Stormfront (website)
- For other uses, see Stormfront.
The Stormfront White Nationalist Community is a prominent white nationalist / white pride / white supremacist Internet forum. It began as a dial-up BBS in 1990 and has been on the Internet since 1995. By 1997, Stormfront.org had expanded and began hosting other white-nationalist websites. Its motto is "White Pride World Wide". The site owner refers to Stormfront strictly as a white nationalist website. Permitted content covers a broad range of racialist / racist and far right beliefs, including extreme forms, although promotion of violence and illegality is banned.
Stormfront has over 75,000 members and has reportedly had as many as 4,865 users logged in at one time. It is the largest online community of white nationalists and has claimed to be the first website of its kind. Some of its members describe themselves as "National Socialists", among other descriptions including patriots, traditionalists, right wing, racialists, "true" conservatives, and "real" Americans.
The webmaster of the site is Don Black, a self-described racialist and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Members
Stormfront calls itself a "Racialist discussion board for pro-White activists and anyone else interested in White survival". Most of the members of Stormfront say that they are opposed to any form of "race-mixing" between the human races and support various forms of racism. The articles posted there often denounce non-white immigration and strongly advocate such views as white nationalism, white supremacy, white separatism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamic sentiment, and anti-homosexuality and such feelings as white pride.
Stormfront caters to white people from all across the world, and has sections in various languages, especially Dutch. Posters from the United States are the largest contingent, but other English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia) are well-represented, as well as the Netherlands and Flanders. The rest of the posters are from other European countries and Latin America, with a few from South Africa. Prominent posters include or included Vonbluvens, Kevin Alfred Strom, Paul Fromm, David Duke, Jurgen Graf.
In early 2001 a massive flame war broke out between members of Fuckedcompany and Stormfront, the conflict lead to the Stormfront message board being taken offline for approximately two days for clean-up. This event caused the Stormfront moderators to take a hard line against trolling and miscellaneous disruption.
Extension of views
The creators of Stormfront.org also operate other websites on the Internet, including Martinlutherking.org [1] which, describing itself as "The truth about Martin Luther King...a valuable resource for teachers and students alike", displays prominently on its main page a link to an article advocating the repeal of the US national Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and a link to a revisionist discussion board harshly criticizing and denouncing Martin Luther King, Jr., hosted on the Stormfront forum. Anti-racist visitors, who are also allowed to post at this discussion board, often condemn the content at Martinlutherking.org.
Jew Watch [2] is another site Stormfront's administrator, Don Black, reportedly provided hosting or maintenance for in the past. However, it is not authored by the creators of Stormfront.org and reportedly is not affiliated with Stormfront anymore.
The Violently Racist Music [3] site was also founded by one of Stormfront's creators to expose examples of anti-white racism in hip-hop and other genres of music.
Controversies
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"[4].
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 using the name "Snarkie". 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."[5]
The moderators at Stormfront are also often accused of undue censorship. The posts of all new users are screened by moderators for a certain period of time before they can become unmoderated. Anti-racists and other opponents are restricted to a few open sections, and often complain that many of their posts fail to pass the screening process. Moderators of the boards claim that they remove posts lacking civility, respect or otherwise "unproductive". Some disgruntled White Nationalist members have also claimed censorship, and accused Stormfront moderators of overreacting, as well as suppressing negative or positive discussion of certain personalities and organizations. On some issues (e.g. Hal Turner), the site has rather explicit, official policies favouring certain types of opinions. Some of the more "extreme" communities often criticize Stormfront for being too "soft", "sanitized" and "hypocritical". White Nationalist or related internet communities where such critique is common are Hal Turner's board, Resistance Records board and Vanguard News Network forum.
Stormfront is listed by some hate group watchdog organizations as a white supremacist and hate site, as a result it's blocked by some Internet filters commonly used in public places. In Germany access to Stormfront is allegedly blocked by ISPs. Recently, many AOL Internet subscribers in different countries reported that AOL had started blocking Stormfront, at first displaying a suspected phishing scam warning and changing that to a generic error afterwards[6].
As a counter to Stormfront, the anti-racist Web site Mootstormfront was founded in October 2004. The site is aimed to be an alternative to the Stormfront forums by providing, according to its motto, an "interface between white supremacy and reality."
See also
- Modern National Socialists
- Council of Conservative Citizens
- Vanguard News Network
- National Vanguard (American organization)