Is the Web Driving Us Mad?

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In Newsweek Magazine - i C R A Z Y !

Is the Web Driving Us Mad?

Jul 9, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html

Tweets, texts, emails, posts.
New research says the Internet can make
us lonely and depressed--and may even
create more extreme forms of mental
illness, Tony Dokoupil reports.

Before he launched the most viral video
in Internet history, Jason Russell was a
half-hearted Web presence. His YouTube
account was dead, and his Facebook and
Twitter pages were a trickle of kid pictures
and home-garden updates. The Web wasn't made
"to keep track of how much people like us,"
he thought, and when his own tech habits
made him feel like "a genius, an addict,
or a megalomaniac," he unplugged for days,
believing, as the humorist Andy Borowitz put
it in a tweet that Russell tagged as a
favorite, "it's important to turn off our
computers and do things in the real world."

But this past March Russell struggled to
turn off anything. He forwarded a link to
"Kony 2012," his deeply personal Web
documentary about the African warlord
Joseph Kony. The idea was to use social
media to make Kony famous as the first
step to stopping his crimes. And it seemed
to work: the film hurtled through cyberspace,
clocking more than 70 million views in less
than a week. But something happened to
Russell in the process. The same digital
tools that supported his mission seemed to
tear at his psyche, exposing him to nonstop
kudos and criticisms, and ending his
arm's-length relationship with new media.

He slept two hours in the first four days,
producing a swirl of bizarre Twitter updates.
He sent a link to "I Met the Walrus," a short
animated interview with John Lennon, urging
followers to "start training your mind."
He sent a picture of his tattoo, TIMSHEL,
a biblical word about man's choice between
good and evil. At one point he uploaded and
commented on a digital photo of a text
message from his mother. At another he
compared his life to the mind-bending movie
Inception, "a dream inside a dream."

On the eighth day of his strange, 21st-century
vortex, he sent a final tweet--a quote from
Martin Luther King Jr.: "If you can't fly,
then run, if you can't run, then walk, if you
can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do,
you have to keep moving forward"--and walked
back into the real world. He took off his
clothes and went to the corner of a busy
intersection near his home in San Diego, where
he repeatedly slapped the concrete with both
palms and ranted about the devil. This too
became a viral video.

Afterward Russell was diagnosed with
"reactive psychosis," a form of temporary
insanity. It had nothing to do with drugs
or alcohol, his wife, Danica, stressed in
a blog post, and everything to do with the
machine that kept Russell connected even
as he was breaking apart. "Though new to us,"
Danica continued, "doctors say this is a
common experience," given Russell's "sudden
transition from relative anonymity to
worldwide attention--both raves and
ridicules." More than four months later,
Jason is out of the hospital, his company
says, but he is still in recovery. His wife
took a "month of silence" on Twitter.
Jason's social-media accounts remain dark.

Questions about the Internet's deleterious
effects on the mind are at least as old as
hyperlinks. But even among Web skeptics,
the idea that a new technology might influence
how we think and feel--let alone contribute to
a great American crack-up--was considered silly
and naive, like waving a cane at electric light
or blaming the television for kids these days.
Instead, the Internet was seen as just another
medium, a delivery system, not a diabolical
machine. It made people happier and more
productive. And where was the proof otherwise?

Now, however, the proof is starting to pile up.
The first good, peer-reviewed research is
emerging, and the picture is much gloomier than
the trumpet blasts of Web utopians have allowed.
The current incarnation of the Internet--portable,
social, accelerated, and all-pervasive--may be
making us not just dumber or lonelier but more
depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive
and attention-deficit disorders, even outright
psychotic. Our digitized minds can scan like those
of drug addicts, and normal people are breaking
down in sad and seemingly new ways.

