Stormfront (website)
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The Stormfront White Nationalist Community is the most prominent white nationalist/white pride and white supremacist forum on the Internet. Its motto is "White Pride World Wide". The site owner refers to Stormfront strictly as a white nationalist website. Its critics and the media, however, often describe it as a Neo-Nazi organisation and accuse it of promoting racism and hate speech and of serving as a forum for the advocacy of violence.<ref>"RedState, White Supremacy, and Responsibility", Daily Kos, December 5, 2005</ref><ref name="FOX">Bill O'Reilly, "Circling the Wagons in Georgia", Fox News, May 08, 2003</ref><ref>"WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center: Case No. DTV2001-0023", WIPO, January 13, 2002</ref> It has been listed<ref>Southern Poverty Law Center Hate on the Net, Intelligence Report, Winter 1999</ref> as a hate site, and a number of internet content filters prevent access to it.<ref>"Google excluding controversial sites" CNet News, October 23, 2002</ref>
Although Stormfront claims to prohibit the promotion of illegal activities under United States law, webmaster Don Black is quoted in an article on the website saying: "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."<ref name="racistnextdoor">NEW TIMES Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org)</ref>
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 separatism, nazism, anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism and homophobia, and such feelings as white pride.
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History
The Stormfront forum began as a dial-up Bulletin board system in the early 1990s and has been on the Internet since March 1995.<ref name="splcreport">"Electronic Storm: Stormfront grows a thriving neo-Nazi community", Southern Poverty Law Center, September 14, 2005</ref> By 1997, Stormfront.org had expanded and began hosting other white nationalist websites.<ref name="poisoning">"Don Black: White Pride World Wide", Anti-Defamation League, 2001</ref> An October 2000 documentary that aired on HBO “Hate.com: Extremist on the Internet” gave an overview of the organization as it stood at that time along with an interview of Stormfornt founder Don Black where he discussed his reasons for developing the site.[1] By June of 2005 Stormfront had grown to over 52,000 registered user accounts, and ranked within the top 1% of all internet sites.<ref name="splcreport">"Electronic Storm: Stormfront grows a thriving neo-Nazi community", Southern Poverty Law Center, September 14, 2005</ref> As of September 2006 Stormfront has more than 92,000 registered user accounts,<ref>Big-Boards Statistics on Stormfront</ref> of which fewer than 21,500 are claimed by Stormfront to be active.<ref>"Stormfront Will Reach 92,000 By Sept. 13", Stormfront.org, accessed on September 23, 2006</ref> The webmaster of the site is Don Black, a self-described racialist and former Grand Wizard, or national director, of the Ku Klux Klan.<ref>"Conservatives, White Supremacists, Take to Florida Streets", Village Voice, November 16, 2000.</ref> Black, describes his website as "a resource for those courageous men and women fighting to preserve their White Western culture, ideals and freedom of speech and association".<ref name="poisoning" />
Forums
Stormfront has a variety of international sections catering to users from Italy, Spain, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, France, Latin America, Netherlands, Baltic & Scandinavia, Serbia, Russia and South Africa. The internal forum activities take place in forums entitled Polls, Poetry, Quotations, Music and Entertainment, Revisionism, Lounge, Classified Ads, eActivism and Stormfront Webmasters, Multimedia, Graphics and Talk. Some form of self-help is given in forums entitled Privacy, Network Security & Encryption, Business and Finance, Self Defense, Martial Arts & Preparedness, Health and Fitness, Homemaking, Education and Homeschooling and Legal Issues. Other forums are entitled Ideology and Philosophy, Culture and Customs, Revisionism, Science, Technology and Race, Youth, Events, Strategy and Tactics, Local and Regional, Advance Scout and Theology.
Members
Stormfront caters to non-Jewish white people of European descent 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. The website also provides internet radio shows hosted largely by site members.
Hosted material
A section called "Our Legacy of Truth" presents a variety of texts on racist and fascist topics. "1001 Quotes By and About Jews" are presented, as well as text about "Race", "Christian Identity", "Eugenics", "National Socialism" (including various works by Adolf Hitler), and "Viewpoints". Another section called "Text library" presents text on "White nationalist issues", "Affirmative Action and anti-White-bias", "Immigration in America", "Racial Differences", "Revisionism", "National Socialism" and "Zionism & Judaism," as well as other texts.
