First they came for the white supremacists, and I said nothing because I was not a white supremacist…
I have mixed feelings about these matters, though ultimately I fall more on the side of free speech and allowing these sites to operate. I am ambivalent, however, because sites like The Daily Stormer talk frequently about throwing people into ovens, which on the face of it is a call to violence and therefore it is hard for me to defend that right. When you are inciting criminal activity, you may well have lost your rights to free speech.
I’ve spent time on Stormfront. It is filled with ugly material, as well as thoughtful postings. Overall, from what I have seen, it is not a site that generally promoted criminal activity (though some of its posts did).
On the other hand, the Torah contains calls for Israel to commit genocides against the original inhabitants of Canaan. Also, there are other statements in the mesora (Jewish tradition) as well as in Christianity that are as ugly as things you can find on Stormfront or The Daily Stormer. I do not want my tradition or Christianity censored or shut down. So I need to allow others the same latitude.
I just read a biography of George Lincoln Rockwell and saw that the ACLU repeatedly went to bat for his right to speak, and much of what he said was horrifying, including his desire to eliminate parts of America’s population.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The founder of the internet’s oldest white supremacist site said he was trying to get back online Monday after a company revoked its domain name following complaints that it promotes hatred and is linked to dozens of murders.
Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has operated stormfront.org since 1995, said he didn’t receive any warning before Network Solutions blocked the use of the stormfront.org name on Friday.
Stormfront.org had more than 300,000 registered users, Black said, with traffic increasing since a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Popular with the KKK and neo-Nazi groups, the site included forums where users sometimes promoted white power events.
“I’m talking to my lawyers, and that’s about all I can do right now,” Black, of West Palm Beach, Florida, said in a telephone interview. “I can switch to another domain, but it might wind up the same way.”
Another major white supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, was previously been shut down by the web-hosting company Go Daddy and then Google after the violence in Charlottesville.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said the stormfront.org shutdown followed complaints it filed with Network Solutions alleging the site promotes not only hate speech, but deadly violence.
A spokesman for Network Solutions didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.
Users of Black’s website have been implicated in more than 100 murders, according to the complaint, including 77 people slain by neo-Nazi Anders Breivik at a camp in Norway in 2011.
“Especially in the wake of tragic events in Charlottesville and the spike in hate crimes across the country, Stormfront crossed the line of permissible speech and incited and promoted violence,” said a statement by Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Black, speaking about the shutdown during an online radio show Monday, said his site had rules against promoting violence or any crime.
Black was a state KKK leader under former Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke, who appeared on the radio show following Black and expressed his “full support” for Black and the website.
“He was the first major site defending the rights of white people,” said Duke.
Black has been involved in the white supremacy movement since the 1970s and was convicted in 1981 for his role in a right-wing plot to overthrow the overthrow the government of Caribbean island nation of Dominica.
