Internationally known
The Internet has brought about what Stormfront’s Kelso calls an “entirely new phenomenon of an international movement.” Almost half of Stormfront members are from outside the U.S. representing countries as disparate as Australia, South Africa and Russia. Kelso is often asked to find translators for international posts. Surprisingly, the fastest growing membership for Stormfront is in South America.
Kelso explains that since America has strong freedom of speech laws, racists from around the world find safe harbor in Stormfront for their posts which are illegal in their countries.
“Before the Internet there was no way to even really know what people in other countries were doing. Now it truly is ‘white pride world wide’,” says Kelso.
While there is no international meet ups or coordinated efforts, the very existence of chapters throughout the world adds strength and potential to the movement.
Click to view intra-group activities or conclusion.
Posted by Team B 4:20 PM
Labels: intra-group activities, Kelso
Swapping and Mingling
The Internet has encouraged a greater level of cross-pollination and cooperation between different factions as an outgrowth of the Internet.
“If you physically put these different factions in a room together, they would fight," said Brian Marcus, director of internet monitoring for the Anti-Defamation League. "On the Internet they can sound off and vent instead of exchanging blows, and agree to put aside their difference. At public rallies you will find the whole spectrum invited to join together and show a strong presence in the real world. There is more willingness to work together."
This intermingling is no small feat for a movement so riddled with internal debate. Uniting these warring factions is one of the Internet's greatest contributions to the white supremacists movement.
The 2004 rally at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, only one hundred miles outside New York City, for example, was staged by the National Socialist Movement, but drew a range of different white supremacists including the KKK, Aryan Nations, the Creativity movement and skinheads. The event was also outnumbered by hundreds of anti-racists activists from groups like the Anti-Racists Action Network who use a similar Web-based grassroots organization and were able to learn about the rally. Click here for photo caption.
Click to continue to international scene or conclusion.
Posted by Team B 4:19 PM
Net effects
The effects of the Internet on the White Supremacist Movement are already apparent. While there is heated debate about whether there is an increase of white supremacist activity, sparked in part by a study put out last February by the Anti-Defamation League on the resurgence of klans, there seems to be a rise in the number of groups, which is attributable at least in part to the Internet. “The number of racists hasn’t necessarily increased that dramatically, but there are more options for those individuals,” explains the Anti-Defamation League’s Brian Marcus, who has been tracking the Internet usage by hate groups for the past fifteen years. “It’s like a supermarket effect where you can pick and choose. Twenty years ago, you would join one local group. That was who you identified with, hung out with. Now with the Internet, you are opened up to information from different groups. People have much greater exposure to different groups,” he says. Videos much like the following, display the Net's ability to unite varied users and disseminate information to them.
This increase in groups has not lead to a more fractioned dispersed community, or as one might expect. Instead thanks to the Internet, it is highly unified with greater cooperation within groups and a wider reach, extending internationally.
Click to explore intra-group activities or the international scene.
Posted by Team B 4:14 PM
Strategic networking
The vision of the white supremacist movement as a network of small independent yet interlinked local groups spread out throughout the country is exactly the kind of structure that the web facilitates and helps create. Theorists call this phenomenon Netwar, and point out that the use of such a cell structure could be the possible solution for smaller groups trying to compete against larger institutionalized powers.
First coined in 1996 by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt of the Rand Corporation, Netwar, is defined as the use a network of small dispersed groups or individuals that share a strong ideology, similar strategies, who communicate, coordinate and work together using an central form of communication, often without any central command. While they stress that there are other forms of communication that can be used, the Internet is the obvious choi
ce. The Internet gives such groups an upper hand. Arquilla and Ronfeldt predict that in the coming decades, these kinds of groups will gain power and prominence. They point to groups like the Anti-Racist Action, Earth Liberation Front, Battle of Seattle, International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Al Qaeda, and of course white supremacists.
The ARA is particularly interesting because they fight the white supremacist movement by taking on a similar network organizational structure of small autonomous individual groups united strongly through their use of the Internet.
White nationalists are very conscious of this strategy. Some leaders in the movement have been preaching long before the advent of the information highway. The “leaderless resistance” model, as it is known, argues for the same kind of network, which can be done using couriers for instance, instead of the Internet. The main proponent of using this model was former Klansman, turned Aryan Nation, writer Louis Beam (at left) in his eponymous 1992 essay.
Stormfront is an example of Netwar and leaderless resistance, and if these theorists are correct, it will further the success of their movement. It makes room for lone wolves, small groups and people like New York City racists, to participate even if they are geographically or otherwise alienated. It eliminates the weak link represented by a central leadership that has historically been targeted by the government and has proved vulnerable to internal disputes and struggles within the movement. The message board with its ability to disseminate information and connect people becomes the meeting place, operating manual, inspiration and in essence the leader itself. The Xerox machine made pamphletting easier, telephones aided outreach, but the Internet has changed the very nature of the organization itself.
