Stormfront (website)

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Stormfront
URL http://www.stormfront.org
Slogan "White pride world wide"
Commercial? No
Type of site Forum
Registration Required to post
Available language(s) English, Italian, Serbian , Spanish, Croatian, French, Gaelic, Dutch, Russian, Afrikaans, Norsk, Hungarian, etc.
Owner Don Black
Created by Don Black
Launched 1991
Current status Active

The Stormfront White Nationalist Community is a white supremacist Internet forum[a] that has been described as one of the earliest and longest continually published websites of any kind and the Internet's first major hate site.[1][2] Stormfront was founded by former Ku Klux Klan member and white nationalist activist Don Black with the intention of creating a community around the white power movement. It grew in popularity in the 1990s and early 21st century, attracting attention from watchdog organizations opposing anti-Semitism.

The website is structured as a discussion forum, with numerous thematic sub-fora on topics such as philosophy, historical revisionism, and self-defense. Stormfront also hosts extensive links to racialist organizations. Issues such as the unsustainability of multicultural society, the possibility of a race war, and the perceived necessity of defending of the white race have fostered a community identity among members of the site, sustaining its growth and development. Stormfront has received media scrutiny for being removed from Internet search engine indexes, for online activism and for having as a member an electoral candidate of a mainstream political party.

Contents

[edit] History

Stormfront began in 1991 as an online bulletin board for white nationalist activist David Duke's campaign for United States Senator of Louisiana.[3] The name "Stormfront" was chosen for its connotations of a political or militant front and an analogy with weather fronts that invokes the idea of a tumultuous storm ending in cleansing.[3] The board began to become popular with the exponential growth of the Internet in 1994 and 1995, according to owner Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the American Nazi Party in the 1970s.[3][4][5] Black founded the website Stormfront.org in April 1995 with the intention of providing a central meeting place for the white power movement.[6] He owns the site's servers, avoiding dependence on Internet service providers.[7] He first received computer training while imprisoned for his role in an abortive 1981 attempt to invade Dominica.[8][9]

The number of registered users on the site rose from 5,000 in January 2002 to 52,566 in June 2005,[1] and it received more than 1,500 hits each weekday as of 2005.[7] By June 2008, the site was attracting more than 40,000 unique users each day.[6] Operating the site from its West Palm Beach, Florida headquarters is Black's full time job, and he is assisted by his son and 40 moderators.[6][10] The popularity of the site attracted attention not only from racialists, but also from watchdog groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League, whose efforts against the site have been hitherto ineffective.[11] With the advent of broadband technology for consumers, the site plans to compete with major television networks in offering video programming.[3]

[edit] Views and topics

The website is notable for the white supremacist views of its members,[a] a characterization that is contested by Don Black as an inaccurate description; Black believes the term "supremacy" implies a system which "isn't descriptive of what [the members] want".[3] It is organized primarily as a discussion forum with multiple thematic sub-fora including 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", and "Music and Entertainment".[1][6] There are also sub-fora for different geographic regions, and a section open to unregistered guests, who are elsewhere unable to post. Stormfront is comprehensive and frequently updated, hosting files from and links to a number of racialist organizations, an online dating service (for "heterosexual White Gentiles only"), and a electronic mailing lists that allow the White nationalist community to discuss issues of interest.[11][12][13]

In a 1998 interview for the alternative weekly newspaper Miami New Times, Black is quoted as 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. 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 U.S. Military in order to learn the skills necessary for winning a race war.[14][15] The 2008 United States presidential campaign of African-American Barack Obama was a cause of significant concern for some Stormfront members.[6]

[edit] Character and appeal

Don Black, a long-time advocate of increasing the mainstream appeal of the white supremacist movement, has as his preferred medium the Internet, specifically Stormfront.[1] The muted tone of rhetoric on the fora, discouragement of using racial epithets or slurs, prohibition of violent threats or describing anything illegal, as well as other standard community-building techniques have been effective for Stormfront.[1]

Scholar Violet Jones notes that Stormfront – like organizations such as Minuteman Project and the Military Order of the Stars and Bars – credits its mission to the founding myth of an America "created, built, and ideologically grounded by the descendants of white Europeans."[16] Black's clarity of vision in constructing the site as a community with the explicit purpose of "defending the white race" has contributed to sustaining the size of the community over its long lifetime, as it attracts white males with a "virtual tribal identity of white masculinity" who define themselves and the community in opposition to ethnic minorities, particularly Jews.[1]

A major function of the site for Black is "to provide a pro-white counterpoint to the mainstream media,"[17] which rarely covers white separatism.[17][3] White separatism is the belief that white Americans need to form a separate, racially homogeneous state to preserve their culture and heritage.[17] In I Found it on the Internet (1999), author Frances Jacobson Harris accuses Stormfront of citing crime statistics out of context in order to support claims of reverse discrimination.[18]

