Stormfront Has Been Kicked Offline.
One of the most prominent white supremacist and Nazi destinations online, Stormfront.org, went dark Friday, likely at the behest of its domain host, Network Solutions. This is just the latest in a wave of online hate-group account deletions and website closures in the wake of the Charlottesville rally that turned violent earlier this month.
Stormfront had been in operation since 1995, and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it was the first major hate website on the internet. Founded by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and Nazi party member Don Black, the website was a forum for more than 300,000 registered members before it shuttered on Friday. “Our mission is to provide information not available in the controlled news media and to build a community of White activists working for the survival of our people,” Stormfront’s posting guidelines read.
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According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is taking credit for the closure. The committee sent a series of letters to Network Solutions arguing that Stormfront’s forum was in violation of the domain provider’s usage policies, which explicitly prohibits using their web services to “display bigotry, discrimination, or hatred in any manner whatsoever.”