Click here to read about the net effects.
Posted by Team B 4:10 PM
Labels: ARA, leaderless resistance, Louis Beam, netwar
Getting to know you
Stormfront becomes an important “icebreaker” explains Kelso (at left), who runs Stormfront’s day-to-day operations. He says he wouldn’t have signed up for Stormfront if it weren’t for the option of using a pseudonym. “If you give people the chance to tip toe into the water, they are more likely to come in than if they have to take a dive. I felt like, ‘I don’t know is these people safe. What will happen to me if I join?’ I got my toes in the water and then over the months and years I saw the water’s not bad, so I went deeper and deeper. That’s happened to many of us,” he said.
The challenge in New York City though is greater. Stormfront helps people to connect, but there is still a lot of fear of meeting up in public. One avid poster, Keith, complains, “I've often attempted to meet people through this website, and it seems that there is an irrational terror of actually going out and chilling at a beer hall for a few hours with cool people.”
“I wouldn't call it an irrational terror—there are real nuts out there,” one local responded, referring to anti-racists.
Plans were made to meet up for beers, with larger hopes for a rally or at least a road trip this summer to one in Kentucky. “It will only happen if you make it happen,” posted one inspirer.
Other cities, like Houston and West Palm Beach are more successfully active with weekly gatherings, which are more akin to barbeques than rallies, but with political discussions and speakers. One of Stormfront’s goals, according to Kelso, is to expand these regular meet-ups from scores of cities where they are now to hundreds.
Click here for a close up on Southern Poverty Law Center map (at right) of groups in New York State.
Click here to read about strategic networking that helps groups like Stormfront and its opponents push forward.
Click here to jump to a discussion on the Web's net effect.
Posted by Team B 2:39 PM
Hiding behind the Web
Jamie Kelso describes Stormfronters as intelligent, tech savvy, and upstanding members of society, who defy the usual stereotype of white hate-mongers. “We are portrayed as being fringe and marginal but we have high powered attorneys, doctors, military and law enforcement officers, and college professors. When we hold gatherings, the quality and caliber of the people is extraordinary,” he says.
Coming out as a racist can be a dangerous thing, which is why the anonymity of the Internet is so crucial. “Most people who hold our point of view are reluctant to become publicly known. They’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs or they will be subject to other forms of harassment. In fact it’s a very small minority of people who don’t care if their names are associated with what has become a politically unfashionable point of view,” explains Black in Hate.com. The ability to freely exchange information and partake in a cyber-community in the safety and privacy of your own home is a major break-through. Anonymous web monikers have become the new hoods in the Internet Age.
Stormfront.org video advertisement:
While Stormfront assumes the government and anti-racist groups are monitoring the site, the medium means less of a risk for members getting outed to the neighbors or co-workers. The FBI could potentially track down information, but it’s more difficult for the average person. In fact Black’s neighbors recently told a newscaster on the local nightly news that they didn’t even know he was a racist.
Some groups successfully use the information on the web to counter white supremacists. Groups, such as the grassroots group, Anti-Racists Action, who stage direct actions against white supremacists at their rallies, can find out about upcoming events to protest, through Stormfront. Other anti-racists groups have used cyber-terrorism to hack these websites.
The desire for anonymity is even more extreme in politically liberal and diverse places like New York City. While there is some white supremacists activity, like the National Socialist Movement chapter in Brooklyn, New York Stormfronters complain that the lack of out racists makes “Jew York City” a frustrating and alienating place to live. One lonely New Yorker posted recently, “I was growing worried that there was no one left here, besides perhaps a small group of friends. I live in Brooklyn, and oh dear. I’d love to talk to those who live here.”
Click here to learn more about how New Yorkers organize on Stormfront.
Posted by Team B 1:54 PM
Labels: anonymity, Jamie Kelso, Stormfront
The Nuts and Bolts of Stormfront and the use of the Web
Stormfront.com, the first of the many white supremacist websites, still holds the title of the largest and most popular. When Black (at right) built his first private dial-up bulletin board in 1990 for a few members of David Duke’s Senate race campaign, he did not expect it would lead to one of the largest influences on the international white supremacist movement. The day after it officially went public in March of 1995, it attracted 1,700 visitors. Today, there are 106, 000 members, with an average of 1,000 new members added every two weeks. According to Alexa Web Rankings, the average number of daily hits is 10,700 a day. Stormfront has been called the most powerful and active influence in the White Nationalist Community. “I feel like I've accomplished more on the Web than in my 25 years of political activism,” Black told a reporter in 1998. (A shy private man, Black has stopped talking to the media in recent years.)
