Stormfront website: Encyclopedia II - Stormfront website - Controversies

Stormfront website - Controversies

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 using the name "Snarkie". 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."[3]

The moderators at Stormfront are also often accused of undue censorship. The posts of all new users are screened by moderators for a certain period of time before they can become unmoderated. Anti-racists and other opponents are restricted to a few open sections, and often complain that many of their posts fail to pass the screening process. Moderators of the boards claim that they remove posts lacking civility, respect or otherwise "unproductive". Some disgruntled White Nationalist members have also claimed censorship, and accused Stormfront moderators of overreacting, as well as suppressing negative or positive discussion of certain personalities and organizations. On some issues (e.g. Hal Turner), there're quite official policies favouring certain types of opinions. Some of the more "extreme" communities often criticize Stormfront for being too "soft", "sanitized" and "hypocritical". White Nationalist or related internet communities where such critique is common are Hal Turner's board, Resistance Records board and Vanguard News Network forum.

Stormfront is listed by some hate group watchdog organizations as a white supremacist and hate site, as a result it's blocked by some Internet filters commonly used in public places. In Germany access to Stormfront is allegedly blocked by ISPs. Recently, many AOL Internet subscribers in different countries reported that AOL had started blocking Stormfront, at first displaying a suspected phishing scam warning and changing that to a generic error afterwards[4].

As a counter to Stormfront, the anti-racist Web site Mootstormfront.org was founded in October 2004. Until its apparent disappearance a year later, the site aimed to be an alternative to the Stormfront forums by providing, according to its motto, an "interface between white supremacy and reality."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversies", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki