Stormfront (website)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Stormfront | |
|---|---|
 |
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| URL | http://www.stormfront.org |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Forum |
| Registration | Required to post |
| Available language(s) | English, Italian, Spanish, Croatian, French, Gaelic, Dutch, Russian, Afrikaans, Norsk, Hungarian, etc. |
| Owner | Don Black |
| Created by | Don Black |
| Launched | April 1995[1] |
| Current status | Active |
- For other uses, see Stormfront
The Stormfront White Nationalist Community is a white supremacist Internet forum.[2] Founded in 1995, Stormfront has been labelled the Internet's first major hate site,[1] though the website asserts that it is a forum for white nationalists.[3] The site received over 1500 hits each weekday as of 2005.[4]
Stormfront 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.[5][6] Black owns the site's servers, avoiding dependence on Internet service providers.[4] He received his first computer training while imprisoned for his role in an abortive 1981 attempt to invade Dominica.[7][8] In Germany, access to Stormfront is blocked by some ISPs in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.[9] The Internet search engine Google banned the website from its French and German listings in 2002 in order to avoid legal liability.[10]
Shortly after Black launched Stormfront, the National Alliance registered domain names for its site starting in July 1995.[1]
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.[11][12]
Contents |
[edit] Views and topics
The website is notable for the white supremacist 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."[6] 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.[13][14]
[edit] 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."[15]
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."[16]
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ a b c First Hate site:
- 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.
- "It was Black who would launch Stormfront, the first major extremist hate site." Ryan, Nick. Into a World of Hate: A Journey Among the Extreme Right, Routledge, 2004, p. 80. ISBN 041594922X
- "It was Holocaust denier and Ku Klux Klan leader, Don Black, who had founded Stormfront (the very first Internet hate site, in 1995)" Samuels, Shimon, "Is the Holocaust unique?", in Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Westview Press, 2001, p. 218. ISBN 0813336864
- "The first extremist hate site was Stormfront (1995)" Bolaffi, Guido. Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity and Culture, Sage Publications, 2003, p. 254. ISBN 0761968997
- ^ 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. "Hate.com expands on the net", BBC News, January 12, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- Lloyd, Robin. "Web trackers hunt racist groups online", CNN, August 12, 1999. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- Hate on the World Wide Web:A Brief Guide to Cyberspace Bigotry. Anti-Defamation League (October 1998). Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- Jena Rally Sparks White Supremacist Rage, Lynching Threat. Southern Poverty Law Center (September 20, 2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- Ripley, Amanda. "The Bench Under Siege", Time Magazine, March 7, 2005. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- Hate on the Net. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- Scheneider, Keith. "Hate Groups Use Tools Of the Electronic Trade", New York Times, March 13, 1995. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- "In 1995 Black brought up a Web site, Stormfront, which now serves as the primary site for white supremacist Internet communications." Atkins, Stephen E. Encyclopedia of Modern American Extremists and Extremist Groups, Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 2004. ISBN 0313315027
- "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" Everett, Anna. Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, MIT Press, 2007, p. 133. ISBN 0262050919
- "White supremacist groups such as Stormfront spread their message of racial hate through their Web site." Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, Caroline Schacht. Understanding Social Problems, Thomson Wadsworth, 2005, p. 181. ISBN 0534625142
- "Don Black, an ex-Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and owner of the white supremacist homepage Stormfront (www .stormfront.org)," Wang, Wally. Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won't Tell You About the Internet, No Starch Press Inc., 2006, p. 239. ISBN 1593271050
- "...the inclusion of the Stormfront flag specifically defines its audience as white supremacist." Negra, Diane. The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, Duke University Press, 2006, p. 94. ISBN 0822337401
- "A search for the term 'Stormfront' on the American version of Google results in a list of sites with the white supremacist Web site Stormfront first on the list." Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B. Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls, and Controversies, Sage Publications, 2003, p. 227. ISBN 0761928146
- "After his release in 1985, Black launched the first white supremacist Web site. Black's "Stormfront" was one of the largest hate sites on the Internet, ", Henry W. Lane, Joseph J. DiStefano, Martha L. Maznevski. International Management Behavior, Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 539. ISBN 140512671X
- "Stormfront is a white supremacist organisation." Jepson, Peter. Tackling Militant Racism, Ashgate Publishing, 2003, footnote 83, p. 151. ISBN 0754621634
- ^ Stormfront.org. White Nationalism FAQ. Retrieved on 2008-04-10.
- ^ a b Cohen-Almagor, Raphael. The Scope of Tolerance: Studies on the costs of free expression and freedom of the press. Routledge, 2005. 254.
- ^ Etchingham, Julie. "Hate.com expands on the net", BBC News, January 12, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- ^ a b New Times Feb. 19-25, 1998 article "The Racist Next Door" (archived on stormfront.org)
- ^ Lloyd, Robin. "Web trackers hunt racist groups online", CNN, August 12, 1999. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- ^ McKelvey, Tara. "Father and son team on hate site", USA Today, August 16, 2001. Retrieved on 2008-01-29.
- ^ "German fined for publishing neo-Nazi web links". The Register, October 2004
- ^ "Google excluding controversial sites" CNet News, October 23, 2002
- ^ Captmike works undercover with the US Government to stop the invasion of the Island Nation of Dominica. manana.com
- ^ Operation Red Dog: Canadian neo-Nazis were central to the planned invasion of Dominica in 1981 canadiancontent.ca
- ^ Southern Poverty Law Center, "A Few Bad Men", David Holthouse, Summer 2006
- ^ The New York Times, "Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts", John Kifner, 7 July 2006.
- ^ Bill O'Reilly, "Circling the Wagons in Georgia", Fox News, May 08, 2003
- ^ "Internet postings end politico's shot", Columbia Daily Tribune, August 6, 2005
