On Saturday night, the editor of the Neo Nazi site Daily Stormer hailed Donald Trump’s official statement/response made after the Charlottesville violent protest. The protest began with the march of armed white militants and led to the murder of 32-year-old Heather Heyer and the attack of innocent counter-protestors. On the Daily Stormer site that night, there were massive hate-provoking racist rants that claimed a white nationalist victory after Charlottesville. They called the two policemen who died in a helicopter crash while observing the protest “idiots,” and ruthlessly attacked Heather Heyer in a beyond reprehensible title.
Stated below is just one of the many disturbing proclamations from the Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin who “blesses” Trump for blaming all groups for the day’s violence, rather than singling out the white supremacists.
“Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. When asked to condemn, he just [waled] out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.” -Andrew Anglin, Editor, Daily Stormer Today
Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) editor and founder of ThinkProgress.com posted a screenshot on Twitter from Fox News. The meme appears to ultimately condemn Trump as well as Anglin for condoning white extremism.
Here is the excerpt from the Daily Stormer rant via Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer), also tweeted by Congressman Ted Lieu.
Anglin’s Daily Stormer site was banned by GoDaddy and the Daily Stormer published a post claiming to be Anonymous seeking revenge. As of the publishing of this story, *the site is back up. The good news is the Department of Justice/DOJ is opening up a civil rights investigation. The bad news is the head of the DOJ, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has himself been accused of being a racist.
Rather than send readers to the Daily Stormer and thus create more profit for them in views, I’ve taken several screenshots from the site’s front page. Warning: The screenshots contain incredibly disturbing images and titles that contain and promote racism, misogyny, anti-semitism and pure, hardcore hatred.
Daily Stormer front page header, August 14, 2017:
Daily Stormer front page stories, August 14, 2017:
Daily Stormer front page stories, August 14, 2017:
Deplorable is an understatement. This is what the questionable election of Donald Trump and his version of making America great again looks like. Under the First Amendment and unlike many other developed countries that ban hate speech, our freedom of speech often allows dangerous and odious rants. In the NPR piece about the comparison between other countries and the U.S. regarding hate speech, Charles Asher Small—who founded the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism—states:
“...the United States of America has become the space or the place where hate groups use URLs or create websites based in the United States because they’re protected under the First Amendment. And I think this is something that policymakers really need to address. How do you balance First Amendment and the Constitution and yet stop people from harming other people?”
The Supreme Court case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, at 447 (1969), states:
Held: Since the statute, by its words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action, it falls within the condemnation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The hate speech catch in America, when it’s rarely enforced, is that an individual/organization can only be prosecuted if the speech incites violence and/or “lawless” action. One look at the Daily Stormer website and Charlottesville’s deadly events can answer to that. So, here you go, Jeff Sessions. Do your fucking job.
UPDATE: Tuesday, Aug 15, 2017 · 9:22:25 PM +00:00 · Leslie Salzillo
*Some good news. Looks as though the Daily Stormer site has been taken down again. Hopefully, this time—it will be for good.