A "magnet and breeding ground for the deadly and deranged"

[catsmate]

Stormfront that is. According to a SPLC report people charged with the murders of almost 100 people can be linked to the White Nationalist website. Included were Anders Behring Breivik and Wade Michael Page.

"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.

For some reason Stormfront object to the characterisation.

 

[ThunderChunky]

I could make the argument that the SPLC is monetizing murder by using these killings to raise funds.

 

[Checkmite]

Stormfront was very quick to point out that Miller was not a member of the forum and in fact had long been banned from ever joining; however - amusingly - the reason wasn't because of Miller's violent nature or anything like this, but rather because during a Federal investigation a couple of decades ago he ratted out some associates to the FBI.

 

[Gallstones]

Isn't the whole article an exercise in unsubstantiated claims?

 

[Cuddles]

Isn't the whole article an exercise in unsubstantiated claims?

It certainly looks that way. Lots of claims about how Stormfront is full of murderers and soon-to-be murderers, lots of emotional stories, but not a single supported fact. One big, scary number that's massively skewed by a single incident, and that's it. No attempt to show actual murder rates or comparisons with non-Stormfront members, despite these being the very thing that the whole report is supposedly about.

Particularly telling is that said outlying incident was not actually in the USA. If you want to include hate crimes from the whole world, I can easily cite a couple of orders of magnitude more that certainly had nothing to do with Stormfront at all.

a two-year study by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that registered Stormfront users have been disproportionately responsible for some of the most lethal hate crimes and mass killings since the site was put up in 1995.

Well go on then, show it.

Note that I certainly don't support Stormfront, the people who post there, or any other racism. But this report is still total bollocks.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Just on the thread title I thought this would be a thread about Congress. I'm disappointed.

 

[Tony]

Just on the thread title I thought this would be a thread about Congress. I'm disappointed.

Stormfront Congress, never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

 

[MontagK505]

Stormfront Congress, never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Samuel Clemens would agree.

 

[carlitos]

I read article after article like this from SPLC sources. I no longer take them seriously. I was trying to nail down some info about the Idaho militias that were showing up at the Bundy farm and the SPLC sources were all innuendo and no facts.

 

[Corsair 115]

Stormfront Congress, never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Samuel Clemens would agree.

Whatever you do, don't double-cross Frank Underwood.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Lol. Their one piece of actual data is horribly misleading:

Events like the attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway result in spikes of traffic to Stormfront, according to Alexa tracking.

It has a little graph with a circled spike on that day. Well duh! Events like the attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway result in spikes of traffic to any discussion forum on the interwebs! Because people talk about big news like that, and they talk about it a lot. Not just on Stormfront.

So as despicable as Stormfront may be (and it is), I still can't countenance shoddy "reports" and other [scarequotes] research [/scarequotes] like that.