[edit] News coverage

In 2002, CNet News reported that Google had removed Stormfront.org from their French and German indexes in order to comply with French and German legislation forbidding links to websites which host white supremacist, Holocaust-denying, historical revisionist or similar material.[19] The attempt by the German government to block Stormfront was unsuccessful; although most of the site's content is illegal under German law, it is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[20]

In May 2003, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly reported on a racially segregated prom being held in Georgia and posted a poll on his website asking his viewers if they would send their own children 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."[21]

In August 2005, Doug Hanks withdrew from seeking the Republican Party nomination for one of four seats on the city council of Charlotte, North Carolina after it was revealed that he had posted on Stormfront. Hanks had posted more than 4,000 comments over the previous three years, including one in which he referred to African Americans as "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."[22]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Black has long been advocate for 'mainstreaming' the white supremacist movement, and the Internet is his preferred medium for doing so. His first and primary presence is Stormfront.org" Daniels, Jessie (2007-12-01). "Race, Civil Rights and Hate Speech in the Digital Era", in Everett, Anna: Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. MIT Press, 133. ISBN 0262050919. Retrieved on 2008-07-19. 
  2. ^ Sources which identify Stormfront as the Internet's "first hate site" include:
  3. ^ a b c d e f Swain, Carol M. (2003-03-24). "Don Black", Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 153-65. ISBN 0521016932. 
  4. ^ Etchingham, Julie (2000-01-12). "Hate.com expands on the net", BBC News. Retrieved on 2007-09-14. 
  5. ^ a b "The Racist Next Door". Miami New Times (1998-02-19). Retrieved on 2008-07-20. (Stromfront copy of original article)
  6. ^ a b c d e Saslow, Eli (2008-06-22). "Hate Groups' Newest Target", Washington Post. Retrieved on 2008-07-13. 
  7. ^ a b Cohen-Almagor, Raphael (2005-11-01). "Conclusion", The Scope of Tolerance: Studies on the Costs of Free Expression and Freedom of the Press, 1st, Routledge, 254. ISBN 0415357586. Retrieved on 2008-07-21. 
  8. ^ Lloyd, Robin (1999-08-12). "Web Trackers Hunt Racist Groups Online", CNN, Turner Broadcasting System. Retrieved on 2007-09-14. 
  9. ^ McKelvey, Tara (2001-08-16). "Father and Son Team on Hate Site", USA Today, Gannett Company. Retrieved on 2008-01-29. 
  10. ^ Phillips, Peter (2001-04-09). Censored 2001: 25 Years of Censored News and the Top Censored Stories of the Year. New York: Seven Stories Press, 133. ISBN 158322064X. 
  11. ^ a b Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000-05-28). "Black Metal", Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 24. ISBN 0742503402. 
  12. ^ Nacos, Brigitte L. (November 2002). "E-Terrorism and the Web of Hate", Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism, 2nd, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 114. ISBN 0742510832. 
  13. ^ Kaplan, Jeffrey (1999-02-28). The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 161. ISBN 0813525640. 
  14. ^ Holthouse, David (2006-07-07). "A Few Bad Men", Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  15. ^ Kifner, John (2006-07-07). "Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts", The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  16. ^ Jones, Violet (2006-11-28). "Violence, Discourse and Dixieland: A Critical Reflection on an Incident Involving Violence Against Black Youth", in Rossatto, César; Allen, Ricky. L; Pryun, Mark: Reinventing Critical Pedagogy: Widening the Circle of Anti-Oppression Education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 39. ISBN 0742538885. 
  17. ^ a b c Pulera, Dominic J. (2004-08-30). "White Wrongs", Sharing the Dream: White Males in Multicultural America. London: Continuum, 304. ISBN 0826416438. 
  18. ^ Jacobson Harris, Frances (2005-04-01). "The Deep End: Content", I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online. Chicago: American Library Association, 99. ISBN 0838908985. 
  19. ^ McCullagh, Declan (2002-10-23). "Google Excluding Controversial Sites", CNet News. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  20. ^ Johansen, Bruce E. (2004-05-30). "The New Terminators: A Guide to the Anti-Treaty Movement", in Johansen, Bruce E.: Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties and Contemporary Controversies. New York: Praeger Publishers, 323. ISBN 0313321043. 
  21. ^ O'Reilly, Bill (2003-05-08). "Circling the Wagons in Georgia", Talking Points, Fox News. Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 
  22. ^ "Internet Postings End Politico's Shot", Columbia Daily Tribune (2005-08-06). Retrieved on 2008-07-20. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormfront_%28website%29"
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