More than 100 hate-crime murders linked to single website, report finds
• Southern Poverty Law Center singles out Stormfront.org
• Report says users disproportionately linked to major killings
People charged with the murders of almost 100 people can be linked to a single far-right website, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org says it promotes values of “the embattled white minority,” and its users include Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 massacre in Norway, and Wade Michael Page, who shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
After a two-year investigation, the SPLC said (pdf) that since Stormfront became one of the first hate sites on the internet in 1995, its registered users have been disproportionately responsible for major killings. The report was released a month early after white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, was accused of killing three people at a Jewish center in Kansas City on Sunday.
“We know that the people who are going to commit the kinds of crimes, like the kinds of crimes Miller committed last weekend, this is where they live,” said Heidi Beirich, report author and a director at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. The report, released on Thursday, calls Stormfront the “largest hate site in the world” and “a magnet and breeding ground for the deadly and deranged.”
Of the site’s more than 286,000 users, only a small sliver are highly active, the report found, with fewer than 1,800 people logging in each day. While the SPLC only identified 10 murderers out of this large user base, researchers think the murderers’ connection to the site is important because it shows how the website offers a community for people who commit these crimes.
“It’s pretty clear that websites like Stormfront are breeding grounds for people who are just enraged at their situation, it’s there that people find the reasons their lives aren’t as they had hoped and Stormfront helps them find the enemy that is standing in their way – whether it be Jews, African Americans, immigrants and so on,” said Beirich. “Unfortunately it’s not very surprising that people who live in this kind of stew of violent racism eventually pick up a gun and do something about it at some point.”
Stormfront proudly declares that “every month is white history month” at the top of its site and forum discussions concern things such as the latest news stories, ideology, poetry and creative writing.
“The fact of the matter is that more people have been killed domestically by radical right extremists than Islamic extremists since 9/11 and where you find a lot of these people is on these sites,” said Beirich.
SPLC also identified 10 characteristics shared by killers who were active online including unemployment, posting on more than one hate website, and sustained activity on these sites.
Stormfront founder Don Black, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, criticized Miller for giving users of his site a bad reputation. “We have enough of a problem with how we are portrayed without some homicidal whack job coming along and reinforcing that,” Black told the Daily Beast. After he was banned from Stormfront, the SLPC said Miller posted more than 12,000 times on a similar forum, Vanguard News Network, whose slogan is “No Jews, Just Right.”
The SPLC’s report said hate killings skyrocketed after Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009.
“We have seen and documented at the SPLC an enormous growth of groups on the radical right, particularly in the last five years,” said Mark Potok, the report’s editor and a senior fellow on the Intelligence Project. “That growth quite clearly seems to be driven by the appearance of Barack Obama on the political scene in the fall of 2008 and of course his subsequent election.”
Potok noted that these hate sites are protected by first amendment rights because they don’t contain concrete plots to commit crimes. He said that law enforcement official unquestionably pay attention to these sites, but criticized how much analysis is done on users by federal authorities.
“We feel pretty strongly that the Department of Homeland Security, which is the lead agency in this country for developing intelligence about these groups and individuals, has more or less taken its eye of the ball in the sense that since 2009 the department seems more focused on Jihadists terrorism,” Potok said.
One of the first places to report Joker Obama is a website devoted to battling "liberal bias":
Obama Joker Poster Popping Up In Los Angeles
By Noel Sheppard | August 1, 2009 | 20:06
Have you seen this poster?
Apparently, it's beginning to appear in odd places in Los Angeles, but nobody seems to know who's responsible for it.
Radio host Tammy Bruce posted some pictures of this odd creation at her blog Saturday morning (h/t Pamela Geller) leading me to investigate further.
At this point, all I could find on the subject was an April 25 article from Bedlam Magazine:
A poster of Barack Obama in Heath Ledger-style Joker make-up with the legend 'Socialism' beneath it has been popping up recently on surfaces around L.A. It does not appear to be in the same category as the many benign take-offs on the Shepard Fairey 'Hope' poster, such as the one by Australian James Lillis (more of a straightforward spoof that merely substituted a Shepardized image of Heath Ledger as Joker on the Obama poster).Here are Tammy's snaps:
Makes you wonder who's behind this.
It's not difficult to figure out. Though I expect Sheppard is angling for something more specific than the "hide the white women" crowd.[Wikipedia attributes this image to Firas Alkhateeb. Only later would "socialism" be added. Previous version are by Ross Brummet and a couple college Republicans. ]
A couple days later the same blogger would opine about a double standard:
Not surprisingly, the Obama Joker Poster reported by NewsBusters Saturday is already drawing some outrage.And:
According to a television station where the posters have been spotted, "Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous."