Extension of views
The creators of Stormfront.org also operate other websites on the Internet, including Martinlutherking.org. The site purports to be an informational resource for students, and others interested in Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and works. The material presented is negative in tone. It has pages entitled "Why the King Holiday Should be Repealed!", "Black Invention Myths" and "Bring the dream to your school!". The material provided calls King "a philanderer, a drunk, a liar, a plagiarist, and a cheater" and "a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people". Stormfront serves as a host to some other white nationalist websites, such as solargeneral.com.
Controversies and criticism
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."<ref name="FOX" /><ref>"Hate groups thrive in cyberspace", Santa Cruz Sentinel, August 22, 1999</ref>
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."<ref>"Internet postings end politico's shot", Columbia Daily Tribune, August 6, 2005; see also: Charlotte Observer (registration required)</ref>
Stormfront is listed by some hate group watchdog organizations as a white supremacist and hate site, and as a result it's blocked by some Internet filters commonly used in public places.<ref>Statement of the Anti-Defamation League on hate on the internet before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation", United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, May 20, 1999</ref><ref>Extremism in cyberspace: the legal issues affecting internet hate speech", Anti-Defamation League, 2000</ref> In Germany access to Stormfront is blocked by some ISPs in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.<ref>"German fined for publishing neo-Nazi web links", The Register, October 2004</ref><ref>"Internet censorship", World Future Fund, 2002</ref> Stormfront also accuses one of the largest American internet providers, AOL, of practicing censorship by blocking its subscribers from accessing Stormfront. Critics accuse Stormfront members of supporting violence, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
Purported advocacy of Neo-Nazism and violence
Although Stormfront describes itself primarily as a "White Nationalist Community", Stormfront is routinely referred to as a Neo-Nazi community.<ref name="splcreport"/> Stormfront has featured the writings of William Pierce, the leader of the National Alliance, a group often described as Neo-Nazi.<ref name="poisoning" /> In the past, Stormfront administators have been accused of censoring some posts critical of the National Alliance.<ref name="splcreport"/> Stormfront also hosts a copy of Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf and extolls him as a man who "refused to surrender".<ref>Adolph Hitler "Mein Kampf" hosted on Stormfront</ref> Among other controversial material, Stormfront has in the past hosted a library of neo-Nazi graphics, although that library has since been taken down.<ref name="poisoning"/> Black himself was a member of the American Nazi Party in the 1970s.<ref name="racistnextdoor">NEW TIMES Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org)</ref> Many Stormfront users describe themselves as National Socialists, while other deny such descriptions and use such terms as white nationalists, white separatists and others.
Black, on behalf of Stormfront, has signed the New Orleans Protocol, an agreement among White nationalist groups which calls for "zero tolerance for violence". Black discusses his 1987 resignation from the Ku Klux Klan by saying :"I concluded the Klan could never be a viable political movement again. It had a reputation for random and senseless violence which it could never overcome."<ref>Nieli, Russ, Carol M. Swain (2003). Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America. Cambridge University Press, 161. ISBN 0521016932.</ref>
Nonetheless, Black and Stormfront have been accused of advocating the use of violence. In 1981, Black was arrested as he prepared to board a boat stocked with weapons and ammunition to invade Dominica in what he and his accomplices dubbed Operation Red Dog. Black was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the attempted invasion. Black is a former "Grand Wizard", or national director, of the Ku Klux Klan - an organization with a long history of violence.
Black and others on Stormfront often envision the possibility of a future race war, such as the one depicted in the novel The Turner Diaries. Such a future race war, and how to best prepare for it, is a frequent topic for discussion on Stormfront. For example, in 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported a discussion on Stormfront which encouraged white nationalists to join the military, in order to learn the skills necessary for winning such a race war.<ref>Southern Poverty Law Center "A Few Bad Men", David Holthouse, Summer 2006</ref><ref>New York Times "Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts", John Kifner, 7 July 2006. (archived on truthout.org)</ref> Speaking of such a future war in a 1998 interview for New Times, a local newspaper, Black has 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."<ref name="racistnextdoor">NEW TIMES Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org)</ref>
References
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