"The Data of Hate" (NY Times profile of Stormfront white supremacist forums)

[alp227]

About the author: "Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a contributing opinion writer who recently received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard."

VIKINGMAIDEN88 is 26 years old. She enjoys reading history and writing poetry. Her signature quote is from Shakespeare. She was impressed when the dialect quiz in The New York Times correctly identified where she was from: Tacoma and Spokane, Wash. “Completely spot on,” she wrote, followed by a smiling green emoji.

I gleaned all this from her profile and posts on Stormfront.org, America’s most popular online hate site.

Stormfront was founded in 1995 by Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Its most popular “social groups” are “Union of National Socialists” and “Fans and Supporters of Adolf Hitler.” Over the past year, according to Quantcast, roughly 200,000 to 400,000 Americans visited the site every month. A recent Southern Poverty Law Center report linked nearly 100 murders in the past five years to registered Stormfront members.

The white nationalist posters on Stormfront have issues with many different groups. They often write about crimes committed by African-Americans against whites; they complain about an “invasion” of Mexicans; and they love to mock gays and feminists. But their main problem appears to be with Jewish people, who are often described as super-powerful and clever — the driving force, generally speaking, behind the societal changes they do not like. They sometimes call the Holocaust the “Holohoax.”

Stormfront members tend to be young, at least according to self-reported birth dates. The most common age at which people join the site is 19. And four times more 19-year-olds sign up than 40-year-olds. Internet and social network users lean young, but not nearly that young.

One of the most popular social groups on the site is “In Support of Anti-Semitism.” The percentage of members who join this group is positively correlated with a state’s Jewish population. New York, the state with the highest Jewish population, has above-average per capita membership in this group.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/opinion/sunday/seth-stephens-davidowitz-the-data-of-hate.html

Heard about this on Thom Hartmann's show today.

[Generic Other]

1. oh great

she's one of my neighbors. Why couldn't I just have a swarm of locusts?

[Number23]

2. "The most common age at which people join the site is 19"

Yeah, the old racists are "dying off" really quickly, aren't they?? Racism will die with them!one1

This article actually shatters alot of myths that some people love to hold about racists. That they are all illiterates, almost always Southern, almost always conservative.

According to this piece, many of Stormfront's most prolific participants were news junkies that read the NY Times more than average Americans.

[m-lekktor]

4. Yep, that map in the article is telling

that gives percentage of stormfront members per the population of each state. My home state of maine looks bad as well as the pacific northwest. i could go on with things I have witnessed and occurances up here in new england and in my current state of Connecticut. I notice states with high stormfront memberships often have a low minority population, like the state i am from, Maine.

Anyway, you are correct , they will NEVER die off, they aren't all inbred illiterate hillbilly's and they aren't all in the south. Pennsylvania is notorious for skinheads etc as is New Jersey. there are also many college groups with "western civilization" in their title which are pretty racist. I used to follow all this stuff more closely and get Southern Poverty Law Center reports in the mail.

[Number23]

6. I went to an all black high school. One of the kids from our school went to Harvard for undergrad

This was a black dude born and raised in Atlanta that said that Boston MA was the most racist place he had ever been in his life. He was damn near gulping for air telling us some of the things he'd endured. It was heartbreaking/eye opening.

And yet for far too many people, racism is only a problem for those "other" white people -- "other" being whatever qualifiers exist that don't pertain to them (Southern, Christian, conservative etc.) but the rest of us know that monster lives in LOTS of different quarters and ain't confined to anything.

[m-lekktor]

8. your friend is so correct

Boston , in the most liberal state in the USA, was where, anecdotally, i personally witnessed the most blatant racism . people had no qualms about talking racist shit assuming everybody in the all white group would be cool with it or agree with it. it was the ethnic irish and italians who were the worst. i lived in Boston for awhile before i enlisted in the navy. I haven't lived there in awhile, maybe it is different now.

[iandhr]

10. The Red Sox...

Were the last MLB team to integrate there is a reason for that. Look up South Boston bussing. You will get the idea

[smirkymonkey]

5. That is actually a terrifying statistic.

I weep for the future. Hate groups like this need to be stopped by whatever means possible.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. And Stormfront's probably off-limits to the NSA

Spy On Everyone program, for fear of right-wing whining.

[Enthusiast]

11. +1

[Behind the Aegis]

7. 'In Support of Anti-Semitism' as the favorite group?

Doesn't surprise me in the least it is the most popular social group. Anti-Semitism is quite "fashionable" among certain circles. It also one of the bigotries that gets shit upon by a number of supposed "open-minded" individuals. For these people, Jews are always at the root of the problems no matter what they are...immigration, GLBT rights, feminism, and civil rights.

[stevenleser]

9. So prevalent right now it's scary. I don't 'look' Jewish nor does my name sound Jewish so...

I hear the most virulent antisemitic stuff on a regular basis.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. Even though my name "sounds" Jewish, I still get my fair share of anti-Semitic comments.

Sometimes, people don't even give a shit (just look at the "nose" post the OP made a few days ago) and mock the very idea of anti-Semitism. This week I learned that some forms of anti-Semitism are "understandable" or simply "blowback."

[MohRokTah]

12. That forum was also an early adopter of the Birther bullshit.

Pre-Orly Taitz birthers on that site.