all 10 comments

[–]send_nasty_stuffNational Socialist 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Stormfront is a different generation of online dissident activity. That's it. Every generation online has different sites and preferences for social media. Stormfront didn't really appeal to many of the modern dissidents that emerged after gamergate even though much of the core content is the same. Stormfront is considered WN 1.0 and a segment of WN 1.0 went through a degenerate skin head phase that is unappealing to modern nationalists. There are a good chunk of new dissdents (like myself) that are former liberals. Stormfront and other WN 1.0 website users did not have the same high school and college experiences that we did.

Personally I'm also not really a fan of the classic internet bulletin board style. I avoid gameruprising.to for the same reason. I much prefer ranked choice social media.

For the record I still have a lot of respect for Stormfront, VNNforum and other early online nationalists. I would have never found my way to these ideas without their vision and groundwork.

[–]literalotherkinNorm MacDonald Nationalism 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is it the biggest? I've genuinely never known anyone who posts there regularly and I've been doing this for a while.

As far as optics I wouldn't call it 'unoptical'. It's WN 1.0 maybe and the userbase is probably a little older but there's nothing wrong with that.

As for having it discussed what does that even mean? What should be being discussed in relation to Stormfront? How pretty the font they use is?

[–]Jacinda 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I almost never think of Stormfront. I've visited it a few times out of curiosity but bulletin board culture has never been something I was interested in. From what I remember I was put off by the violent hyperbolic comments — in that sense it was like an early version of Voat.

I am grateful however for the pioneers of WN 1.0 who, despite their crankiness, managed to see so early on the impasse iinto which our culture was being driven. Don Black, who established Stormfront was one of those pioneers.

From a Counter Currents review of Blood in the Face, an early documentary on the white nationalism.

Counter Currents:

Don Black, now known as the founder of stormfront.org but at the time still an obscure activist, gives the best speech. He accurately assesses that getting the message out is critical but one must be able to get around the mainstream media. His idea is direct-mail VHS tapes. One can see that Black has seen to the foundation of the issue. When the internet became a factor, he was positioned to exploit it.

[Snip...]

All racially aware activists prior to 1991 had to really go against the grain. The media and the government were against white advocates. Nearly all churches preached against their message. White advocates were blamed for every race riot and “civil rights” failure and the public believed it. It probably seemed to the participants that they were navigating an unending sea of failure, but these visionaries were on to something. The Michigan rally’s organizer Pastor Bob Miles (1925-1992) deserves the final word:

I won’t be here to see it — you will. I can only tell you that like Johnny Appleseed we have sowed the seeds. I told the FBI in the presence of my lawyer one time, (I said) “It’s too late we’ve done the work, and you can’t reverse it. And out there these seeds we know will grow into apple trees and they’ll bear fruit. Whether we see it or not we know it so. And we’ve done our job.”

[–]Fitter_HappierWhite Nationalist 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

AFAIK it's just the greybeards of the Alt Right. David Duke speaks highly of Don Black and I think Duke is spot on.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I like Croatian section, some segment of userbase is very intelligent.

For the general site, I found some informative posts on it and that's it, I don't visit much.

As others have said, it's too boomerlicious to my taste but it's good thing overall.

[–]Blackbrownfreestuff 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Stormfront was partially taken over by FBI agents around 2014 and completely by 2017.

[–]VraiBleuScots Protestant, Ulster Loyalist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Do you have a source for that?

[–]Blackbrownfreestuff 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do not. The FBI claims they lost their files on stormfront. I am not sure if there is any public information about their operation other than "we lost it".

[–]Girondin 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I personally give zero fucks about optics (honesty is the best policy), thought I don't find it unoptical at all. you will see headlines that say "stormfront is linked to 100 murders" (how many murders is facebook linked to, hundreds of thousands?) but it having millions of post and being a very old website it is not shocking that some posters could be attributed to a crime (one poster being Breivik which accounts for 90% of that statistic, who was more active on pamela geller's website), simple probability.

I personally find it kinda boring but it is definitely better then 4chan pol at this point. You can see on google trends that stormfront popularity was very much diminished / waning by 2015 which is probably the only factor why it is rarely discussed by alt-right / dissident-right circles.

It is very much useful for finding out white nationalist history. We don't have a history book and the ones we have are written by left-wing activist or by WN who have a specific narrative they want to push, which is basically shitting on their WN rivals (see Covington for a egregious example, he accuses rivals of being infiltrators, rapist, sodomites, pedophiles etc). You can find posters who knew WN figures from the 70s 80s 90s etc and can give you a alternative perspective on things (since it isn't one person's opinion but a bunch of people)

[–]asterias 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't feel entitled to speak on behalf of alt-right, as I consider it a mainly American movement, but in my opinion there are certain things prevalent on SF that I find annoying, mainly the way you can't criticize white women for their role in the current status of society, the way men are attacked for getting fed up with white women, the way ecology concerns are ridiculed, and generally the optics are too one-dimensional in my eyes. It's like they think that having a white-only society will magically solve all major issues, which certainly doesn't sound reasonable to me.