In the summer of 1996, seven young researchers
at MIT blurred the lines between man and computer,
living simultaneously in the physical and virtual
worlds. They carried keyboards in their pockets,
radio-transmitters in their backpacks, and a
clip-on screen in front of their eyes.
They called themselves "cyborgs"--and they were
freaks. But as Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at
MIT, points out, "we are all cyborgs now."
This life of continuous connection has come to seem
normal, but that's not the same as saying that it's
healthy or sustainable, as technology--to paraphrase
the old line about alcohol--becomes the cause of and
solution to of all life's problems.

In less than the span of a single childhood,
Americans have merged with their machines,
staring at a screen for at least eight hours
a day, more time than we spend on any other
activity including sleeping. Teens fit some
seven hours of screen time into the average
school day; 11, if you count time spent
multitasking on several devices.
When President Obama last ran for office,
the iPhone had yet to be launched.
Now smartphones outnumber the old models in
America, and more than a third of users get
online before getting out of bed.

Meanwhile, texting has become like blinking:
the average person, regardless of age, sends
or receives about 400 texts a month, four times
the 2007 number. The average teen processes an
astounding 3,700 texts a month, double the 2007
figure. And more than two thirds of these
normal, everyday cyborgs, myself included,
report feeling their phone vibrate when in
fact nothing is happening. Researchers call
it "phantom-vibration syndrome."

Altogether the digital shifts of the last five
years call to mind a horse that has sprinted
out from underneath its rider, dragging the
person who once held the reins. No one is
arguing for some kind of Amish future. But the
research is now making it clear that the
Internet is not "just" another delivery system.
It is creating a whole new mental environment,
a digital state of nature where the human mind
becomes a spinning instrument panel, and few
people will survive unscathed.

"This is an issue as important and unprecedented
as climate change," says Susan Greenfield, a
pharmacology professor at Oxford University who
is working on a book about how digital culture
is rewiring us--and not for the better.
"We could create the most wonderful world for
our kids but that's not going to happen if we're
in denial and people sleepwalk into these
technologies and end up glassy-eyed zombies."

Does the Internet make us crazy? Not the
technology itself or the content, no.
But a Newsweek review of findings from more
than a dozen countries finds the answers
pointing in a similar direction. Peter Whybrow,
the director of the Semel Institute for
Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, argues
that "the computer is like electronic cocaine,"
fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive
stretches. The Internet "leads to behavior that
people are conscious is not in their best interest
and does leave them anxious and does make them
act compulsively," says Nicholas Carr, whose
book The Shallows, about the Web's effect on
cognition, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
It "fosters our obsessions, dependence, and
stress reactions," adds Larry Rosen, a California
psychologist who has researched the Net's effect
for decades. It "encourages--and even
promotes--insanity."

Fear that the Internet and mobile technology
contributes to addiction--not to mention the
often related ADHD and OCD disorders--has
persisted for decades, but for most of that
time the naysayers prevailed, often puckishly.
"What's next? Microwave abuse and Chapstick
addiction?" wrote a peer reviewer for one of
the leading psychiatric journals, rejecting
a national study of problematic Internet use
in 2006. The Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders has never included
a category of machine-human interactions.

But that view is suddenly on the outs.
When the new DSM is released next year,
Internet Addiction Disorder will be included
for the first time, albeit in an appendix
tagged for "further study." China, Taiwan,
and Korea recently accepted the diagnosis,
and began treating problematic Web use as a
grave national health crisis. In those
countries, where tens of millions of people
(and as much as 30 percent of teens) are
considered Internet-addicted, mostly to
gaming, virtual reality, and social media,
the story is sensational front-page news.
One young couple neglected its infant to
death while nourishing a virtual baby online.
A young man fatally bludgeoned his mother for
suggesting he log off (and then used her
credit card to rack up more hours). At least
10 ultra-Web users, serviced by one-click
noodle delivery, have died of blood clots from
sitting too long.