During his lifetime career in the white nationalist movement, Black has tried traditional forms out outreach, but he has called the Internet far superior. “Over the years I have distributed tens of thousands of leaflets, fliers and newspapers, maybe hundreds of thousands. But we have never been able to reach the kind of audience we can now, so easily and inexpensively,” he said in a 2000 interview for HBO’s documentary Hate.com. "The net has provided us with the opportunity to bring our point of view to hundreds of thousands of people who would never have otherwise subscribed to one of our publications or otherwise been in touch with any of our organizations.”
Click here to read Don Black's reaction to the documentary on Stormfront.org or here to learn more about anonymity on the Web.
But more than the web’s wide reach, it’s the power of its immediacy and ease. “Everything used to be done by mail and paper. It was very weak compared to what we have now. You had to wait each month to get your magazine or newsletter, had to write in letters to congress. Now if you get hankering to do something, you are online 24 hours a day,” explains Jamie Kelso, 58, the website’s manager, Black’s current right hand man and David Duke’s former top aide.
As a message board, akin to Craigslist, the design is simple to the point of looking outdated; unfortunately the messages posted reveal that the white supremacists movement is not. There are announcements for local Klan gatherings, downloadable flyers, polls, and streaming podcasts and racist music.
Different sections cover race related news (“White Girl beaten by Mestizo girls on bus,” “Liberian Family of 15 Moves Right In”), activism, poetry, strategy and tactics, money talks and even a youth section and a whites-only dating service. Debates cover whether it is more effective to identify oneself as a Klansman when speaking out to the community (consensus says no), and if it’s appropriate to use the N-word around children. The classified ad section list Swastika rings, Hitler paintings and Aryan wear boots. The “Self-defense, Martial Arts and Preparedness” section lists “a 30 day count down to race war” and “Just a friendly warning; .223 & 5.56mm are NOT the same round!” The “Privacy, Network Security and Encryption” section has information about the FBI bugging cell phones, Spyware, and file-sharing network. And perhaps most importantly, is the locals’ section which links racists to others in their neighborhood to plan events and meet-ups.
The ease of partaking in a movement by simply clicking one’s mouse may seem too small of a commitment to really amount to much, but Stormfront has tried to counter this by adding incentives for greater involvement and dedication. Positive feedback on your posts helps graduate you to a higher member status with more site access; monetary donations grant entry into the secret VIP chatroom. Moreover, to create a greater sense of an immediate and tangible community, they added a list of the other members currently online, which often includes the high profilers within the movement like David Duke, Bob Whitaker (a former Reagan administration member in charge of security clearances, one of the few white nationalists to gain prominence in government despite being openly racist), and April Gaede (mother of Prussian Blue, the 14-year-old blond twin girls who perform pop songs with racist lyrics, a sort of white supremacist version of the Olsen Twins) all of whom are just a click away. A section even alerts users of other members' birthdays.
View Prussian Blue music video below:
Click here to view ABC News' report on the group.
More importantly, the ease in joining has paid off in the long run through its ability to draw people into what can be an intimidating and scary communities. There are ignorant rants and overt hate, but the site prohibits discussions that aren’t “civil and productive, ” and have even taken down posts which seem too extreme or ignorant. Profanity is coded to appear as asterisks. The site prohibits anyone “advocating or suggesting any activity which is illegal under U.S. law.” (The rules are enforced, but they are easy to get around. There are no guns listed for sale, for instance, but plenty of advice on buying them, and no monitoring of private messages sent between members. Members discuss strategies for possible race wars, and ask for specific help in dealing with Jews and ethnic minorities causing problems. One can only surmise that the talk could lead elsewhere.) While the legal incentives for such a ban are clear, it also helps dispel the stereotype of ignorance and extremity. A more mainstream image furthers their cause politically and helps with recruitment.
Stormfront works hard to make the movement seem welcoming. The very medium of the internet portrays a more mainstream image, and self-selects only those with internet access. Stormfront’s Jaime Kelso conducts outreach on other websites and in the real world, which includes promoting the very use of the Internet. He personally found Stormfront through the benign Google, which is not surprisingly the most common way that people find the site. Members have even created videoblogs on YouTube to counter the stereotypes. Their efforts may just be working. Click here to read how many use the Web as a mask.
View a white nationalist's YouTube video response to a newscast on Stormfront:
View NBC newscast:
Click here to continue ...
Posted by Team B 1:25 PM
Labels: anonymity, Don Black, immediacy and ease
