Spencer Sunshine, an associate fellow at Political Research Associates, explained that it is difficult to gauge the extent of harm the Daily Stormer’s inability to find a permanent online home has had on its influence. The demonstration culminated with James Alex Fields, who had been photographed earlier in the day marching with neo-Nazis, allegedly ploughing his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more.įollowing the bloodshed, GoDaddy, the Daily Stormer’s web-hosting service, booted the neo-Nazi site over an article referring to the late Heyer as a “fat skank”. Participants clashed with community members, anti-fascists and anti-racist activists throughout the day. The website was founded in 2013 by Andrew Anglin, who is currently being sued by the SPLC and Tanya Gersh, a Jewish lawyer in Montana, for inspiring a storm of threats and harassment against Gersh in December 2016.ĭuring the August rally in Charlottesville – dubbed “Unite the Right” – thousands of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis converged on the Virginia city to demonstrate against plans to remove a Confederate monument.ĭaily Stormer had been issuing marching orders to Unite the Right attendees in the days leading up to the demonstration. ‘Never an advantage to lose a platform’ĭaily Stormer, which was named after the German Nazi-era publication Der Sturmer, has been forced to hop from one web host to the next, owing to growing public backlash in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville rally on August 12, 2017. “It was low-hanging fruit, and publicly available for others to see,” he said, explaining that the SPLC’s designation of Daily Stormer as a hate group “saves us the trouble of having to make the case that the people who seek to organise on that particular forum actually subscribe, to some degree or another, to neo-Nazi ideologies”. The far right has grown throughout the campaign and presidency of right-wing President Donald Trump, with groups proliferating across the country.Īccording to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based hate monitor, there were 917 “hate groups” in the US as of 2016.Īmong those were 30 Ku Klux Klan chapters, 100 white nationalist organisations and 99 neo-Nazi groups.įor Simon, choosing to put a focus on Daily Stormer was an easy decision. Be sure to clear your browser cache to view new data. “When that influence creeps into positions where it has no business being – such as a public office, a school teacher, a police officer – it creates a serious threat to both the safety and civil rights of any person fascists see as less than themselves.”Īt the time of its launch, FashMaps had around 700 pins signifying Daily Stormer meet-ups in cities and towns in almost every state across the US, and to a lesser degree, in Canada, the UK, Australia and Southeast Asia.Īdded points in Canada, Australia, South America. “It is important to be aware of these groups because, as they grow in numbers, they also grow in influence beyond their immediate circle,” he told Al Jazeera. Simon, a systems analyst who spoke to Al Jazeera with a pseudonym, launched FashMaps for the purpose of “education and awareness”.Īccording to Simon, a four-person team uses fake accounts to monitor Daily Stormer forum discussions and pin down when and where they plan to hold events, which they often refer to as “book clubs” and “pool parties”.
Launched on January 28, FashMaps is an activist-run initiative that seeks to inform local communities about the presence and gatherings of neo-Nazis in their area. A new anti-fascist website tracks the location and activities of people affiliated with Daily Stormer, one of the largest neo-Nazi websites in the United States.
0 kommentar(er)
