I’m really enjoying watching the trickling demise of the Daily Stormer. Named after a Nazi propaganda sheet, Der Sturmer, the Storm is over. From its threats of epic doom via “white right” thunder and lightning to today’s sprinkling of evaporating drops, the neo-Nazi, alt-right, Proudboy digital dreadnought has died with a whimper. Republicans at the highest levels of government are scrambling to disassociate themselves from Daily Stormer’s message of racist hate and violence.
And all it took was a riot in Charlottesville, bruises, blood, and broken bones, and the death of a young warrior.
Two days ago, the “unitetheright” rally, organized and promoted online by Daily Stormer as an epic battle between white supremacists and everybody else, a veritable “clash of civilizations”, happened. We have all seen the videos and wept for the tragedy.
Now, the website that hosted and promoted and served as the main means of networking for its lost cause has lost its web host, its rights to its domain name- and today, it lost Google.
GoDaddy , Stormer’s original domain host, cancelled its domain registration on Sunday, following Stormer’s publication of an offensive article about the deceased victim of the car assault in Charlottesville. Reason given was “Violation of Terms of Service”.
Anonymous, the hacker collective, apparently hacked and took over the Stormer website. Andrew Anglin, Stormer’s owner, claimed that he had regained control , and hosted the site on Google. Anonymous hackers themselves said that they had not hacked Stormer, and that it was probably a publicity stunt by Anglin to stir up sympathy against the “Jewish conspiracy” victimizing the poor little Nazi website.
Today, web search behemoth Google also said that it wanted no part of Stormer’s mission and message, that it violated Google’s terms of service, and also declined to host the alt-right site.
To recap:
Stormer’s staff, including CEO Andrew Anglin, with other “alt-right” and neo-Nazi organizations and provocateurs, promoted and helped to organize the “Unite the Right” rally.
Charlottesville happened.
A young woman died and at least 40 people were injured, fighting Nazis in 2017 in the United States of America.
Stormer mocked the dead woman, and called the vehicular assault “road rage”.
Twitter leaped into action, sending thousands of tweets to Godaddy asking for the web host to drop the Daily Stormer.
GoDaddy dropped Stormer.
Stormer’s Anglin claimed it was hacked by Anonymous, but that he had regained control. Anonymous said it had not hacked the site.
Stormer moved to Google. Google dropped Stormer. Stormer’s YouTube account was also deleted.
Stormer’s email server had been on Zoho, but then Zoho dropped Stormer.
Stormer moved to keep its discussions going on Discord. Discord banned Stormer discussion.
Stormer’s DDS protector, Cloudflare, also dropped the “ironic Nazi (sic) site. Since a controversial website can’t exist without some protection from hacking denial of service attacks, Stormer is now officially dead.
They did pop up, briefly, on a Russian domain, as DailyStormer.ru. But the Russians, also, apparently decided that these idiots were not useful enough — they did not advance the narrative of Glorious Russia and Declining America — and so they were dropped, as well, from the Russian domain.
To the Dark Side
The Verge reports that Stormer is now on the “dark web” , accessible only by using “dark web” browser Tor and typing in a link. Screenshot via Hunchly:
So the ideology of white supremacy has been driven from mainstream web hosters. It now will probably try to survive in the cracks and corners of the internet, where it will be difficult to access and hard to find. It’s unlikely to find a major web company willing to host its domain with the bandwidth it used to have. It will be heavily spied upon and hacked. In a just world, there would even be legal charges for inciting a riot and promoting violence. Right now, a google search for Daily Stormer gets this error message:
One of the Alt-Right’s main propaganda vehicles has been neutralized. Its message has toppled quicker than a Confederate statue pulled down by an angry mob. And that’s how it should be.
-crossposted at ColoradoPols.com. This version is updated.