The 2000 CBS/ HBO TV documentary special focused on the rise of hate groups online and included input from Don Black, the founder of Stormfront. The website has received considerable attention in the United States, given that, as of 2009, it had over 120,000 active members. By 1999, nearly 2,000 websites associated with white supremacism existed, with the recruitment power of reaching millions across the United States. Until this point, attempts at using the Internet as opposed to bulletin boards have had limited success for the white pride movement, but Stormfront developed a following with the growth of the Internet during the 1990s.
Liberty Net's success as a computer platform led to Stormfront's establishment and later conversion into a website. Liberty Net's code-accessed message board contained personal ads along with recruitment material and information about the white power movement. Liberty Net was implemented in 1984 by Klan grand dragon Louis Beam and protected by four password-protected computers that took the FBI two years to decrypt. Īlthough Stormfront became the first website associated with white supremacy, its founding as a private cyberspace medium for white supremacy was based on the earlier online bulletin board system Liberty Net. Black first received computer training while he was imprisoned for his role in an abortive 1981 attempt to overthrow the government of Dominica. The Stormfront website was founded in 1996 by Don Black, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and a member of the National Socialist White People's Party. The name "Stormfront" was chosen for its connotations of a political or military front (such as the German Nazi Sturmabteilung (also known as storm troopers or SA)) and an analogy with weather fronts that invokes the idea of a tumultuous storm ending in cleansing. Stormfront began in 1990 as an online bulletin board supporting white nationalist David Duke's campaign for United States senator for Louisiana. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law claimed credit for the action after advocating for Stormfront's web host, Network Solutions, to enforce its Terms of Service agreement, which prohibits users from using its services to incite violence.
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In August 2017, Stormfront was taken offline for just over a month when its registrar seized its domain name due to complaints that it promoted hatred and that some of its members were linked to murder. Its prominence has grown since the 1990s, attracting attention from watchdog organizations that oppose racism and antisemitism. Stormfront has been the subject of controversy after being removed from French, German, and Italian Google indices for targeting an online Fox News poll on racial segregation and for having political candidates as members. It received national attention in the United States in 2000 after being featured as the subject of a documentary,. Stormfront began as an online bulletin board system in the early 1990s before being established as a website in 1996 by former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist Don Black. The site is primarily focused on propagating white nationalism, antisemitism and islamophobia, as well as anti-Hinduism, anti-feminism, homophobia, transphobia, Holocaust denial, anti-Catholicism, and white supremacy. Stormfront is a neo-Nazi Internet forum, and the Web's first major racial hate site.