understand and respect each other, to embrace and sing, if not "Kumbaya," at least the latest download of Senegalese pop.
Instead, the 'Net has become the most powerful tool for spreading hatred in history, as well as the home of the two great pornographies, the grotesque porn of the flesh and the even more virulent pornography of hatred.
Yes, hatred also proliferated during the first information revolution, following the invention of movable type for the printing press. But the worst excesses of printing could be managed. Books were tangible items and couldn't disappear down a digital rabbit hole.
Radio and television were each a step forward for propagandists. Even though they were subject to legislation, competition and jamming, radio swiftly became a tool for tyrants and al-Jazeera's TV tirades would be the envy of Goebbels and Co.
But the Internet trumps all previous means of deepening hatred. Cheap to access and subject to endless variations of electronic vagrancy and subterfuge, it's proving ever harder to patrol. Its celebrated anarchy camouflages well-organized bigotry.
Far from bringing together the forces of peace and progress, the 'Net has become the perfect realm for monsters in search of victims. In the past, aberrant human beings were isolated from one another, living in shame and fear, whether we speak of village pederasts or potential terrorists. Thanks to the 'Net, they've learned that they're not alone, that there are millions of similarly diseased minds around the world.
Today the bigots and perverts of the world are all but unionized. The 'Net has built communities, all right communities of hatred. (When was the last time you were spammed by Quakers?)
Of course, the Internet has become a great convenience to us. Within minutes, I can comparison shop for a rare book published in the 1790s. I can keep in touch with far-flung friends at a stunningly low cost. I can read a wide range of newspapers and magazines online, or find out what Americans think who aren't part of the traditional publishing aristocracy.
The 'Net isn't going to go away, and we wouldn't want it to. So we might as well make the best of it. And we will: Each American citizen is conditioned from birth to separate fact from fiction, to handle great volumes of information effectively. We take the rants we read on the 'Net with more than one grain of salt.
Elsewhere, it's different. In information-starved societies, the computer has an iconic power if it's online, it must be true.
Especially in the Arab homelands, where florid words have always trumped reality, Web sites that make spectacularly outrageous claims are treated as if they are, literally, God's truth.
In the Middle East, people believe what they want to believe to a far greater degree than the silliest American. The intellectual conditioning at work is fundamentally different. Above all, the masses want to hear that their failures are not their fault, that Israel and America, the Crusaders and the Jews, are guilty of keeping Muslims impoverished, powerless and backward.
No matter that their own failed traditions and corrupt governments have done these things to Muslims. The culture of blame has conquered the Middle East. The Internet feeds that culture an athlete's diet.
On the 'Net, a photo of a bleeding Arab child takes on the identity terror's Webmasters assign it. The child may have been injured by the terrorists themselves. But on the Web, the child is "indisputably" a victim of America or Israel.
Islamic terrorists inhabit a virtual empire more elusive than the al-Qaeda remnants in rural Pakistan. Extremists discovered that the Web offers the easiest, safest way to stay in touch. On Islamic Web sites, they've created a mad illusion of success, a virtual world in which all of the West's setbacks are exaggerated and the slightest terrorist action is magnified into a triumph.
Terrorist "martyrs" find eternal life on the Internet, not among the dark-eyed virgins of Paradise. We are at war in the digital sphere as surely as on any physical battlefield.
Above all, the 'Net empowers the weak and cowardly, inviting them to join an imagined community of supermen. Communicating on the 'Net, each pathetic Nietzsche believes himself in the company of giants. The imagination supplies a more powerful identity to the being on the other keyboard just as men and women notoriously imagine that their romantic correspondents are far more attractive than they turn out to be.
The Internet releases the human power to fantasize. And a significant portion of humankind isn't dreaming of peace and love, but of asserting their power over others, of demonstrating the superiority of their faith, or simply about revenge. And their fantasies are soon enough transformed into deadly reality.
Leni Riefenstahl's films glorifying Nazi rallies were baby steps in the dissemination of hatred. The 'Net has proven far more seductive than Hitler at a microphone. Islamic terrorists and bigots everywhere have never been granted a more effective tool.
Today, the terrorists are building their virtual concentration camps. Tomorrow, they'll do their best to create real ones.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."
