I WAS LURKING ON THE WEB OF HATE   Reflections on White Fire   Owen Pepperel		ISSUE NO. 1
	(...) For the adolescent trying to parse the bewildering complexity of identity, the Internet is the quintessential Pandora’s box. The keys to the box are as infinite as the imagination, and I am loath to consider the repercussions of some testosterone-muddled kid stumbling upon the wrong one. Google the word “Aryan,” for example, and the site that appears at the top of the list is for a group called the White Aryan Resistance (WAR). The caption beneath the link states: “Click here if you are a RACIST!” I hesitated. At first I was incredulous that the sound-byte could actually work its mojo on anyone—that there are those who say: “Yeah, that’s me.” Worse still was the thought of the kid who thinks, “hmmm, OK.” Then I felt the paranoia, second nature during our “Patriot Act” era, that clicking would register me as a “racist” in a database in some distant subterranean bunker. Finally there was the frisson of morbid curiosity—a brief luxuriating in impending disgust (...) OWEN PEPPEREL is a pen name.