White supremacists
Stormfront.org is a white supremacist/neo-nazi internet forum. This week, several people visited my website from a stormfront forum post that linked to my blog’s white privilege tag. Apparently, a white guy (that’s me) with Swiss-German ancestry who blogs about social justice caused several of their servers to melt.
I watched as more than 50 unique visits poured into my blog via the stormfront posting. By the way, the stormfront site is not a website to which people randomly surf. It’s not Amazon.com. The people who visited my blog were, in my opinion, frequent readers of stormfront postings.
Here are just a few of the places in the world that showed up in my web statistics…
-
Brampton Ontario Canada
Lawrenceville, Georgia, United States
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Keene, New Hampshire, United States
Roanoke, Virginia, United States
Unknown City, Unknown Region, Sweden
Schenectady, New York, United States
Oslo, Norway
Milford, Massachusetts, United States
Stratford, Connecticut, United States
Miami, Florida, United States
Corona, New York, United States
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Alexandria, Virginia, United States
Vancouver, Washington, United States
Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Pasadena, California, United States
New York, New York, United States
Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
Los Angeles, California, United States
Reston, Virginia, United States
Buffalo, New York, United States
Houston, Texas, United States
Staten Island, New York, United States
Winchester, Virginia, United States
Huntington Beach, California, United States
Related posts:
[...] « White supremacists White privilege [...]
White privilege » Eric Stoller’s Blog | social justice | higher education | technology
31 Jan 08 at 10:52 pm
Eric,
At least you did not name names, though I think you might have if you could based on my previous observations. I am not defending white supremacists, but you have no idea who was reading that site and linked to it. I have visited sites at times in the past of which I completely disagreed. Simply visiting the site does not make one a white supremacist nor does it make even a white supremacist sympathizer. It could well be someone like yourself who wants to get insight into what the other side is thinking or someone doing research. In fact, given your topic of interest and your familiarity with the site (I seem to have heard of it, but I could not have named it off the top of my head), I would venture to guess you might have visited it at one point in the past to recon the opposition. Should “Corvallis, Oregon” appear in someone else’s list of had visited stormfront.org.
I am not defending white supremacists. No, I do not think that that comprises the bulk of those locations in your list, but if it included one and you implied that they were a white supremacist simply for visiting a website, that is wrong. Like I said, you did not name names but based on my experience and Radar’s experience with you as people who are hardy white supremacist but simply people who disagreed with you, I ask would you have if you had had names? If so, does it concern you that your brush might paint too broadly for people that might fit as I described above?
FinanceBuzz
2 Feb 08 at 6:27 am
Derek – I feel that you are correct that some of the visitors to my site who entered via links from the stormfront site could have been non-members, however, like I said, this is not a site that people just happen to find while surfing the web. And furthermore, the stormfront thread that linked to my site was not indexed by Google when people started flowing into my site. They had to have either visited the stormfront site and surfed to that particular thread or been a member who followed threads on that site.
I read a lot of news stories and had heard of Stormfront.org in the past. A bunch of commenters who said that they were from stormfront, posted comments on a site that I frequently read (Diverse Podium, the blog of Diverse Issues in Higher Education.). I noted that the Diverse Podium admins had removed their comments as they were full of epithets and bile. Then, my webstats started showing (on the same day) a bunch of inbound visits from the stormfront site. I then took a look at the site thread where I was being called all sorts of names and made the decision not to link back to the stormfront site and give them any “link juice.”
My familiarity with stormfront has definitely increased in the past week as I looked them up on wikipedia and saw that at least one of their frequent commenters had left a not so subtle, racist comment on my site.
I’m sure that Corvallis, Oregon did indeed appear on the stormfront.org server stats. However, I’m talking about inbound visitors who clicked from the stormfront thread to my site.
Eric Stoller
2 Feb 08 at 1:33 pm
One thing that always amused me is the large amount of bad grammar used by the members of those types of sites. Must be an indication…
Not that I’m some shining example of grammar, but even simple grammar rules are failed by most of the posters :p
annz0r
3 Feb 08 at 6:44 pm
[...] I was sifting through my web site statistics when I found yet another inbound link from a hate-spewing, neo-nazi, white supremacist website. It’s the type of thing that happens when word gets out that yet another Swiss-German, anti-racist, feminist, ally, man is blogging about social justice issues. The white supremacists link to your site and visit in droves. Jim S., who graciously nominated me for the award, has commented on my site a couple times and has left hundreds of bigoted comments on the aforementioned (not directly linked as I refuse to send link juice in their direction) site. [...]
I won an award! » Eric Stoller’s Blog
30 Mar 08 at 7:09 pm
[...] Once again, my site has been mentioned on a white supremacist internet forum… I think if I ever start a rock band, it will have to be called “Leftwing Fever Swamp.” [...]
Leftwing Fever Swamp » Eric Stoller’s Blog
2 Jun 08 at 10:14 pm
White supremacy is a useless cause. Think of it they are talking about stealing away a nation in which their forefathers are responsible for populating with immigrants in the first place. If their forefathers where so bold, strong, and all out straight forward about starting and all pure white country that’s segregated from the rest of the world they would have done so to begin with. You can’t claim a country or any place if someone already existed there it’s just not possible. You can steal it! Yeah but you can’t claim it as yours by right. You people kill me with that. “This is American our Country for all Pure White Christians” goodluck with that. If a race war doesn’t happen and happen soon more that likely the future of the world not only America is going to be on race. Just the scientific fact so with all due respect get to fighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Vae Victus
10 Jun 09 at 7:24 pm
Christians, you claim to be. Here’s a question, what version of the Bible do you read? Doesn’t your bible quote Jesus, who by the way is JEWISH, as saying, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or here’s another, how about, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” But let me guess. My bible is wrong an your’s is more accurate. If you believe in God, you must believe He is all loving, so why would he condone the hate that is in your heart.
Gabrielle
2 Aug 09 at 12:16 pm
I am sick to death of all of the crap from these “white supremecy” cowards. I am a Native American, and if ANYONE in this country has a right to AMERICAN supremecy, it is MY people. ALL persons within the “white supremecy” groups should go back to Germany where they belong. Being as all of YOU, STOLE our land and raped our people… look in the mirror before claiming any kind of supremecy… COWARDS!!!
jimilee
6 Aug 09 at 7:18 am
I can assure you that people who visit your website are not necesarily white supremacist. in fact, anything BUT.
People like you, Eric, are why we have insane asylums and prisons. Unfortunately, you’re not a resident of either, yet, but one can only hope, right? The very notion of ‘white supremacy” is absurd in and of itself, but the pure HATRED such groups spew (not to mention completely ILLOGICAL thinking) is downright frightening.
People like you disgust and nauseate me, as well as the vast majority of sane Americans, and you have no useful purpose to American Society whatsoever.
S
(Oh, and just so you’ll know, I’m Caucasian, of European descent, and as Ango Saxon “white” as you can get).
Grapevine
14 Aug 09 at 5:17 am
@Grapevine – the point of my post was not that everyone who visits my site is a white supremacist. I was pointing out the locations of inbound referral links from a white supremacist forum to my blog.
I agree that white supremacy is absurd. Unfortunately, there a lot of people who are white supremacists who spew a lot of hate and influence policy decisions.
I’m not sure how or why my mental health was called into question…I am an anti-racist blogger. Did you even read the post? I was identifying the locations of people who came to my site from a specific, hate-based forum, not from the entire internet.
I think that it’s great that my site comes up on Google searches, but you need to read the entire post before you cast aspersions.
Eric Stoller
16 Aug 09 at 2:01 pm