"Revolution Internet Style" series

.net, the Internet magazine,

October 1995

THE VIRTUAL REICH

By Crawford Kilian

Some are Nazis, some aren't. Some are one-issue groups, like the Holocaust deniers, while others want to transform society to its roots. You can't even call them "right-wing," because some advocate programmes that sound more like socialism; but they're certainly at the far end of the political spectrum from the Reds.

So let's call these groups the Ultra-violets, or Ultras for short. In just a few years they've become prominent on the Internet, with their own newsgroups and Web sites, using the Net to bring about their own par- ticular brand of revolution.

Other Net users regard the Ultras as cranks, losers, or as an outright menace. Along with the pornographers, the Ultras provoke repeated calls for limits on Net freedom of speech. They drew still more attention after the Oklahoma City bombing last spring. In the US and Canada, the stereotype of a racist suddenly changed from urban skinhead to small-town gun nut playing soldier in camouflage on weekends and using the Internet to swap paranoid lies with like-minded goons.

Look at the Net's live Ultras and you soon see something different. For one thing, they are very far from illiterate. All the texts on Don Black's Stormfront site, for example, are very clearly and correctly written. While I can't judge his German-language materials, his texts in Spanish are as well-written as the English ones, and the mere fact that he runs a Web site in three different languages is a reflection of a cosmo- politan outlook, itself another challenge to stereotype. It's also a sizeable store of right-wing art so if you're confused enough to want to dress up your desktop with swastikas and other sundry insignia it's an ideal place to visit.

In many cases the Ultras are clearly concerned with making a documented case for their views. Marc Lemire of the Digital Freedom BBS in Canada often posts extensive reviews of books questioning the Holocaust or documenting the firestorm that destroyed Dresden.

Greg Raven of the Institute for Historical Review (a Holocaust-denying group in California) says revisionism has no connection with neo-Nazism, white nationalism, or other Ultra positions. "Historical revisionism is supposed to be a part of writing history (historiography). As time passes, we gain new information and new insights, which enable us to better perceive not only the facts of events but also their context. Furthermore, the IHR is neither ideological nor political."

Maybe not, but according to Ken Mcvay of the Nizkor Project, a Web-based organisation which campaigns against the far-right, the IHR was founded in 1979 by William David McCalden, who had founded the British National Party, a breakaway from the National Front, a few years earlier.

"Racist, me?"

Raven's home page explicitly denies carrying anything racist or hateful and promises to withdraw anything criticised as such. For a time he offered a link to the home page of a community newspaper in North Vancouver, British Columbia, which carries a columnist sympathetic to Holocaust denial. When the paper discovered the link it asked Raven to close it; he promptly did so.

Nevertheless, Raven doesn't ask Stormfront to close its links to his own home page, and Stormfront is avowedly White Nationalist. Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, Stormfront features a Nazi-style Gothic lettering, extensive links to sympathetic groups elsewhere in the US and Canada, and extensive texts and graphics. According to Milton John Kleim, Jr., who calls himself "Net Nazi Number One," Stormfront "lists just about every important individual and group that should be noted."

Indeed, the Net itself is the common denominator of the Ultras. They may disagree with one another, even quarrel bitterly, but they keep the lines of communication open to one another. That's because without the Net, the Ultras are scattered and isolated. Marc Lemire describes his own progress in Ontario, Canada:

"I started up a hotline called the Canadian Patriots Network on 1 November 1993. From that hotline I could reach thousands of people around the world every week. We actually had a regular caller from South Africa. After one and a half years of that I decided that I could reach far more people over the Internet and through a BBS I was starting up. "

"So on 1 April 1995 I started up Digitial Freedom BBS (001-416- 462-3327). I also got two Internet sites and began forging a lot of contacts with like minded people on the Internet. Within four months I had an e-mail list of around 400 and contacts with all the sysops and leaders throughout the US and Canada. We are also working quite closely with European leaders. We have our address on two World Wide Web sites and I post to USENET every day."

"Doesn't matter if you're red or white"

Kleim in Minnesota has found a similar community forming through the Net. "All my comrades and I, none of whom I have ever met face-to-face, share a unique camaraderie, feeling as though we have been friends for a long time. Selfless cooperation occurs regularly among my comrades for a variety of endeavours. This intense feeling of comradeship is irre- spective of national identity or State borders."

Is the Net a useful means of recruiting sympathisers? "Absolutely," says Kleim. "There are millions of people who agree with us, but feel isolated and helpless because they don't know who to contact to network with others who feel similarly...USENET, in combination with the Web, offers an unparalleled opportunity for our Movement to get our views and more importantly our facts across to the general public."

Marc Lemire agrees. "It is the best recruiting tool we have. For example, my mailing list from Digital Freedom grew from only five people back in April to over 400 people in July. If it continues that way for a year I will have reached 1,600 people. Not bad!"

How many are British? "I am in contact with only a few British comrades," says Kleim, "all of whom wish to remain anonymous due to the dispicable restrictions on free thought and expression, imposed by a criminally-negligent government out of touch with its nation's proud heritage of freedom and the wishes of the majority of the British people." Touchy subject, obviously.