Now the Korean government is funding treatment
centers, and coordinating a late-night Web
shutdown for young people. China, meanwhile,
has launched a mothers' crusade for safe Web
habits, turning to that approach after it
emerged that some doctors were using
electro-shock and severe beatings to treat
Internet-addicted teens.

"There's just something about the medium that's
addictive," says Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist
at Stanford University School of Medicine, where
he directs the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Clinic and Impulse Control Disorders Clinic.
"I've seen plenty of patients who have no history
of addictive behavior--or substance abuse of any
kind--become addicted via the Internet and these
other technologies."

His 2006 study of problematic Web habits (the one
that was puckishly rejected) was later published,
forming the basis for his recent book Virtually
You, about the fallout expected from the Web's
irresistible allure. Even among a demographic
of middle-aged landline users--the average
respondent was in his 40s, white, and making
more than $50,000 a year--Aboujaoude found that
more than one in eight showed at least one sign
of an unhealthy attachment to the Net. More recent
surveys that recruit people already online have
found American numbers on a par with those in Asia.

Then there was the University of Maryland's
2010 "Unplugged" experiment that asked 200
undergrads to forgo all Web and mobile
technologies for a day and to keep a diary
of their feelings. "I clearly am addicted
and the dependency is sickening," reported
one student in the study. "Media is my drug,"
wrote another. At least two other schools
haven't even been able to get such an
experiment off the ground for lack of
participants. "Most college students are
not just unwilling, but functionally unable,
to be without their media links to the world,"
the University of Maryland concluded.

That same year two psychiatrists in Taiwan
made headlines with the idea of iPhone
addiction disorder. They documented two
cases from their own practices: one involved
a high-school boy who ended up in an asylum
after his iPhone usage reached 24 hours a
day. The other featured a 31-year-old
saleswoman who used her phone while driving.
Both cases might have been laughed off if
not for a 200-person Stanford study of
iPhone habits released at the same time.
It found that one in 10 users feels
"fully addicted" to his or her phone.
All but 6 percent of the sample admitted
some level of compulsion, while 3 percent
won't let anyone else touch their phones.

In the two years since, concern over the Web's
pathological stickiness has only intensified.
In April, doctors told The Times of India about
an anecdotal uptick in "Facebook addiction."
The latest details of America's Web obsession
are found in Larry Rosen's new book, iDisorder,
which, despite the hucksterish title, comes
with the imprimatur of the world's largest
academic publisher. His team surveyed 750 people,
a spread of teens and adults who represented the
Southern California census, detailing their
tech habits, their feelings about those habits,
and their scores on a series of standard tests
of psychiatric disorders. He found that most
respondents, with the exception of those over
the age of 50, check text messages, email or
their social network "all the time" or "every
15 minutes." More worryingly, he also found
that those who spent more time online had more
"compulsive personality traits."

Perhaps not that surprising: those who want
the most time online feel compelled to get it.
But in fact these users don't exactly want to
be so connected. It's not quite free choice
that drives most young corporate employees
(45 and under) to keep their BlackBerrys in
the bedroom within arms' reach, per a 2011
study; or free choice, per another 2011 study,
that makes 80 percent of vacationers bring
along laptops or smartphones so they can check
in with work while away; or free choice that
leads smartphone users to check their phones
before bed, in the middle of the night, if
they stir, and within minutes of waking up.

We may appear to be choosing to use this
technology, but in fact we are being dragged
to it by the potential of short-term rewards.
Every ping could be social, sexual, or
professional opportunity, and we get a
mini-reward, a squirt of dopamine, for
answering the bell. "These rewards serve as
jolts of energy that recharge the compulsion
engine, much like the frisson a gambler
receives as a new card hits the table,"
MIT media scholar Judith Donath recently
told Scientific American. "Cumulatively,
the effect is potent and hard to resist."

