Monday, October 5, 2020

Before Metapedia: Stormfront Messageboard Users Editing Wikipedia

This is another short post on the recent history of Wikipedia.....Stormfront is one of the oldest surviving white supremacist/neo-Nazi websites in America, founded in 1995 by Don Black, who has been hip-deep in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and various American neo-Nazi groups since the 1970s. The site has had a messageboard since the late 1990s, and some of the denizens of that space were Wikipedia editors, such as Amalekite, who was banned in 2005 for posting a list of "Wikipedia Jews" to the Stormfront messageboard; one of the people listed and who spent a lot of effort getting Frank Sinatra (his Stormfront handle) / Amalekite kicked was none other than SlimVirgin. Another user was Paul Vogel, whose personal page was edited by none other than David Gerard (he listed all the IPs Paul Vogel allegedly used, and it was a long-ish list), after one of the earliest Requests for arbitration which blocked him for one year in 2004 or 2005; they didn't give a date of sentencing. Hilariously they allowed "outsider responses" and one of the randos was JRR Trollkien, who later was labeled a sockpuppet of EntmootsOfTrolls (banned by Jimbo Himself in 2003) who was also a number of other accounts according to the deleted List of banned users (not to be confused with the WMF Global Ban.) The final example we can give is Svigor, whose handle on Stormfront was Svyatoslav_Igorevich, a reference to Svyatoslav I (943-972), a Prince of Kiev who fought the Khazar kingdom in 969. (The Khazars were reputed to have converted to Judaism, science says no.) His user page was open that he was a White Nationalist and he vanished after 2004.

Stormfront Was Open About Wikipedia Propagandizing

In 2012 a thread on Stormfront's messageboard discussed editing Wikipedia articles, one of the posters (Palmer) wrote the following:

For some e-activism... I would say Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia!
I know, anyone can just edit and add whatever they want to Wikipedia, but chances are your changes will be reverted if it's not factual/relevant or has any sources.

Here is one that I did: Vodacom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vodacom is a South African company that said White people can't invest in there Yeboyethu program, this wasn't shown anywhere on the wiki article so I added it.

If you don't know how to Wiki. Just use ==Section Title== to add the bolded title sections, type whatever you need under that title, then use <ref></ref> tags to add references (the little [1] for those that don't know) which allows you to add supporting links. Example: <ref>http://link-to-the-page</ref>
easy...
This way you can raise awareness on pages like this and "anti-White racism" and obvious double standards. Just use credible sources and word it politely, and remember to save your text somewhere on your computer in case they delete it, then you can post it back on the wiki article and maybe re-word it or look for better sources, etc.

Of course long before this, Wikipedia was arguing back-and-forth about Stormfront on a talk page that lasted from 2005 to 2019 and we got a bunch of charming gunk over the years:

This RfC

There are lists "proving" it a hate/neo-nazi website yet these "sources" fail to qualify their accusations. Think about it. When you go to SF it alleges to be a "White Nationalist" website. That is from the horse's mouth. But what about neo-nazi? SF never claimed it, some of the member are neo-nazis but not only are they not the majority there are others who condemn them who are white NATIONALISTS. At the very mosts it is a white nationalist website with members who are neo-nazis. At most. And ADL sources; seriously? We'll talk about neutrality on Wikipedia all the time but that's because most of the time it works for us.

Seriously, if we can't be honest when writing these articles what is the point of Wikipedia? Answer: there is none. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.148.43 (talk) 23:45, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

