Net profits: Chip Berlet tracks computer networks of the religious right

Afterimage, Feb-March, 1995 by Grant Kester

Before joining PRA in 1982, Berlet spent three years as a paralegal investigator at the Better Government Association in Chicago, engaged in research and trial preparation for the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against illegal government surveillance by the Chicago Police Intelligence Unit - litigation dubbed the "Chicago Red Squad" case. As a freelance writer, Berlet has written, edited, and co-authored a long list of material an right-wing activity, racism, prejudice, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, government repression, covert operations, and constitutional rights, including articles and opinion pieces in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, the Utne Reader, and many others. Berlet is a photojournalist whose pictures have been carried on the Associated Press wire, and have been published in periodicals such as the Denver Post, Washington Star, and Chronicle of Higher Education. Berlet is also a co-founder and member of the editorial board of the legal newsletter Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report.

Berlet co-founded and still runs a computer bulletin board designed to challenge the information circulated by racist and anti-Jewish bulletin boards and to provide information on civil rights and civil liberties, including a kit far requesting information under the federal Freedom of Information Act. His most recent book, co-authored with Matthew N. Lyons, is Too Close for Comfort: The Fascist Potential of the U.S. Right (South End Press, 1995). In the following interview we asked Berlet to comment specifically on the use of computer networks and telecommunications systems by the Religious Right. The interview was conducted by phone from Berlet's office in Boston.

Grant Kester: When did you first begin to track right-wing computer-networks?

Chip Berlet: Around 1984. I was on-line very early with bulletin board systems (BBSs), in part because I was writing a column on computer technology and the law for the publication Chicago Lawyer. As I was examining the trend in the legal profession away from dedicated word processing systems I realized that the cutting edge law firms were developing ways to transfer data between their offices very efficiently, so I went on-line and started to explore. In June 1985 I presented a paper at a national conference on Issues in Technology and Privacy organized by professor George Trubow of the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. The debate over computer networks and BBSs was so new that Jerry Berman of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) got up at this conference and announced that, in his view, all of the BBSs were just public carriers and thus had no First Amendment rights. People's jaws just hit the floor. Part of my presentation was an attempt to explain that some of the BBSs were just like magazines or newspapers or a new form of public debate and therefore entitled to Constitutional protections.

When I learned that the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations were networking via BBSs run through individual Apple II computers, I was so offended that the Klan had beaten the political left into bulletin boards that I got together with some friends in the Chicago area and started a progressive, anti-racist BBS in 1985. A hospital electronics technician volunteered to knit together a whole bunch of used Atari computer parts so that they would be powerful enough to sustain a bulletin board. We had the second progressive BBS in the country; the first one was NewsBase started in 1984 by Richard Gaikowski in California. I also began to give speeches about far right bigotry. I'd bring an old portable remote printer terminal about the size of an attache case. I'd dial into a racist BBS and download text files as I spoke to show how accessible racist hate literature was on-line.

GK: It's interesting to hear that the right had their foot in the door so early with computer technology. It reminds me of the fact that one of the first radio licenses issued was to evangelist Mary Baker Eddy.

CB: It's very similar. Christian BBSs also started very early. People tend to ignore the fact that Christian evangelicals have always been at the cutting edge of new technologies; whether its the printing press, offset technology instead of letterpress, early radio and TV, or electronic media. We tend to think that because they are culturally conservative they are not willing to utilize technology. But of course if you remember that evangelists' main goal is to spread the message of Christ throughout the world, you'll realize that they will want to use the best technology available.

GK: The rhetoric used by religious and political Conservatives regarding communications technologies characterizes the technology as open and accessible. Conservatives claim that they want to use computer networks or cable-cast TV as a way to give voice to the populace. National Empowerment Television (NET), for example, uses this rhetoric. At the same time NET has a component called C-NET, which is a very controlled, subscriber-selected service used to generate activism around particular issues. So it's being used in exactly the opposite way.