Don Black: White Pride World Wide
An unmistakable logo greets visitors to the Stormfront Home Page,
the gateway to Don Black's online world of bigotry: a cross ringed by
the words "White Pride World Wide." Under this logo, Black describes
his site:
Stormfront is a resource for those courageous men and women fighting
to preserve their White Western culture, ideals and freedom of speech
and association a forum for planning strategies and forming political
and social groups to ensure victory.7
Though Black claims to be a "White Nationalist," not a hatemonger,
his idea of "White Pride" involves demeaning, demonizing and
menacing Jews and non-whites, and his concept of "victory" includes
the creation of ethnically cleansed political enclaves.
Since its creation, Stormfront has served as a veritable supermarket
of online hate, stocking its shelves with many forms of anti-Semitism
and racism. In its first two years, Stormfront featured the writings
of William Pierce of the neo-Nazi National Alliance; David Duke; representatives
of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review and other assorted
extremists. Conspiracy-laden discussions of the destruction of the Branch
Davidian complex in Waco, Texas; the shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, between
the FBI and white-separatist Randy Weaver; and the bombing of the Murrah
Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City appeared on the site's Home Page.
In one article, Kirk Lyons, defender and self-proclaimed sympathizer of
right-wing extremists, likened the events at the Branch Davidian compound
to the Nazi destruction of the town of Lidice in Czechoslovakia.8
In another piece, Eustace Mullins, an aged anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist
who has spread hate for more than 40 years, suggested that the likely
party responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City is the Anti-Defamation
League.9 In addition to text articles, early versions of Stormfront
housed a library of neo-Nazi graphics available for downloading, a list
of phone numbers for racist computer bulletin boards that were not on
the Internet, and a short page of links to other hateful Web sites.
By 1997, Black's site became home to the Web pages of other extremists,
such as Aryan Nations and Ed Fields, racist publisher of The Truth
At Last, a hate-filled newspaper. He also posted new reprints of white
supremacist articles and essays, such as The Talmud: Judaism's holiest
book documented and exposed. Meant to inflame Christians by characterizing
the Talmud as primarily anti-Christian and filled with "malice,"
"hate-mongering" and "barbarities," this particularly
scurrilous tract willfully distorts and misrepresents an important religious
document while demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of its history,
complexity, and role in Jewish religious practice.
In addition, Black posted Louis Beam's article entitled "The Conspiracy
to Erect an Electronic Iron Curtain." Drawing on images of the Inquisition,
Beam's diatribe describes a massive conspiracy, led by a coalition of
Jewish groups (including ADL) and the government, to censor the Internet.
According to Beam,
Writing about Jewish religious leaders and government spymasters operating
in a collusive effort to erect an electronic iron curtain to restrict
freedom of speech and information does not make one anti-Semitic or
anti-government. The truth is anti-Semitic. The government is erecting
a police state. The author opposes both oppressive religious groups
and repressive government. If speaking the truth and opposing tyranny
makes one anti-Semitic and anti-government, then I am both...
On January 13, 1998, Black appeared on the ABC-TV program "Nightline."
Presented in an introductory segment as "a former member of the Ku
Klux Klan," he explained how he has "recruited people"
via the Internet whom he "otherwise wouldn't have reached."
He also commented
| Stormfront has served as a veritable
supermarket of online hate, stocking its shelves with many forms of
anti-Semitism and racism. |
that sites such as Stormfront "provide those people who are
attracted to our ideas with a forum to talk to each other and to form
a virtual community."
Despite the fact that Black's racist and anti-Semitic views were clearly
reported in a pre-recorded introduction, the program gave him the opportunity
to market these views in a mainstream forum. In his subsequent discussion
with Ted Koppel, "Nightline's" host, and Floyd Abrams, a prominent
First Amendment attorney (both of whom rejected his bigotry), Black tried
to portray himself as reasonable. "You may consider my views dangerous,
but so were those of the Founding Fathers, who were considered dangerous,"
he claimed. "In fact, their views...weren't that much different from
my own." Later in the discussion, Black declared that "Fifty,
60, 70 years ago, what I'm saying was part of the mainstream." He
claimed a four-fold increase in visitors to his site during the days that
followed the broadcast. Perhaps emboldened by this jump in traffic, Black
has since picked up the pace of his online activities.
Some of Black's recent efforts have involved the expansion of Stormfront:
enlarging its collection of links, adding an interactive chat room, and
housing additional racist Web sites. One of these sites, Our Legacy
of Truth, offers the text of works such as "Proof of Negro Inferiority"
by Alexander Winchell and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, as well as
Willie Martin's "1001 Quotes By and About Jews." This pernicious
compendium of quotations strings together mistranslated remarks made by
Jews, statements of well-known non-Jews taken out of context, and the
ravings of anti-Semites, so as to give readers the impression that Jews
are constantly striving for global control. Another site now housed by
Black,
| Jew Watch organizes its anti-Semitic
materials much in the same way a popular Web directory might group
more benign information. |
White Singles, serves as a free dating service for white supremacists.
