The recent spate of noose incidents in South Hempstead, Hempstead Village, Roosevelt and Valley Stream reminds us that the power of symbols to convey instant meaning hasn't been lost on hatemongers. They exploit symbols - the noose, the swastika, the burning cross - to convey feelings of hate and anger and instill feelings of fear and insecurity in their targets.

This is nothing new. But why we are seeing so many nooses this fall - not just on Long Island but also in Manhattan at Ground Zero and on a Columbia University professor's office door and in a backyard in Richmond Hill, Queens - is an important question. The answer may be connected to a heavily publicized case in a Jena, La., high school in combination with the spread of the Internet.

Whether left at a town garage, a police station or a construction site, as were the nooses, or scrawled on synagogues, churches and schools; burned into lawns, tattooed on bodies or displayed on jewelry or clothing, these symbols not only give the perpetrators a sense of power and belonging, but they tear at the fabric of society. They can spread fear among the target victims and others who see them.

As Hempstead Town councilwoman Dorothy Goosby told Newsday after two nooses were found in a Hempstead town garage earlier this month, "They were letting us know that they are still not satisfied with us as African-Americans."

The origin of the noose as a hate symbol is connected to the history of lynching in America, particularly in the South after the Civil War, when intimidation and violence replaced slavery as one of the main forms of social control that whites used against African-Americans. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century coincided with the height of lynching incidents, thus cementing the noose as a key hate symbol targeting African-Americans.

The noose may appear as a drawing or rendering, but more common is the use of actual rope nooses to intimidate or harass African-Americans - for example, by leaving one at someone's home or at their workplace (as we saw at the Hempstead police station and at Columbia University) or, as recently occurred in Jena at their school. In practice, it is an easily recognized modern symbol of hate and racial violence, just as is the use of the Nazi swastika.

In the past, the imagery of a noose or a swastika impacted the victim and others in the immediate vicinity of the act. But today, the Internet has made the world smaller and given more people access to an exponentially growing pool of data, information and opinion. Information about a hate incident is put out into cyberspace, reaching far beyond the community in which it occurred, to the whole country and even the world in a matter of nanoseconds.

The potency of these hate symbols takes on an added dimension when haters, racists and anti-Semites easily join online communities in which they can revel in the hate that is being spread and remain anonymous in the process.

White extremists have capitalized on the rash of nooses and swastikas that have appeared recently, and have used these incidents to inspire and urge their followers to continue the acts and even to step up the violence. One such hater in the metropolitan area has even gone so far as to sell nooses through his Web site. These calls, which are meant to inflame and motivate like-minded believers to action, are usually couched in terms that are protected speech under the First Amendment.

There is not enough concrete data to assess the link between the proliferation of hate symbols and rhetoric through the Internet to hate violence, but there are numerous anecdotes that hint at the power of the Internet to foster hate crimes. For example, Benjamin Smith learned online of the white extremist group World Church of the Creator and went on a multistate killing spree in the Midwest in 1999, targeting Jews, an African-American and a Korean American.

Eric Hunt, who admitted to reading Holocaust denial material online, faces criminal charges for allegedly attempting to kidnap and assault Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in a San Francisco hotel. Other haters have been inspired by Web sites and online propaganda to join with jihadists and become terrorists. We know that the Internet allows haters to share their practices, to influence and encourage each other and to revel in the hateful acts of others.

We are often asked if reporting on hate groups and the acts of hate they commit just gives rise to more incidents. We agree with the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said sunlight is still the best disinfectant - it is always better to expose hate to the light of day than to let it fester in the darkness.

The best answer to bad speech is good speech, and education is the key to ensuring that those who seek good will prevail. Just as freedom of speech allows haters to spread their hurtful messages, people and organizations who believe in respect and understanding and diversity can - indeed must - use their right of expression to condemn acts of hate and counter the falsehoods and closed-mindedness of the haters.

While we have come a long way - and legislation working its way through the New York State Legislature to create stiffer penalties for noose incidents should help - these recent hate symbol incidents unfortunately remind us that the demons of hatred and prejudice are still with us. We must encourage an open and honest examination of the underlying hatred and potential for violence that they represent. They are attacks against not just a person or a group but against democracy and American society as a whole, and we must educate people about the consequences of unchecked racism, anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate.

This is especially important for the younger generations for whom the Internet is the source of all information. Just as we teach them how to drive a car, we must teach them how to navigate through cyberspace so that they don't end up on a superhighway to hate.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.