Anonymity
Sunday June 29, 2008
Anonymity leads to social and racial vandalism
If you believe in something, you should have the courage to put your name behind it.
The yahoos who spray-painted swastikas and hate slogans on the Jewish Community Centre in Kelowna last weekend came in the dark, Friday night. They covered the walls with crude messages of hate. They declared that Jews and niggers – their words, not mine—should die or burn. “Jews are evil,” stated the scrawl beside the synagogue’s front door.
But they did not sign their names.
They’re like a hit-and-run driver who leaves a mangled body bleeding on the pavement while he runs away.
This was not the first such act of vandalism. In March, someone similarly desecrated Kelowna’s newly opened Sikh temple.
The RCMP brought in personnel from its Integrated Hate Crimes Unit, based in Vancouver.
“All crimes motivated by hate, we take very seriously,” said RCMP spokesperson Const. Julie Rattee.
As an aside, they apparently did not consider it a hate crime when vandals sprayed graffiti onto the walls of Winfield United Church last winter. Perhaps graffiti only counts as “hate” when directed against a group that has previously experienced persecution.
Part of a continuum
Could such actions escalate to racial or religious violence? Probably.
Paradoxically, because of the protection that anonymity provides.
Our daughter, for example, has recently been the target of two anonymous letters. Granted, poison-pen letters do not compare with swastikas on a synagogue. But they are, I think, part of the same continuum.
The first letter arrived shortly after she moved into her new home in south-eastern Edmonton. She had to clear out the junk left behind by the previous owners, including a malfunctioning indoor hot tub. The debris got piled in garbage bags at the curb, for pickup later that week.
A letter advised her that in this neighbourhood, people don’t put garbage bags out until the night before the trucks come around.
It was unsigned, of course.
A second letter, also unsigned, warned her to stop her dog from barking too loudly, too early in the morning.
It didn’t suggest how one teaches a German Shepherd to bark softly.
Our daughter is a single mom with two small children, self-employed, living across the road from a small park. As in all urban parks these days, there are drug deals almost every night. Small stuff, probably. Marijuana joints glowing the dark. Packets passed hand to hand…
For our daughter, the dog is a vocal security alarm. The sound of a large dog barking inside the house becomes a significant deterrent for anyone tempted to break into her house seeking cash or valuables.
Escalating tactics
Anonymous letters are little more than an irritating nuisance. Recently, matters got more serious.
Someone in her neighbourhood has started trapping cats. If the cats enter this person’s yard, lured by succulent bait, they’re captured and delivered to the city pound. Unless they can be traced and reclaimed, they will be killed.
The trapper, naturally, prefers to remain anonymous.
Someone has also started slipping small containers of antifreeze under the fences of pet owners. Antifreeze labels warn that ethylene glycol tastes sweet to pets and other animals. But it’s deadly.
In Toronto, a similar animal-hater left poison-laced bread and contaminated drinking bowls in a popular off-leash dog park. Two dogs have died, at least six others sickened. The poison has claimed wild raccoons as well.
All done anonymously, of course.
I’m prepared to concede that the person who wrote the letters to our daughter may have believed that she, or possibly he, was protecting the quality of life in that community.
It’s possible, too, that the cat trapper felt justified in defending his/her private property against uninvited furry visitors.
Still, I can’t imagine why they think anyone would want to live in a neighbourhood where neighbours make a practice of writing poisonous letters and poisoning pets.
The poisoners and the graffiti painters certainly knew they were doing something society considers both repugnant and illegal. That’s why they act in secrecy.
Hiding from accountability
Unfortunately, there is no direct way to combat those who hide under the cloak of anonymity. Gossip is insidious precisely because its attacks come from invisible sources.
In a kind of vicious circle, anonymity builds false courage. Getting away with writing one letter tempts the writer to pen another. Or perhaps to risk more drastic action. Like poisoning a cat. Or spraying hate messages on temples.
But always under cover of darkness. They won’t do it in daylight. And they won’t sign their names. Because they know, deep down, that what they’re doing is unacceptable to society as a whole.
Anonymity enables them to act without risking rebuke.
Clearly, the cure for anti-social anonymous acts is exposure.
Writing a letter can be a completely private act. But even letter writers tend to brag to friends. Personal conjecture is legitimate; it becomes gossip only when whispered around. Graffiti slathered on the walls of a Jewish synagogue or a Sikh temple requires more than one participant.
So someone almost always knows who’s responsible.
Cowards and crooks
Protecting a relative, a friend, a fellow member of an organization, merely encourages the perpetrators. They feel that they have successfully avoided identification. Anonymity even allows them to believe that others must agree with them, because they receive no negative feedback.
“We deplore these cowardly acts of anti-Semitism,” stated Frank Dimant, vice-president of Bnai Brith Canada.
I’m sorry he restricted his criticism to anti-Semitism. Because, in fact, all acts that require anonymity are cowardly.
Here’s a quick and easy test. If you can’t do it in the open, if you won’t let your name be attached, whatever it is, it’s almost certainly wrong.
Would a charity benefit from an unsigned cheque? Is a cause supported by those who decline to add their names on a petition?
Only cowards and crooks feel a need to conceal their identity.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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To receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. E-mail subscribers also get excerpts from correspondence about these columns. Please forward a copy of this column to anyone who might be interested in subscribing. If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website. For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com. It’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating’s “SeemslikeGod” page.
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