Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-gay radicals are the stuff of David Goldman's weekends.

Goldman, a research assistant at a University library, has committed himself to tracking the rapidly growing traffic of hate speech on the Internet--everything from a group claiming "If your refuse to help arrest faggots, you really should expect to be left behind when God comes to collect His people" to one which asserts that "The Jew is like a destroying virus that attacks our racial body."

Originating as a Web development team project for the library in the spring of 1995, Hatewatch, Goldman's Web-based hate-monitoring organization, has gathered momentum.

"We were looking generically at ways to put our information and wanted to play with different formats," he says. "The next day I saw an article about Storm-front."

Goldman visited the site, one of the earliest white supremacist presences on the Web, and decided to focus the library's project on hate on the Internet, compiling a database for researchers.

But this incarnation had a limited lifespan.

"I realized I could not stay objective. I was having a difficult time just listing the groups," he says.

Separating from the library and its server, Hatewatch developed into an activist site.

"We don't say eliminating. We believe in the notion of containing and marginalizing extremist speak from political discourse," he says.

Hate.com

Since the inception of his project, Goldman says he has witnessed the explosion of sites espousing hate.

"In 1995 there were six groups on the Web. And there were two real ones--Stormfront and the Aryan Crusaders Library," he says.

According to a number of studies, the relatively low cost and effort of Internet publishing has opened up a new forum for hate speech.

"It allows organizations that have been limited by money and geographic location to communicate freely, to organize and spread propaganda," Goldman says. "The Internet is a medium that allows anyone to publish their gripes and grievances."

The spread of hate speech on the Internet is well-documented. Several weeks ago, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released its second report on extremist use of the Internet, titled "High Tech Hate."