WHITE HOMICIDE WORLDWIDE Stormfront, the Leading White Supremacist Web Forum, Has Another Distinction — Murder Capital of the Internet
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WHITE HOMICIDE WORLDWIDE Stormfront, the leading white supremacist Web forum, has another distinction — murder capital of the Internet BY HEIDI BEIRICH Stormfront.org A typical murderer drawn to the racist forum a Filipino-American postal worker. is a frustrated, unemployed, white adult male living with his Eight months later, on April 28, 2000, mother or an estranged spouse or girlfriend. She is the sole just days after exchanging E-mails and a phone call with a woman he met on provider in the household. the Stormfront “Singles” page, Richard Forensic psychologists call him a “wound collector.” Instead of Scott Baumhammers shot and killed his building his resume, seeking employment or further education, he next-door neighbor, a 63-year-old Jewish woman. Next, he drove to the victim’s syn- projects his grievances on society and searches the Internet for an agogue, shot out the windows and painted excuse or an explanation unrelated to his behavior or the choices two large red swastikas on the front of the he has made in life. building. And then Baumhammers went on a shooting rampage, specifically target- His escalation follows a predictable of isolation the terrorist can indulge his ing minorities and murdering five people. trajectory. From right-wing antigovern- ideology” without the restrictions of the A sixth victim would die of his injuries ment websites and conspiracy hatcheries, routines of daily life. several months later. he migrates to militant hate sites that Then there is a trajectory from idea When Baumhammers’ connection blame society’s ills on ethnicity and shift- to action. to Stormfront was pointed out in media ing demographics. He soon learns his Though on any given day, fewer reports, Black denied any responsibility. He race is endangered — a target of “white than 1,800 registered members log on claimed Baumhammers “had been previ- genocide.” After reading and lurking for a to Stormfront, and less than half of the ously diagnosed as something worse than while, he needs to talk to someone about site’s visitors even reside in the United schizophrenic.” But Black did note that it, signing up as a registered user on a rac- States, a two-year study by the Southern attention to the killings had more than dou- ist forum where he commiserates in an Poverty Law Center (SPLC) shows that bled the number of “hits” to his website. echo chamber of angry fellow failures registered Stormfront users have been Furrow, 37, and Baumhammers, 34, where Jews, gays, minorities and mul- disproportionately responsible for some were both unemployed and still living ticulturalism are blamed for everything. of the most lethal hate crimes and mass with their parents at the time of the kill- Assured of the supremacy of his race killings since the site was put up in 1995. ings. The next Stormfront user to commit and frustrated by the inferiority of his In the past five years alone, Stormfront murder was also living with his parents. achievements, he binges online for hours members have murdered close to 100 This one was in the ninth grade. every day, self-medicating, slowly sip- people. The SPLC’s research shows that On April 19, 2002, Ian Andrew Bishop, ping a cocktail of rage. He gradually gains Stormfront’s bias-related murder rate a 14-year-old so-called “Stormfront Youth” acceptance in this online birthing den of began to accelerate rapidly in early 2009, killed his brother by striking him repeat- self-described “lone wolves,” but he gets after Barack Obama became the nation’s edly in the head with a claw hammer, no relief, no practical remedies, no sug- first black president. allegedly because he thought 18-year-old gestions to improve his circumstances. For domestic Islamic terrorists, the Adam Bishop was gay. “He said his brother He just gets angrier. breeding ground for violence is often was a faggot,” said a 15-year-old witness. And then he gets a gun. the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire and its “He said he wanted to kill his parents, too.” It is a myth that racist killers hide in affiliated websites. For the racist, it Bishop’s activity on Stormfront the shadows. Investigators find that most is Stormfront. included downloading and distributing offenders openly advocated their ideol- Third Reich images while promoting ogy online, often obsessively posting on Making Excuses his racist views in the neighborhood. racist forums and blogs for hours every Investigators find that most offenders Described as a “racist bully with neo- day. Over the past two decades, the larg- openly advocated their ideology online Nazi views,” Bishop’s attorney cited his est hate site in the world, Stormfront.org, for lengthy periods while sucking up the activities on Stormfront as evidence Ian has been a magnet and