Trial by Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case (4 page)

In our modern society, this sort of “parochial altruism” can — and does — go haywire. History is littered with examples: the witch trials of Europe, the Inquisition, pogroms, and innumerable irrational wars. In modern times Nazi Germany is a prime example. What was Kristallnacht but “altruistic punishers” gone mad, forming mobs that destroyed Jewish businesses and brutally murdered innocent people because they were the “other”?

Bowles said, “The sentiments that go into the most repugnant racial politics against outsiders come from the same evolutionary source that leads us to respond to natural disasters and helping others. This may be our legacy, that’s how we got this way. But it doesn’t have to be our destiny.”

What does all this have to do with Amanda Knox? I will ask the reader to go back and read the comments quoted in this article — or better yet, Google your own assortment of nasty comments. You will find that most them follow a similar pattern:

1.   Amanda Knox has violated social norms. (e.g. she is a sex pervert, murderess, liar, etc.)

2.   An appropriate punishment is suggested, (e.g. burning, raping, imprisonment for life, rotting in hell).

This is nothing more than third-party or “altruistic” punishment translated to the Internet.

Over the centuries most civilizations have developed state forms of social control and punishment. In our culture, for example, wrongs are investigated and evaluated by neutral parties (the “police”). A public airing of information (“evidence”) is presented in an open, formalized manner with many people participating. The accused by law must be party to the discussions (the “trial”). The accuser must meet the accused face to face. All evidence, pro and con, must be considered. Every stage of the process is open and scrutinized. The state (not the victim’s family) is charged with punishing, so there will be no feuds or vendettas. This process is one of the most precious assets of our society. It took Western civilization many bloody centuries to develop it.

Now we have the Internet. It functions, in part, as a non-state form of social control. But it is one where our punishing instincts go haywire. We earlier saw how anti-Amanda bloggers found one other, established websites, and became a community. We saw how these anti-Amanda communities waged an implacable cyberwar, in which anyone who expressed doubt about Amanda’s guilt became the enemy and a target of the most brutal and irresponsible attacks. Employing a Mafia-like logic, they extended their attacks to friends, families, co-workers, and even the children of their targets. We saw how the desire to punish went absolutely berserk over Amanda Knox.

Never in human history has a system developed like the Internet, which allows for the free rein of our punishing instincts with no checks or balances, no moderation, and no accountability, and conducted with complete anonymity. On the Internet, any assertion, no matter how false, remains forever. It is a process that is horrendously unfair.

Community is a fundamental part of this process. The Internet simulates the small communities in which human beings thrive. But these Internet communities are devoid of the softening effects of real human interactions, in which discussions of wrongdoing occur face to face, where diverse opinions are expressed, and where people are held accountable for what they say. In these cybergroups, all are self-selected punishers. Dissenters are blocked and nonconforming opinions deleted. The accused is dehumanized. A toxic feedback loop of highly filtered information transforms the group into a cybermob not unlike the medieval witch hunts of Europe or lynch mobs in the American South. We see this phenomenon not just in the Knox case but all over the Internet.

The Internet is indeed a non-state form of social control — but one that is severely dysfunctional. The ugliness on the Internet is not white noise. It lasts forever. It cannot be ignored. It causes terrible things happen in the real world. The Internet is a place where our darkest evolutionary biology runs riot.

Table of Contents

Title Page

The bitch needs to die

I was drawn into the case...

Katrin Riedl....