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Stormfront (website)

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Stormfront
File:Stormfrontlogo.gif
Type of site
Forum
Available inEnglish
OwnerDon Black
Created byDon Black
URLhttp://www.stormfront.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationRequired to post
For other uses, see Stormfront

The Stormfront White Nationalist Community is a white nationalist Internet forum.[2] Founded in 1995, Stormfront is generally seen[weasel words] as the Internet's first major hate site,[1] and remains one of the most popular.[3] As of 2005, the site received over 1500 hits each weekday as of 2005.[3]

It is owned by Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was a member of the American Nazi Party in the 1970s.[4][5] Black owns the site's servers, avoiding dependence on Internet service providers.[3] He received his first computer training while imprisoned for his role in an abortive 1981 attempt to invade Dominica.[6][7] In Germany, access to Stormfront is blocked by some ISPs in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.[8] The Internet search engine Google banned the website from its French and German listings in 2002 in order to avoid legal liability.[9]

David Duke has an account on Stormfront that he uses to post articles from his own website, as well as polling forum members for opinions and questions; in particular during his Internet broadcasts. Duke has worked with Don Black on numerous projects including Operation Red Dog in 1980.[10][11]

Views and topics

The website is notable for the white nationalist views of its members.[2] The Stormfront forum is divided into many sub-forums. These include: News, Ideology and Philosophy, Culture and Customs, Theology, Quotations, Revisionism, 'Science, Technology and Race', Privacy, 'Self-Defense, Martial Arts, and Preparedness', Homemaking, Education and Homeschooling, Youth, Music and Entertainment, Lounge, and Classified Ads. There are also subforums for different geographic locations, and there is a section open to unregistered guests, who are elsewhere unable to post.

In a 1998 interview for the newspaper New Times, Black said, "We want to take America back. We know a multicultural Yugoslav nation can't hold up for too long. Whites won't have any choice but to take military action. It's our children whose interests we have to defend."[5] In 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported a discussion on Stormfront in which white nationalists were encouraged to join the US military, in order to learn the skills necessary for winning a race war.[12][13]

Stormfront in the news

In May 2003, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly reported on a segregated prom being held in Georgia and posted a poll on his website asking his viewers if they would send their own kids to one. A link to the poll was posted on Stormfront and messages subsequently posted there implied that a mass of readers had duly voted in order to skew the poll in favor of segregation. O'Reilly reported this the following week and refused to read the final results due to this, citing Stormfront as the culprit by name and referring to it as a "Neo-Nazi organization."[14]

In August 2005, a candidate for city council of Charlotte, North Carolina dropped out of the race after it was revealed that he had posted on Stormfront. Republican Doug Hanks had posted more than 4,000 times over the previous three years. In one comment he called African Americans "rabid beasts". Hanks, a writer and actor from Connecticut, said that his postings were intended to gain the trust of Stormfront users in order to help him write a novel. "I did what I thought I needed to do to establish myself as a credible white nationalist."[15]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Levin, Brian. "Cyberhate: A Legal and Historical Analysis of Extremists' Use of Computer Networks in America."Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader. Ed. Barbara Perry. Routledge, 2003. 363.
  2. ^ a b Sources which consider Stormfront a white supremacist website are:
    • New Times Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org)
    • Etchingham, Julie (January 12, 2000). "Hate.com expands on the net". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-09-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    • Lloyd, Robin (August 12, 1999). "Web trackers hunt racist groups online". CNN. Retrieved 2007-09-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    • "Hate on the World Wide Web:A Brief Guide to Cyberspace Bigotry". Anti-Defamation League. October 1998. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
    • "Jena Rally Sparks White Supremacist Rage, Lynching Threat". Southern Poverty Law Center. September 20, 2007. Retrieved 2008-01-29.
    • Ripley, Amanda (March 7, 2005). "The Bench Under Siege". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2008-01-29. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
    • "Hate on the Net". Retrieved 2008-01-29.
    • Scheneider, Keith (March 13, 1995). "Hate Groups Use Tools Of the Electronic Trade". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-01-29. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  3. ^ a b c Cohen-Almagor, Raphael. The Scope of Tolerance: Studies on the costs of free expression and freedom of the press. Routledge, 2005. 254.
  4. ^ Etchingham, Julie (January 12, 2000). "Hate.com expands on the net". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-09-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. ^ a b New Times Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org) Cite error: The named reference "racistnextdoor" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  6. ^ Lloyd, Robin (August 12, 1999). "Web trackers hunt racist groups online". CNN. Retrieved 2007-09-14. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  7. ^ McKelvey, Tara (August 16, 2001). "Father and son team on hate site". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-01-29. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ "German fined for publishing neo-Nazi web links". The Register, October 2004
  9. ^ "Google excluding controversial sites" CNet News, October 23, 2002
  10. ^ Captmike works undercover with the US Government to stop the invasion of the Island Nation of Dominica. manana.com
  11. ^ Operation Red Dog: Canadian neo-Nazis were central to the planned invasion of Dominica in 1981 canadiancontent.ca
  12. ^ Southern Poverty Law Center, "A Few Bad Men", David Holthouse, Summer 2006
  13. ^ The New York Times, "Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts", John Kifner, 7 July 2006.
  14. ^ Bill O'Reilly, "Circling the Wagons in Georgia", Fox News, May 08, 2003
  15. ^ "Internet postings end politico's shot", Columbia Daily Tribune, August 6, 2005
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