breeding ground hatred around them. Yet Stormfront’s was “troubled” and “drawn to the skin- for the deadly and the deranged. founder, former Alabama Klan leader head philosophy.” There is safety in the anonymity of the Stephen Donald “Don” Black, shrugs off Again, Black denied any responsibil- Web, and comfort in the endorsement responsibility for what he has wrought. ity in the Bishop case, claiming “Bishop others offer for extreme racist ideas, The homicidal trend began just killed his older brother because he argues former FBI agent Joe Navarro, four years after the site went up. On thought his parents liked him better. But who coined the term “wound collector.” Aug. 10, 1999, Buford O’Neil Furrow, a we’re ‘responsible’ for that too,” he added “Isolation permits the free expression of known user of Stormfront, left his par- sarcastically, “since he was a ‘good kid’ ideas, especially those which are extreme ents’ home in Tacoma, Wash., and drove before visiting SF.” and which foster passionate hatred,” to Los Angeles, where he shot and Navarro, who helped found the FBI’s wounded three children, a teenage girl The Body Count Skyrockets Behavioral Analysis Division, wrote in and an elderly woman at a Jewish day The murders would keep on coming, 2011 in Psychology Today. “In this cocoon care center. Furrow then shot and killed their frequency accelerating. On Feb. 19, 2 splc intelligence report and “p0p633.” An aspiring skinhead, Poplawski posted his “Iron Eagle” Nazi tattoo under his p0p633 user name in 2007, about 16 months before the killings. The worst mass murder was still to come. On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik set off a truck bomb in front of a government building in downtown Oslo, Norway. The blast killed eight and injured hundreds more. Dressed as a police officer and armed with a Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle and a Glock pistol, Breivik then boarded a ferry to Utoya Island, where a Workers Youth League summer camp was being held. There, Breivik shot and killed 69 people, most of them teenagers. When he was taken into custody by a SWAT team without incident, Breivik calmly told authorities that he blamed the government for allowing Norway to be “invaded” by Muslims. At the time of the killings, Breivik had The hatemaker: Don Black, the former Alabama Klan been a registered member on Stormfront leader who founded and still runs Stormfront, provides for almost three years. Under the user- an electronic home and breeding ground for racists who name “year2183,” Breivik introduced have murdered almost 100 people in the last five years. himself in October 2008. In one post he To this day, he remains fiercely unapologetic, even as he wrote, “Feminism, corrupt treacherous rakes in donations from his forum members. politicians, a corrupt treacherous media, pro-immigration Jewry and a corrupt academia is the hole in the ‘dike,’ while Muslims are the water flooding in.” After a rant about Islamic enemies, Breivik 2008, James “Yankee Jim” Leshkevich, Pa., police officers, and wounded a fourth. was warmly welcomed by close Black who had posted more than 5,000 times to Poplawski, 22, was unemployed and liv- confidant Freeland Roy Dunscombe, or Stormfront in the preceding four years, ing with his mother when an early morning “TruckRoy”: “glad to have you here.” beat and strangled his wife to death in the argument escalated between the two and Hours before he began his terror living room of the home they shared in resulted in her calling 911. Poplawski campaign, Breivik E-mailed a copy of West Hurley, N.Y. Then he hung himself. waited just behind the front door with his his racist manifesto to two other influ- Similarly, a little over two years later, AK-47 assault rifle and shot and killed the ential Stormfront members, Billy Joe on April 21, 2010, Curtis Boone Maynard first three police officers who responded. Roper and Timothy Gallaher Murdock, shot and killed his ex-wife outside her Another officer was injured before a SWAT who runs the racist WhiteRabbitRadio. Lake Jackson, Texas, home. He then shot team shot and wounded Poplawski and net. In his manifesto, Breivik claimed he his 16-year-old stepdaughter in the face, then took him into custody. was banned from Stormfront, though a severely wounding her, before killing Fifteen weeks before the murders, search shows no suspension. Breivik himself during a subsequent police chase. Poplawski, who went by the name later admitted he was not removed as a Maynard had posted almost 900 times “Braced for Fate” on Stormfront, wrote registered member. on Stormfront before he was banned for that he kept his AK-47 “in a case within “I was never kicked out of publishing personal information about a arms reach.” He’d been a registered Stormfront,” he said last September. black woman who had voted as a juror to Stormfront member for 20 months prior “Instead, I attacked them in the compen- acquit a black murder suspect.