Racist Internet Forums Linked to U.S. Hate Crimes

A white supremacist charged with killing three people this week had posted over 12,000 messages on the website Stormfront, which carries the slogan “No Jews, No Right,” according to an organization that tracks hate groups. Frazier Glenn Cross stands accused of killing three people near two Jewish community facilities in suburban Kansas City.

According to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights organization, there has been a developing online trend of posters on online hate forums being “disproportionately responsible” for mass killings and racist crime.

A community of “White Nationalists,” Stormfront describes itself as “the voice of the new, embattled White minority.”

Users of the website were responsible for over 100 murders in the last five years, claim researchers.

Past visitors include Wade Michael Page, an American veteran who killed six people in a mass shooting at a Sikh Temple in 2012. Another was Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who killed 77 people in a shooting spree at a youth summer camp in 2011.

“It has been a magnet for the deadly and deranged,” said Heidi Beirich, author of the report.

Don Black, owner of Stormfront, told Reuters that killers like Breivik have been banned from posting on the site. “We’re obviously a big website, and any site is likely to have a few unstable people pass through,” Black posted in a statement on his website.