Stormfront Founder Don Black Pictured Seated Next to Confederate Flag at New York Times Story on White Supremacists in the Internet Age

Nothing pisses off old Stogie at Saberpoint more than asking him why the Ku Klan Klan flies the Confederate flag. He threatened to ban me from his comments after I asked him about it at his blog.

From what I gather, the standard line, among Stogie and others, is that "only a small number" of people who support the Confederacy today are Klansman. By this time folks know how I feel about it. The heritage argument is fine so long as those advocating it don't completely discount (or lie about) the racist slaveholding foundations of the Confederacy. Stupidly alleging that the North was even more racist just doesn't cut it. Northerners long banned slavery above the Mason-Dixon line and by the 1850s they opposed expansion of slavery in the territories. Only Southerners sought to protect states' rights to own property in slaves. All the rest is bullshit, dumped by the Marxists and radical libertarians who hate the United States.

In any case, Stogie won't like this piece at the Old Gray Lady, but it is what it is, "White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites":

White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites http://t.co/UWhe33oU10 #newyorktimes

— Diego Palma (@1milhaodetweets) July 6, 2015

In late June, as much of the nation mourned the killing of nine parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church, The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website, was busy posting articles on a different issue: black crime against white people. “Adolescent Ape Jailed for Murdering White Man Out of Boredom,” one headline blared.

And after Dylann Roof, a white 21-year-old high school dropout and the apparent author of a vitriolic anti-black diatribe, was arrested and charged with the killings, commenters on another white supremacist site, Stormfront.org, lamented something else: the possibility of the massacre’s leading to gun control. “Jews want the white man’s guns. End of story,” one person wrote from Utah.

In the wake of the church massacre, many white supremacist groups have rushed to disavow any link to Mr. Roof and any role in the murders. And while Mr. Roof appears to have been in contact with some white supremacists online, investigators say it does not appear that those people encouraged or assisted in the deadly shootings.

Still, the authorities say, Mr. Roof had clearly embraced their worldview. As investigators comb through the data streams of Mr. Roof’s electronic equipment, a four-page manifesto apparently written by him before the killings offers a virtual road map to modern-day white supremacy. It contains bitter complaints about black crime and immigration, espousing the virtues of segregation and debating the viability of an all-white enclave in the Pacific Northwest.

That manifesto has refocused attention on a shadowy movement that, for all its ideological connections to the white racists of the past, is more regionally diverse and sophisticated than its predecessors, experts say.

They say it is capable, through its robust online presence, of reaching an audience far wider than the small number of actual members attributed to it.

“There’s really not a lot out there as far as membership organizations,” said Don Black, who runs Stormfront.org. “But there is a huge number, I think more than ever, as far as people actively working in some way to promote our cause. Because they don’t have to join an organization now that we have this newfangled Internet.”

Experts dispute the number of movement supporters but agree about its efforts to modernize. While the virulent racism of old can still be found online, the movement today also includes more button-down websites run by white nationalism think tanks with vanity publishing units. Most of the best-known organizations also claim to have disavowed the violence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Richard B. Spencer, the 37-year-old president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute in Whitefish, Mont., embodies this new generation.

He holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and studied for a doctorate in history at Duke University. Now he runs an organization that produces papers on issues like racial differences in intelligence and the crime rate among Hispanic immigrants.

“America as it is currently constituted — and I don’t just mean the government; I mean America as constituted spiritually and ideologically — is the fundamental problem,” he said in an interview. “I don’t support and agree with much of anything America is doing in the world.”

But precisely because the movement is more atomized and has been rendered more anonymous by the Internet, law enforcement officials say it has become harder to track potentially violent lone-wolf terrorists who might draw inspiration from white supremacist sites without being actively involved in the organizations.

“White supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy — separate from any formalized group — which hampers warning efforts,” said a Department of Homeland Security report issued in 2009. The report came under fierce criticism from conservatives, who said it unfairly painted them as terrorists.

If the movement has a leading edge, it is Stormfront.org, an online discussion forum. With about 40,000 visitors a day, it is perhaps the most popular supremacist site in the world based on page views, with more than a million a month (a figure that includes repeat visitors).

Mr. Black, its 61-year-old proprietor, straddles the movement’s generational divide: a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama decades ago, he later ushered in the movement’s Internet era with Stormfront.org in 1995, and followed up with a two-hour weekday Internet radio show.

Stormfront’s website, operated by Mr. Black out of his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., features the slogan “White Pride World Wide.” It is primarily a chat room, with discussion threads that range from innocuous cooking tips to diatribes against gays, immigrants, Jews and blacks.

Mr. Black said he had broken from the Klan because it had a history of “random and senseless violence.” But he also said he could not rule out violent conflict as white people tried to promote what he called “our heritage, our values,” and attempted to realize the dream of a separate all-white enclave.

“I personally would like to see it play out peacefully,” he said. “Unfortunately I took too many history classes, and history is not filled with a lot of peace. America is becoming balkanized just like the Balkans; we are breaking apart because of Hispanics — particularly in the Southwest — and other races.”

More.

You can see the Confederate flag at the tweet embedded above, but it's very prominent at the photo accompanying the article.

It doesn't matter how many of these idiots pose with the flag. That's just going to ruin it for everyone else, all the "heritage buffs" and so forth, because it feeds into the most terrible associations people have with white supremacy. Unfortunately, Stogie and his ilk simply help the left and its attacks on conservatives. Indeed, Stogie's a leftist as far as I'm concerned, particularly in his postmodernist Derridean social constructionist relationship to the truth.

BONUS: "What the Left, and Sadly, Some Conservatives Just Do Not Grasp."

PREVIOUSLY: "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut," and "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative."