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Adam Klein

Adam Klein

About

Adam Klein, Ph.D., was most recently a visiting professor at James Madison University in the School of Media Arts & Design. He received his Doctorate in Mass Communication & Media Studies from Howard University, and earned an M.F.A. in Screenwriting from the University of Miami. Adam is also a Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellow for proven research commitment to international conflict-resolution studies. Dr. Klein has published articles dealing with the topic of social movements and intercultural conflicts in the media, and has presented his research at several academic conferences including M.I.T.’s Media in Transition Conference in 2009, where this research debuted. As the grandson of two Holocaust survivors, Adam has focused much of his work on the present-day messages and messengers of hate speech and racial propaganda in the new global media. Next year, Adam will join the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University.

The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls

The Sons of Godwine: Part Two of The Last Great Saxon Earls

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<p>Emerging from the long shadow cast by his formidable father, Harold Godwineson showed himself to be a worthy successor to the Earldom of Wessex. In the following twelve years, he became the King's most trusted advisor, practically taking the reins of government into his own hands. And on Edward the Confessor's death, Harold Godwineson mounted the throne—the first king of England not of royal blood. Yet Harold was only a man, and his rise in fortune was not blameless. Like any person aspiring to power, he made choices he wasn't particularly proud of. Unfortunately, those closest to him sometimes paid the price of his fame.<br /><br />This is a story of Godwine's family as told from the viewpoint of Harold and his younger brothers. Queen Editha, known for her Vita Ædwardi Regis, originally commissioned a work to memorialize the deeds of her family, but after the Conquest historians tell us she abandoned this project and concentrated on her husband, the less dangerous subject. In THE SONS OF GODWINE and FATAL RIVALRY, I am telling the story as it might have survived had she collected and passed on the memoirs of her tragic brothers.<br /><br />This book is part two of The Last Great Saxon Earls series. Book one, GODWINE KINGMAKER, depicted the rise and fall of the first Earl of Wessex who came to power under Canute and rose to preeminence at the beginning of Edward the Confessor's reign. Unfortunately, Godwine's misguided efforts to champion his eldest son Swegn recoiled on the whole family, contributing to their outlawry and Queen Editha's disgrace. Their exile only lasted one year and they returned victorious to London, though it was obvious that Harold's career was just beginning as his father's journey was coming to an end.<br /><br />Harold's siblings were all overshadowed by their famous brother; in their memoirs we see remarks tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism, and in Tostig's case, with jealousy. We see a Harold who is ambitious, self-assured, sometimes egocentric, imperfect, yet heroic. His own story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things a little differently. Throughout, their observations are purely subjective, and witnessing events through their eyes gives us an insider’s perspective.<br /><br />Harold was his mother's favorite, confident enough to rise above petty sibling rivalry but Tostig, next in line, was not so lucky. Harold would have been surprised by Tostig's vindictiveness, if he had ever given his brother a second thought. And that was the problem. Tostig's love/hate relationship with Harold would eventually destroy everything they worked for, leaving the country open to foreign conquest. This subplot comes to a crisis in book three of the series, FATAL RIVALRY.</p>

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<span style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:16px;border-collapse:collapse;"></span><div>May, 2010</div><div><span style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:16px;border-collapse:collapse;"><br /></span></div>&quot;At a time when racist propaganda is again on the rise, <em>A Space for Hate</em> offers an important analysis of how the internet is being used to spread 'a modernized version of hate.'  Recalling the Nazis' extremely effective use of propaganda, Adam Klein shows how contemporary radical racists have effectively exploited what is certainly the most democratic medium ever known to spread hate and political violence.&quot;  <div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;">- Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project,                      Southern Poverty Law Center</div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;">September, 2010<br /></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">&quot;</span><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:10px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">When I brought this intriguing book to my monthly reference staff meeting (six public librarians), I supposed that everyone knew more than I did about the presence of white supremacy hate groups on the Internet. But I found out that only one-third of us did-and the ones who had </span><em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">no idea</span></em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"> were the decidedly older members of our staff. This small sample coincides with the most disturbing element of the research presented in Klein's book: not only are white supremacist Web sites and social networks ubiquitous and wildly popular, they are primarily targeting-and attracting-the younger generation.</span></span></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:10px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"></span></span><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">Although hate speech and hate groups include far more than racist and anti-Semitic white supremacists, Klein's book focuses on these particular groups and their outreach to the “net generation.” The granddaddy of them all, Stormfront.org, has been in cyberspace since the web took off in 1995. While much of the book uses and quotes a wealth of research already done on these groups, thereby bringing a lot together in one volume, </span><em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">A Space for Hate</span></em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"> claims its own contribution to the field by postulating a theory of “information laundering” to describe how hate sites use the unique “formats and constructs” of cyberspace to transform hate-based information into “acceptable web-based knowledge.” Maybe it seems obvious once we really think about it, but the normal Web paths such as search engines and links “can unwittingly lead an online information seeker to white power content that has already been designed for them as being educational, political, scientific, and even spiritual in nature.” The Institute for Historical Review (holocaust denial) and the Charles Darwin Research Institute (white race supremacy) don't engage at all in “hate speech” but present themselves as legitimate and respectable research operations. Classy Web design and function may lead those raised online to accept the legitimacy of the content based on appearance. One example might be the “metapedia” that, using the same format as Wikipedia and sophisticated language and choice of topics, seeks to bring white nationalist thinking into the mainstream rather than keep it out at the fringes. Typical hate speech and swastikas will not be found on these sites.</span></span></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"></span></span><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">The book is organized thus: an examination of the legal debate surrounding hate speech in the context of the first amendment (the U.S. is a center of Internet sites devoted to this kind of speech, as it banned on servers elsewhere); the murky coexistence of information and propaganda online and how they are cunningly manipulated; the special attraction of hate-based sites to young people based on the various kind of social and cultural media that are proliferating in cyberspace (YouTube, music sites, etc.); an analysis and review of 26 white nationalist/supremacist Web sites and how they frame their issues for the target audience; and an examination of counterattack by monitoring and other sites devoted to exposing and counteracting them. Does it scare you to know that many of these sites get</span><em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;">far</span></em><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"> more traffic than the Human Rights Campaign site, or that of the NAACP?&quot;</span></span></div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;"><span style="line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';font-size:13px;"><span style="font-family:'Gill Sans MT', 'Gill Sans', GillSans, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:16px;"></span></span></span><h3 style="font-size:15px;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-weight:normal;">- Reviewed by Ann Sparanese - Social Responsibilities Round Table, of the American Library Association</span></span></h3></div><span style="line-height:normal;font-size:16px;"></span><p style="padding-top:10px;padding-right:50px;padding-bottom:10px;padding-left:50px;line-height:24px;font-size:16px;"><font size="3"><span style="font-size:13px;line-height:15px;"><span style="font-family:'Courier New';"><span style="line-height:24px;"><br /></span></span></span></font></p>