Recently it became possible to watch this
kind of Web use rewire the brain. In 2008
Gary Small, the head of UCLA's Memory and
Aging Research Center, was the first to
document changes in the brain as a result
of even moderate Internet use. He rounded
up 24 people, half of them experienced
Web users, half of them newbies, and he
passed them each through a brain scanner.
The difference was striking, with the Web
users displaying fundamentally altered
prefrontal cortexes. But the real surprise
was what happened next. The novices went
away for a week, and were asked to spend
a total of five hours online and then
return for another scan. "The naive
subjects had already rewired their brains,"
he later wrote, musing darkly about what
might happen when we spend more time online.

The brains of Internet addicts, it turns out,
look like the brains of drug and alcohol
addicts. In a study published in January,
Chinese researchers found "abnormal white
matter"--essentially extra nerve cells built
for speed--in the areas charged with attention,
control, and executive function. A parallel
study found similar changes in the brains of
videogame addicts. And both studies come on
the heels of other Chinese results that link
Internet addiction to "structural abnormalities
in gray matter," namely shrinkage of 10 to
20 percent in the area of the brain responsible
for processing of speech, memory, motor control,
emotion, sensory, and other information.
And worse, the shrinkage never stopped:
the more time online, the more the brain
showed signs of "atrophy."

While brain scans don't reveal which came first,
the abuse or the brain changes, many clinicians
feel their own observations confirmed.
"There's little doubt we're becoming more
impulsive," says Stanford's Aboujaoude, and
one reason for this is technology use. He points
to the rise in OCD and ADHD diagnosis, the latter
of which has risen 66 percent in the last decade.
"There is a cause and effect."

And don't kid yourself: the gap between an
"Internet addict" and John Q. Public is thin
to nonexistent. One of the early flags for
addiction was spending more than 38 hours a
week online. By that definition, we are all
addicts now, many of us by Wednesday afternoon,
Tuesday if it's a busy week. Current tests for
Internet addiction are qualitative, casting
an uncomfortably wide net, including people
who admit that yes, they are restless,
secretive, or preoccupied with the Web and
that they have repeatedly made unsuccessful
efforts to cut back. But if this is unhealthy,
it's clear many Americans don't want to
be well.

Like addiction, the digital connection to
depression and anxiety was also once a near
laughable assertion. A 1998 Carnegie Mellon
study found that Web use over a two-year
period was linked to blue moods, loneliness,
and the loss of real-world friends. But the
subjects all lived in Pittsburgh, critics
sneered. Besides, the Net might not bring
you chicken soup, but it means the end of
solitude, a global village of friends, and
friends you haven't met yet. Sure enough,
when Carnegie Mellon checked back in with
the denizens of Steel City a few years later,
they were happier than ever.

But the black crow is back on the wire.
In the past five years, numerous studies
have duplicated the original Carnegie Mellon
findings and extended them, showing that the
more a person hangs out in the global village,
the worse they are likely to feel. Web use
often displaces sleep, exercise, and
face-to-face exchanges, all of which can
upset even the chirpiest soul. But the
digital impact may last not only for a day
or a week, but for years down the line.
A recent American study based on data from
adolescent Web use in the 1990s found a
connection between time online and mood
disorders in young adulthood.
Chinese researchers have similarly found
"a direct effect" between heavy Net use
and the development of full-blown depression,
while scholars at Case Western Reserve
University correlated heavy texting and
social-media use with stress, depression,
and suicidal thinking.

In response to this work, an article in the
journal Pediatrics noted the rise of "a new
phenomenon called Facebook depression,"
and explained that "the intensity of the
online world may trigger depression."
Doctors, according to the report published
by the American Academy of Pediatrics, should
work digital usage questions into every
annual checkup.