"A bit of dark reading"

What else do Ultras share besides a sense of camaraderie? On Stormfront, Net users have a considerable range of materials to download and links to other sites. Earlier this summer, the page was offering "Thunderbolts" (news items of interest), "Storm Warnings" (commentary), letters from friends and foes, and a number of major documents; three long articles about the siege of the Branch Davidians at Waco by US government forces; two stories about the Oklahoma City bombing (their theory: the government itself planted the bomb); three Canadian stories, and two racial-issues stories (in one, ex-Nazi David Duke, now a Louisiana State legislator, finds much to admire in the Indian caste system).

A "White Nationalism FAQ" on Stormfront proposes creating seperate nations for whites and non-whites, to spare whites from continuing exploitation through racial-preference schemes in hiring, university admissions and government contracting. The FAQ's author, using the pen name Yggdrasil, suggests ceding land already occupied by non-Whites. White-only areas, however, would still welcome Asians; the only ones with much to fear, evidently, would be white liberals: "Those who are guilty of 'integrationism' should do the sensible thing and flee. It will spare us all a lot of pain."

Milton Kleim, by contrast, sees a different future: "The United States of America, the Confederate States of America, Canada, and Quebec would be unified into one nation-state, perhaps known as the Aryan Confederation." Local government would operate with elected officials, "but the present ridiculous parliamentary game in national politics would be replaced with frequent referenda for important issues."

Kleim would follow a "live and let live" policy with nations like Japan and Iraq. "Belligerent actions of those governments violently opposed to us, such as the criminal State of Israel, or the menace to the world called China, would be countered with equal force, up to and including total utilisation of America's strategic forces."

Marc Lemire foresees "propaganda-free education, where blacks could have their own courses, Jewish people could learn all they want about the Holocaust and us whites could learn exclusively about white history."

The Ultras have encountered everything from jail sentences to e-mailed death threats, but appear determined to carry on -- indeed, they welcome attacks as a means of publicising their cause. Critics may damn their anti-Semitism, mock their paranoia (one Ultra group wondered whether Stormfront was a government-run trap), and dismiss their "facts" as fabrications. Nevertheless, half a century after the defeat of Nazism, something in its world view still appeals to them. And just as the Nazis used the new media of radio and film, their spiritual descendants are using the Internet to spread the same message. Are you just going to stand by and watch?

"They're out there...Somewhere"

The Ultras attract attention out of all proportion to their actual numbers, and their organisations appear to be small and few. In some cases, the person who posts on behalf of a group may be the group's only computer user (and may even be the whole group). Many Ultras prefer to post anonymously; this may explain the absence of any British Ultra groups, although individuals in the UK will take part in discussions on Ultra newsgroups. In the following list, organisations are US-based unless otherwise described.

The pre-eminent Ultra source.

This is of course Stormfront (http://204.181.176.4/stormfront/), but numerous others are worth examining:

The Institute for Historial Review It doesn't have its own Web site, but Greg Raven is editor of its Journal for Historical Review. He says his home page has no formal connection with the IHR, but his page provides a forum for Institute viewpoints. You can reach Greg Raven's homepage at http://www.kaiwan. com:80/~greg.ihr/

This site also provides access to Ernst Zundel's Voice of Freedom home page. Zundel is a longtime denier of the Holocaust who has been in trouble with Canadian law. His home was recently destroyed by arson; his critics, tongue in cheek, say the fire never happened.

The National Alliance

This is active on the Net, offering detailed tactical and strategic advice: for example, to vote for the most left-wing candidates avail- able. This will ensure that life will become more rapidly intolerable for exploited whites, rousing them from their apathy to join the Ultra cause. It's accessible through Stormfront, or directly at ftp:// ftp.netcom.com/pub/NA/NA/

SPIRAL

The Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties archives materials from all over the Net. It supplies information from numerous groups such as Terra Libra (terrhq@ix.netcom.com), the Constitu- tion Party (constitution@earthquake.net) and the American Freedom Net, which has no e-mail address but which claims the US government is a puppet of the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London. For details on SPIRAL e-mail alex@spiral.com

The National Socialist Page

This supplies Milton John Kleim, Jr.'s National Socialism Primer at http://www.gl.umb.edu/~laude/natlsocial.ntml

Resistance Records

It distributes skinhead music, has its home page at http://www.resistance. com/ and is also accessible by e-mail at rrecords@resistance.com

The Heritage Front

A Canadian organisation, puts selections from its print magazine, _Up Front_, on its home page, but rarely updates. You can reach it through Stormfront or directly at http://204.181.176.4/stormfront/ufl8dx.html

US militia groups

The Patriot Archive provides considerable details on this subject. It also supplies information on media available through the Net, e-mail addresses of US members of Congress, and other data. Accessible through Stormfront or directly at http://www.tezcat.com:80/patriot/

CyberHate

http://www.vms.utexas.edu/~axl/index.html is the home page of Reuben Logsdon; well-written and sometimes witty, it provides links to a broader range of sites than Stormfront, including government and anti-Ultra groups.

Mailing lists

• The Frog Farm (frog.farm-request@blizzard.lcs.mit.edu)
• Patriots (patriot@kaiwan.com)

Newsgroups

Those dealing with Ultra issues include alt.politics.nationalism.white, alt.politics.white-power, alt.revisionism and alt.skinheads.

BBSs

Several are active in the US, but the only European one listed on Stormfront is Widerstand (49-9131-201124), based in Erlangen, Germany; the sysop is Alfred Tetzlaff.

The Nizkor Project