Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

White supremacist chatroom Stormfront taken offline

editor

hiraethified
It provides a conundrum for free speech advocates, but I won't be crying over the loss of this site.
One of the oldest and largest neo-nazi sites on the internet, the white supremacist chatroom Stormfront, has been thrown off the open web by its hosting provider.
Stormfront has been described by the anti-hate group Southern Poverty Law Center as the “murder capital of the internet”. The group pointed out that “registered Stormfront users have been disproportionately responsible for some of the most lethal hate crimes and mass killings since the site was put up in 1995. In the past five years alone, Stormfront members have murdered close to 100 people.”

As of Tuesday morning, Stormfront.org was unavailable, with the site’s domain registry recording that its hosting provider Network Solutions had issued a “hold” on the address.
Stormfront: 'murder capital of internet' pulled offline after civil rights action
 
Last edited:
images
 
Who was Diesel? And what's the story there?
He was a long-term US neo-nazi inolved with all sorts of horrible things. He himself shot a black bloke twice, was convicted of trying to blow up MLK, acted as a strong arm man for a notorious racist Seattle slum lord and many other shitty things. Last seen ten years ago getting 8 years for gun-running. I think he did that then went back in for further arms violations. He would be 77 if he's alive today. He posted on here for a number of years as diesel.
 
Last edited:
Yeh. But who decides what's criminal?
I'm fairly sure that most people would agree murder is a crime, I'm all in favour of respecting free speech even for tossers like these but I would (and I'm sure pretty much 99.999% of humanity) draw the line long before we get to the killing part.
 
I'm fairly sure that most people would agree murder is a crime, I'm all in favour of respecting free speech even for tossers like these but I would (and I'm sure pretty much 99.999% of humanity) draw the line long before we get to the killing part.
So you're not in favour of respecting free speech: you're quite happy to draw the line for others
 
Yeh. But who decides what's criminal?

Our lawmakers. There's all sort of laws that are similar. A lot of cities have "nuisance" laws for rental properties that attract crime. Many cities have a "three strikes" law regarding rental properties. If the police are called to an address more than three times in a certain period of time, the city can require that the landlord evict the renters or face fines. This is just an online version of a property that attracts crime.

This may already fall within an existing law in the US.

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - Wikipedia

Its a pretty vague law and has been applied to a lot of things that it wasn't originally conceived to apply.

The purpose of shutting them down is to prevent more murders. The government has a reasonable interest in furthering public safety. The impact on free speech is only incidental.
 
Last edited:
Our lawmakers. There's all sort of laws that are similar. A lot of cities have "nuisance" laws for rental properties that attract crime. Many cities have a "three strikes" law regarding rental properties. If the police are called to an address more than three times in a certain period of time, the city can require that the landlord evict the renters or face fines.

This may already fall within an existing law in the US.

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - Wikipedia
These would be the same lawmakers who among other things pass laws impacting on black people's ability to vote and giving people carte blanche to drive into demonstrations.
 
So you're not in favour of respecting free speech: you're quite happy to draw the line for others
Now you're being a pedant, If people go on the internet or the telly and rant on about how much they hate blacks, gays, gingers, refugees, immigrants, take your pick then no matter how offensive I find it then I accept they have a right to say it, You can't believe in free speech if you aren't prepared to accept that people will say something you don't like. The line gets drawn at action or encouraging others to act, the law recognises that not perfectly maybe but it does recognise it.
 
These would be the same lawmakers who among other things pass laws impacting on black people's ability to vote and giving people carte blanche to drive into demonstrations.

Neither of those would likely survive a constitutional challenge.

I'm not suggesting that you criminalize speech. Only the collective effect on public safety of criminal networking which is resulting in murder.
 
Last edited:
This will be a real achievement if it sticks. Nobody cares about the Stormer clown show but taking down Stormfront is a major success. Is there any chance they can come back from this?
 
Now you're being a pedant, If people go on the internet or the telly and rant on about how much they hate blacks, gays, gingers, refugees, immigrants, take your pick then no matter how offensive I find it then I accept they have a right to say it, You can't believe in free speech if you aren't prepared to accept that people will say something you don't like. The line gets drawn at action or encouraging others to act, the law recognises that not perfectly maybe but it does recognise it.
what a pedant i am, pointing out your readiness to draw the line. but i must applaud your innovative variation on millions of pms of support.
 
Who was Diesel? And what's the story there?

It was shameful, he used to sign off every post with 88888888, which is Nazi code for "Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler..." and people complained about it, but he passed himself off as a polite lawyerly type and fooled one or two moderators into taking his side when people wanted him banned.

He used to express astonishment at being called a "ladypart" when people called him a cunt, the Nazi cunt.
 
I won't miss stormfront, but I can't help but feel a bit of sadness at the rapidly declining demise of the free internet. I guess in hindsight it was always inevitable but lets not for a moment think that such shutdowns will be limited to the 'bad guys'. Of course our own Theresa May has worked very hard to bring in her own little controls - brought in for paedophiles and terrorists but will be applied far wider in practice.

[strong]Our lawmakers.[/strong] There's all sort of laws that are similar. A lot of cities have "nuisance" laws for rental properties that attract crime. Many cities have a "three strikes" law regarding rental properties. If the police are called to an address more than three times in a certain period of time, the city can require that the landlord evict the renters or face fines. This is just an online version of a property that attracts crime.

This wasn't shut down by lawmakers or anything though, rather it seems their domain registrar Network Solutions (a pretty shonky setup in my experience!) pulled the plug.
 
This wasn't shut down by lawmakers or anything though, rather it seems their domain registrar Network Solutions (a pretty shonky setup in my experience!) pulled the plug.

No, it wasn't shut down by the government. I think they realized that they might have a liability problem if they didn't pull the plug. Soldier of Fortune was pretty much put out of print over a murder for hire ad in their magazine.
 
Back
Top Bottom