Rosen, the author of iDisorder, points to a
preponderance of research showing "a link
between Internet use, instant messaging,
emailing, chatting, and depression among
adolescents," as well as to the "strong
relationships between video gaming and
depression." But the problem seems to be
quality as well as quantity: bad interpersonal
experiences--so common online--can lead to
these potential spirals of despair. For her
book Alone Together, MIT psychologist Sherry
Turkle interviewed more than 450 people, most
of them in their teens and 20s, about their
lives online. And while she's the author of
two prior tech-positive books, and once graced
the cover of Wired magazine, she now reveals a
sad, stressed-out world of people coated in
Dorito dust and locked in a dystopian
relationship with their machines.

People tell her that their phones and laptops
are the "place for hope" in their lives, the
"place where sweetness comes from." Children
describe mothers and fathers unavailable in
profound ways, present and yet not there at all.
"Mothers are now breastfeeding and bottle-feeding
their babies as they text," she told the American
Psychological Association last summer. "A mother
made tense by text messages is going to be
experienced as tense by the child. And that
child is vulnerable to interpreting that tension
as coming from within the relationship with
the mother. This is something that needs to be
watched very closely." She added, "Technology
can make us forget important things we know
about life."

This evaporation of the genuine self also
occurred among the high-school- and
college-age kids she interviewed.
They were struggling with digital identities
at an age when actual identity is in flux.
"What I learned in high school," a kid named
Stan told Turkle, "was profiles, profiles,
profiles; how to make a me." It's a
nerve-racking learning curve, a life lived
entirely in public with the webcam on,
every mistake recorded and shared, mocked
until something more mockable comes along.
"How long do I have to do this?" another
teen sighed, as he prepared to reply to
100 new messages on his phone.

Last year, when MTV polled its 13- to
30-year-old viewers on their Web habits,
most felt "defined" by what they put
online, "exhausted" by always having to
be putting it out there, and utterly
unable to look away for fear of missing
out. "FOMO," the network called it.
"I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
naked," begins Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl,
a beatnik rant that opens with people
"dragging themselves" at dawn, searching
for an "angry fix" of heroin. It's not
hard to imagine the alternative
imagery today.

The latest Net-and-depression study may be
the saddest one of all. With consent of the
subjects, Missouri State University tracked
the real-time Web habits of 216 kids,
30 percent of whom showed signs of depression.
The results, published last month, found that
the depressed kids were the most intense
Web users, chewing up more hours of email,
chat, videogames, and file sharing. They also
opened, closed, and switched browser windows
more frequently, searching, one imagines, and
not finding what they hoped to find.

They each sound like Doug, a Midwestern college
student who maintained four avatars, keeping
each virtual world open on his computer, along
with his school work, email, and favorite
videogames. He told Turkle that his real life
is "just another window"--and "usually not my
best one." Where is this headed? she wonders.
That's the scariest line of inquiry of all.

Recently, scholars have begun to suggest that
our digitized world may support even more
extreme forms of mental illness. At Stanford,
Dr. Aboujaoude is studying whether some digital
selves should be counted as a legitimate,
pathological "alter of sorts," like the alter
egos documented in cases of multiple personality
disorder (now called dissociative identity
disorder in the DSM). To test his idea, he gave
one of his patients, Richard, a mild-mannered
human-resources executive with a ruthless
Web poker habit, the official test for multiple
personality disorder. The result was startling.
He scored as high as patient zero. "I might as
well have been ... administering the
questionnaire to Sybil Dorsett!"
Aboujaoude writes.

The Gold brothers--Joel, a psychiatrist at
New York University, and Ian, a philosopher
and psychiatrist at McGill University--are
investigating technology's potential to sever
people's ties with reality, fueling hallucinations,
delusions, and genuine psychosis, much as it seemed
to do in the case of Jason Russell, the filmmaker
behind "Kony 2012." The idea is that online life
is akin to life in the biggest city, stitched and
sutured together by cables and modems, but no
less mentally real--and taxing--than New York
or Hong Kong. "The data clearly support the
view that someone who lives in a big city is
at higher risk of psychosis than someone in a
small town," Ian Gold writes via email. "If the
Internet is a kind of imaginary city,"
he continues. "It might have some of the same
psychological impact."

A team of researchers at Tel Aviv University
is following a similar path. Late last year,
they published what they believe are the first
documented cases of "Internet-related psychosis."
The qualities of online communication are
capable of generating "true psychotic phenomena,"
the authors conclude, before putting the medical
community on warning. "The spiraling use of the
Internet and its potential involvement in
psychopathology are new consequences of
our times."

So what do we do about it? Some would say
nothing, since even the best research is
tangled in the timeless conundrum of what
comes first. Does the medium break normal
people with its unrelenting presence,
endless distractions, and threat of public
ridicule for missteps? Or does it attract
broken souls?

But in a way, it doesn't matter whether our
digital intensity is causing mental illness,
or simply encouraging it along, as long as
people are suffering. Overwhelmed by the
velocity of their lives, we turn to
prescription drugs, which helps explain why
America runs on Xanax (and why rehab
admissions for benzodiazepines, the
ingredient in Xanax and other anti-anxiety
drugs, have tripled since the late 1990s).
We also spring for the false rescue of
multitasking, which saps attention even
when the computer is off. And all of us,
since the relationship with the Internet
began, have tended to accept it as is,
without much conscious thought about how
we want it to be or what we want to avoid.
Those days of complacency should end.
The Internet is still ours to shape.
Our minds are in the balance.

Tony Dokoupil is a senior writer
at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

For inquiries, please contact
The Daily Beast at
edit...@thedailybeast.com
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html

... ... ...

Meanwhile...

A Dangerous Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

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Protocols of the Elders of Zion
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007058

'A Dangerous Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'
opened in the Gonda Education Center at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in April 2006.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?ModuleId=10007058&MediaId=5991

"If ever a piece of writing could
produce mass hatred, it is this one....
This book is about lies and slander."
--Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most
notorious and widely distributed antisemitic
publication of modern times. Its lies about Jews,
which have been repeatedly discredited, continue
to circulate today, especially on the Internet.
The individuals and groups who have used the
Protocols are all linked by a common purpose:
to spread hatred of Jews.

The Protocols is entirely a work of fiction,
intentionally written to blame Jews for a variety
of ills. Those who distribute it claim that it
documents a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the
world. The conspiracy and its alleged leaders,
the so-called Elders of Zion, never existed.

THE ORIGIN OF A LIE

In 1903, portions of The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion were serialized in a Russian
newspaper, Znamya (The Banner). The version of
the Protocols that has endured and has been
translated into dozens of languages, however,
was first published in Russia in 1905 as an
appendix to The Great in the Small: The Coming
of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on
Earth, by Russian writer and mystic Sergei Nilus.

Although the exact origin of the Protocols is
unknown, its intent was to portray Jews as
conspirators against the state. In 24 chapters,
or protocols, allegedly minutes from meetings
of Jewish leaders, the Protocols "describes"
the "secret plans" of Jews to rule the world
by manipulating the economy, controlling the
media, and fostering religious conflict.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917,
anti-Bolshevik emigres brought the Protocols
to the West. Soon after, editions circulated
across Europe, the United States, South America,
and Japan. An Arabic translation first appeared
in the 1920s.

Beginning in 1920, auto magnate Henry Ford's
newspaper, The Dearborn Independent,
published a series of articles based in part
on the Protocols. The International Jew, the
book that included this series, was
translated into at least 16 languages.
Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, later
the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, praised Ford
and The International Jew.

FRAUD EXPOSED

In 1921, the London Times presented conclusive
proof that the Protocols was a "clumsy plagiarism."
The Times confirmed that the Protocols had been
copied in large part from a French political satire
that never mentioned Jews--Maurice Joly's Dialogue
in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu (1864).
Other investigations revealed that one chapter of
a Prussian novel, Hermann Goedsche's Biarritz (1868),
also "inspired" the Protocols.

