Does the internet play a role in facilitating this kind of thing? Does it bring people with secret white-supremacist views together? Does it give them a space to network together and operate? Does it embolden them in some way? Or is the internet merely serving to shine a light into the darker corners of student life - areas which have hitherto been largely invisible and ‘under the radar’ of most people?
I do have a sneaking suspicion that, throughout recent history, there have always been plenty of law students with these kinds of bigoted views! But in the past the said views would have been expressed over a table in a pub or coffee shop. If somebody happened to overhear it and make a complaint to the university, well hey, it would just have been strenuously denied. It would have been the word of Person X against the word of Persons B, C, D and E, so to speak.
Now there is a traceable electronic trail. Now people can get caught with their pants down. Certainly the bastards in this article have been burned big time - thrown out of the academy, blacklisted by the law society, and basically made unemployable by anyone up to and including McDonald’s!
Or…were they just dumb youngsters talking ill-considered trash, who have paid a massive price for their monumental stupidity…?
There has been talk in the UK about a law to allow people to have their digital footprint prior to age 18 erased, so as to prevent adolescent nonsense from hanging around someone’s neck for the rest of his or her life. But why the cut-off at 18? Maybe people don’t really mature in their views until they are somewhat older than that?
I dunno.
But there sure is some ugliness out there in the world :-0