"Women and men listed on WS [White Singles] are heterosexual,
white gentiles only," its Home Page declares. Well over 200 men and
women have registered for this service, many of them submitting pictures
of themselves for viewing by prospective mates. A third new site at Stormfront,
White Nationalist News Agency (NNA), posts the text of articles
from the Associated Press and other reputable news sources, seemingly
without legal permission. Attached to these articles are the racist and
anti-Semitic comments of Vincent Breeding, NNA editor and National Alliance
activist of Tampa, Florida. Clickable, colorful advertisements for the
sites of the National Alliance and Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel have
also appeared at the NNA site.
Beyond his additions to Stormfront, Black has begun to help other
white supremacists by hosting their sites without publicly admitting that
he is doing so. Unlike sites such as The Truth at Last or White
Nationalist News Agency, which are housed by Black and are in effect
part of Stormfront, it is not readily apparent that he services
these other sites.
Adrian Edward Marlow of Suisun City, California, maintains one of these
sites, White Pride World Wide.10 In fact, Marlow owns
Black's Web server, the computer that contains his Web site and makes
it available to Internet users. Black rents this server from Marlow and
controls it electronically from a remote location: his home in West Palm
Beach, Florida.11 Marlow also uses his own server to co-host
white supremacist sites with Don Black.
Not surprisingly, White Pride World Wide is advertised on Stormfront
and links to the mailing lists and chat room at Black's site. The
rest of the site reflects Black's values as well: it includes "1001
Quotes By and About Jews," Madison Grant's racist tract The Passing
of the Great Race and transcriptions of Louis Beam's speeches. Like
Stormfront, White Pride World Wide also houses other racist Web
sites, such as Verboten (a German-language extremist site) and
women.wpww.com (a site created by and for white supremacist women).
Black hosts a site named Blitzcast, which Stormfront and
White Pride World Wide recommend for those seeking online, racist
audio "broadcasts." Using free audio software easily downloadable
from the Web, visitors to Blitzcast can listen to the speeches
of American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, the weekly radio
addresses of National Alliance leader William Pierce, and the ravings
of anti-Semitic Jew Benjamin Freedman. Also appearing at Blitzcast
is Frank Weltner, who uses the pseudonym "Von Goldstein Mohammed"
and runs Jew Watch, yet another site hosted by Black.12
Jew Watch organizes its anti-Semitic materials much in the same
way a popular Web directory might group more benign information. Weltner
presents accusations that Jews were behind the terrors caused by Russia's
Communist regime in "Jews, Communism, and The Job of Killing Off
the USSR's Christians." "Jewish Genocides Today and Yesterday"
describes an alleged Jewish plan to deport non-Jews from the U.S. in 1946.
"90% of All United States News-papers Are Owned and Run by Jews"
repeats the oft-heard charge that Jews run the media, and "The Rothschild
Internationalist-Zionist- Banking-One World Order Family" claims
that Jews control the world of finance. Adolf Hitler's writings, transcripts
of Father Charles Coughlin's anti-Semitic radio broadcasts, and the text
of Henry Ford Sr.'s bigoted International Jew are all available
at Jew Watch as well.
A subtler, though equally virulent anti-Semitism pervades the Bamboo
Delight Web site. Hosted by Black, the site hides downloadable anti-Semitic
and racist computer programs behind the false front of a company selling
"Tai Chi Chuan Chinese Exercise" materials. Looking past "Asian
Health Philosophy" items such as the "Nine Treasure Exercises
of Ancient China" videotape and the "Skinny Buddha Weight Loss
Method" pamphlet, Web surfers find the downloadable computer programs
"Jew Rats," "Police Patriots," "ZOG" and
"Talmud." These programs are interactive in the same way that
Web pages are interactive: users "click through" their contents,
viewing various pages filled with text and graphics. "Jew Rats"
is a multi-panel cartoon that depicts Jews as rats that kill Christians
and encourage integration. Blacks are depicted as sub-human gorillas.
"ZOG" contains the complete text of the "classic"
anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion along
with dozens of other documents that claim knowledge of Jewish plans for
world domination.
When Marlow created Web sites at more than ten domain names that resembled
the names of major daily newspapers, another misleading Web venture involving
Black garnered attention. In October 1998, Marlow linked these sites directly
to Stormfront. Consequently, Web users looking for news about Philadelphia
at "philadelphiainquirer.com," for example, ended up visiting
Don Black's site, not the Philadelphia Inquirer Home Page (which
is located at phillynews.com). Other newspapers affected included the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Atlanta
Constitution, and the London Telegraph.
As Black's site has grown and he has aggressively continued to promote
it, an increasing number of Web users have been visiting Stormfront.
Black told the Associated Press that the number of contacts to Stormfront
doubled during the domain name incident, to 2,000 per day. According to
Black, Web surfers have accessed Stormfront more than a million
times since its debut.
Web users visiting Stormfront right now will likely find a bold
advertisement in the lower left-hand corner of their screens. By clicking
on it, they arrive at the Web site for perhaps America's best-known and
most politically active racist: Black's mentor, David Duke.
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