Yet, when Vanity Fair's Politics & Power blog published a somewhat similar visual representation of George W. Bush last July, nobody seemed to complain. In fact, throughout the Bush years, demeaning drawings of the President and Vice President Dick Cheney were quite commonplace.
Hmmm. I wonder where the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable was when Vanity Fair published this last July:
And where was the outrage when the Village Voice published this on the cover of its October 26, 2004, issue:
Like many conservatives Sheppard misses the point. Unfortunately he doesn't provide links for context, but at a wild ass guess the Bush images were a commentary on Bushes policies, and the fact, let's face it: as president Bush was a joke.
The Obama Joker is more offensive not just because of the undertones of racism, but the outright lie he's a socialist. There is a difference between criticizing someone for something they actually are vs. making up shite to support reactionary paranoia. This is a false equivalency. Mind, it's possible Sheppard isn't even aware of this, perhaps believing organized political racism no longer exists. The SPLC's report pretty much demolishes that idea.
While these were popular with the KKK friendly crowd, they didn't invent them. And Obama Hitler comes directly from the marketing department of the Larouche cult:
These are relevant to this blog because the more blatant racist "truthers" and libertarian crowd around them were pushing the Obama joker meme from word go. In fact "Infowars" had a campaign to push the meme, and much like Paultards, was able to mobilize the fringe base to make it a reality:
http://www.infowars.com/joker-obama-posters-to-go-viral/
‘JOKER’ Obama Posters to go viral
InfowarsDON’T ALLOW POLITICALLY CORRECT OBAMANOIDS TO STOP FREE SPEECH & POLITICAL DISSENT.
August 5, 2009
POST THESE EVERYWHERE YOU CAN IN YOUR AREA AND ONLINE
Note: Obama Joker posters should be posted in public commons where other fliers, public announcements, handbills, etc., are posted. Please do not post on federal or private property as this will be considered vandalism and will be counterproductive and diminish the message of the Obama Joker poster.
This was four days after the NewsBusters report. The posters in Tammy's pics were probably part of a campaign in progress Alex Jones almost certainly was aware of.
Invented, reporposed or coopted, the anti-Obama memes were a great moral boost to racist fringe culture. A picture doesn't make anyone kill and I certainly don't think it should be banned. But it's not too much to expect the agencies that should be tracking these things to use this as a flag to follow the trend. It comes as no surprise that Stormfront.org was a hotbed for discussion around the Obama Joker: Google search
What is a surprise is the link to the first News Busters article about the poster the same day it was published:
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t626350/
Calling into question exactly how unaware NewBusters was of the origins if a faithful reader picked it up so soon. Posted by a self described Libertarian:
The subject clearly has support, wandering into the delusional:Forum MemberJoin Date: Oct 2005Location: Christian, Free-market Libertarian
Spread as many as such posters as possible on the most busy places, if enough people see through the deception they fall.Oookaaaaay. LA is still standing. Guess the poster brigade didn't put up enough.
Meanwhile the people sucked into conspiracy culture and particularly the "truth" movement would do well to shun memes of racist origin. Better yet, shun the entire culture before being labeled a race traitor and targeted by violent nuts.
One last thought: could the embrace of Obama joker in 9/11 "truth" been the death knell of the fake "leftist" truther groups? People pushing "truth" were always a pale faced bunch. Only in the very early days was there even a smattering of dark-ish complected truthers. This would be paralleled in the Tea party, and much like the Tea Party, is a sign someone, somewhere is LYING about the origins and goals of the "movement". Except in the "truth" movement the lie was more believable because the anti war left was very critical of Bush's handling of 9/11. What Black Tea Partiers were thinking I don't know: the anti black racism of the Tea Party was far, far more obvious on the street than the anti-Jew "truthers".
In any case, the Obama Joker was actively pushed by "truthers" in mid 2009. I remember seeing it and being neither offended nor impressed. I don't remember seeing the socialism tag though. Had I known it's origins, I would have been much less impressed. I do remember a spin off of the meme, Hopenosis, which I thought was forced and idiotic. This was offensive because it mocked people's quite understandable desire for economic relief after the Bush years. Mocking a public figure is one thing; having a go at people while they're down is mean spirited. Perhaps if it had been coupled with thoughtful criticism it would have been different. But I did feel the aversive effects of Hope-nosis. Like Obama Joker it signaled the end of any attempts to woo the left into 9/11 "truth" and the complete abandonment of any leftist "truther" fronts.
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