THE NAZI ERA

Nazi party ideologue Alfred Rosenberg introduced
Hitler to the Protocols during the early 1920s,
as Hitler was developing his worldview. Hitler
referred to the Protocols in some of his early
political speeches, and, throughout his career,
he exploited the myth that "Jewish-Bolshevists"
were conspiring to control the world.

During the 1920s and 1930s, The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion played an important
part in the Nazis' propaganda arsenal.
The Nazi party published at least 23
editions of the Protocols between 1919 and
1939. Following the Nazis' seizure of power
in 1933, some schools used the Protocols
to indoctrinate students.

FRAUD EXPOSED

In 1935, a Swiss court fined two Nazi leaders
for circulating a German-language edition of
the Protocols in Berne, Switzerland.
The presiding justice at the trial declared
the Protocols "libelous," "obvious forgeries,"
and "ridiculous nonsense."

The US Senate issued a report in 1964 declaring
that the Protocols were "fabricated." The Senate
called the contents of the Protocols "gibberish"
and criticized those who "peddled" the Protocols
for using the same propaganda technique as Hitler.

In 1993, a Russian court ruled that Pamyat, a
far-right nationalist organization, had committed
an antisemitic act by publishing the Protocols.

Despite these repeated exposures of the Protocols
as a fraud, it remains the most influential
antisemitic text of the past one hundred years,
and it continues to appeal to a variety of
antisemitic individuals and groups.

THE PROTOCOLS TODAY

According to the US Department of State's
"Report on Global Anti-Semitism" (2004),
"The clear purpose of the [Protocols is]
to incite hatred of Jews and of Israel."

In the United States and Europe, neo-Nazis,
white supremacists, and Holocaust deniers endorse
and circulate the Protocols. Books based on the
Protocols are available worldwide, even in
countries with hardly any Jews such as Japan.

Many school textbooks throughout the Arab and
Islamic world teach the Protocols as fact.
Countless political speeches, editorials, and
even children's cartoons are derived from the
Protocols. In 2002, Egypt's government-sponsored
television aired a miniseries based on the
Protocols, an event condemned by the US State
Department. The Palestinian organization Hamas
draws in part on the Protocols to justify its
terrorism against Israeli civilians.

The Internet has dramatically increased access
to the Protocols. Even though many Web sites
expose the Protocols as a fraud, the Internet
has made it easy to use the Protocols to spread
hatred of Jews. Today, a typical Internet search
yields several hundred thousand sites that
disseminate, sell, or debate the Protocols or
expose them as a fraud.

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Related Articles:
Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Timeline
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007244

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Related Links:
USHMM Library bibliography: Antisemitism
http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/?lang=en&content=antisemitism

Voices on Antisemitism: podcast and audio series
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/

Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Timeline (requires Flash Player)
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/en/timeline/

Special Focus: Antisemitism
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/

Antisemitism: How Deep are the Roots?
(Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies presentation)
http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/presentations/features/details/2004-07-20/

Museum comment on antisemitism, by the Committee
on Church Relations
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/#comment

Guidelines for teachers: Methodological Considerations
http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/guideline/#methodological

1964 Senate report (courtesy Klau Library,
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion)
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/pdf/senate-protocols.pdf

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Copyright (c) United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Washington, DC - Encyclopedia Last Updated: May 11, 2012
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007058

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-=[[ NOTE: Israel: The Most Disputed
strip of Real Estate
on Planet Earth!
http://www.mefacts.com/cached.asp?x_id=10190 ]]=-

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< HTTP://TINYURL.COM/THREE-YEARS-LONGER >

[Androcles]

"Koyaanisqatsi Fahrvergnugen" wrote in message
news:f7c71296-be37-4c47...@l6g2000pbf.googlegroups.com...

In Newsweek Magazine - i C R A Z Y !

Is the Web Driving Us Mad?

==========================================
Your chosen newsgroups which are unconnected with physics
show you are already a raving lunatic. Fuck off.