You might have a point is we were basing it on the ADL. But we're basing it on the SPLC, the Univ. of AZ, the Daily Telegraph etc. Niteshift36 (talk)
The IP still has a point. WP:LABEL is a problem on this and other articles. Why do we need to apply a contentious label in the first sentence? There is no argument that it is white nationalist (from what I can tell) so that is fine. However, neo-nazi is disputed. We also all know that the media has a tendency to be sensationalist and does not have Wikipedia's strict and needed neutrality standards. An easy fix is to have the second line in the lead be "It is often described as a neo-nazi..." or something. Then Wikipedia would not be applying the label but giving the description the prominence it deserves.Cptnono (talk) 06:17, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
This as been discussed at great length. The overwhelming consensus was what we currently have. Niteshift36 (talk) 17:32, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
And people keep on complaining about it so it is a good thing that consensus can change. Can you provide a policy based reasoning on the label to be applied in the first line instead of being handle slightly different in the second line?Cptnono (talk) 20:57, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
Since Stormfront doesn't openly admit that they're a neo-Nazi website you think that all of Wikipedia sucks.? That's just idiotic. Stormfront won't acknowledge that they obviously love Nazism because they fear repercussions. How do you justify saying that it's "at the very most a white nationalist website with members who are neo-nazis??" You object to this article claiming that Stormfront is a neo-nazi website even when it can cite references backing that claim up, yet I sincerely doubt that you could justify your assertion that any particular member of Stormfront is a neo-nazi. The website appeals to neo-Nazi's for a reason: the beliefs and ideas exchanged on Stormfront are consistent with Nazism. Stormfront denies being neo-nazi because that would be bad for their already poor public image (see for example, Warman v. Kouba, 2006 CHRT 50 - 2006-11-22 - Canadian Human Rights Tribunal — Federal: one poster talks about how he doesn't want white nationalism publicly associated with neo-nazism). Stormfront has an entire forum dedicated to "revision" - that is, the discussion about how the holocaust (allegedly) didn't happen. You'll find many of these discussions involve obvious admiration of Hitler's desire to get Jews off "Aryan" lands and how the holocaust was really a hoax and is an example of the kind of lies and deception that Hitler knew the jews were capable of and used to manipulate world politics. In particular, the *obvious* admiration of Adolf Hitler and the ideals of the Nazi regime expressed by many posters on stormfront is the best evidence that Stormfront is a neo-nazi website (I think it is OBVIOUS to anyone who reads the site that it is a neo-nazi website - how anyone can try denying this is beyond me). People post on Stormfront regularly because they identify with others who post there and like you said, many of those who post there are neo-nazis. That's precisely the reason that they're posting on the site: they want to talk with other neo-nazis and talk about how bad the jews are or how blacks are ruining civilization. To say that Wikipedia is a bad resource because of the claim that Stormfront is a neo-nazi website really just suggests that you would also rather not have "white nationalism" associated publicly with neo-nazism. I'm curious, you claim that the "sources" (there is no reason to put sources in quotes, they ARE sources) don't "prove" that Stormfront is a neo-nazi website. Have you looked at absolutely everything on those sites? 74.13.3.57 (talk) 23:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC) A white guy who's ashamed of the idiots at Stormfront.
The label is one thing, (clearly, clearly racist), but there are conditions which must be met to be neo-nazi. As far as adherence to nationalistic socialism, anti-communist sentiment, fascistic ideologies, or anti-capitalism, the question should be whether or not the contributions that make up the forum are supportive of those ideas. I don't know that they are or are not, but if I had to guess, it's probably just some racist people saying racist things, with very few posts outlining the problems of capitalist structures. Racism in itself is not NSDAP, and even a claim to NSDAP affiliation cannot simply be taken as proof. That second part has two connotations, both that if I were to claim neo-nazi membership, it wouldn't just be valid in virtue of the claim, but would require some kind of evidence, AND that if the SPLC claims it, it isn't true just because they've said it. The SPLC happens to be very on the ball, so I imagine if they've claimed it, it wasn't out of the blue. Can anyone direct me to evidence of genuine Nazi components of belief? I don't doubt that they exist, but both sides seem to be looking for this. It's potentially in these many pages of history here...137.99.147.184 (talk) 02:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
As Wikipedia editors, our job is just to verifiably summarize reliable sources using the neutral point of view. We should not make determinations based on our own theories. that said: [www.stormfront.org/forum/t749913/].   Will Beback  talk  03:11, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Maybe if this is continuing to come up it is still a problem. Good thing we have an easy solution. Too bad established editors don't want to implement it.Cptnono (talk) 07:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Which solution? Niteshift36 (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Removing it as a label in the first line and spelling it out clearly in the second line. This is inline with WP:LABELCptnono (talk) 20:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't think there's really an ongoing problem with the article. I think what's fairly obvious is that we have an occasional neo-Nazi visiting this talk page as an IP and claiming the he and his neo-Nazi friends are not really neo-Nazis. Best way to respond to that is to do nothing. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm not a neo-nazi and I see a problem with it. I kind of feel for those guys in this circumstance since their socially unacceptable beliefs causes Wikipedia editors to disregard NPOV (again, see LABEL). This isn't the only article it has been a problem on.Cptnono (talk) 03:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't think WP:NPOV actually supports you in this case. As far as I know, there are no reliable sources that dispute these descriptions/labels. Jayjg (talk) 04:03, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Then "use in-text attribution" is required per that guideline. But instead: There is no dispute that it is white nationalist. However, if the site denies that it is the other two then there is no reason to apply the label like that. Simply say "Stormfront is a white nationalist Internet forum. It is often considered white-supremacist and neo-Nazi." There is zero way anyone can dispute that line.Cptnono (talk) 04:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
"In-text attribution" is forbidden here, because it would imply "apparent parity between the supermajority view and a tiny minority". See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Explanation of the neutral point of view . And practically speaking it would be ridiculous anyway. Would you write "According to source1, source2, source3, source4, source5, source6, source7, source8, source9, source10, source11 and source12, Stormfront is white supremacist"? Jayjg (talk) 04:00, 1 December 2010 (UTC)
In text attribution would be ridiculous but it would actually be inline with the standards. Alternatively, it could be simply written as "It is often called...". It would address the concern below. It keeps on coming up when it is an easy fix.Cptnono (talk) 04:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

This stuff.

Does anyone here actually dispute that they are Tatarophobic?--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 20:45, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a reliable source that says that they are? Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:27, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

It Has No Real Ending

Thanks to the "social media revolution", doing Nazism has gotten a lot easier: podcasting, streaming video, ranting on Reddit, having your own racist Wiki (Metapedia), so on. The need to infiltrate Wikipedia has fallen away because the culture of Wikipedia is too annoying to survive for long as whatever flavor of Nazi the farthest-Right user is, especially if they are extremely militant. Also, if a project is tied to Stormfront like The Political Cesspool radio show, the article about it will be fought over as well. We live in a never ending nightmare spawned by the mind of Don Black, the Nazi who looks like a paint store manager.



                               Don Black sometime in the mid-1990s. The hair is grey now.

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