Stormfront.org is a white supremacist discussion forum designed to spread the word of white nationalist organizations and groups (like the Aryan Nations). Active members can post and comment on topics like ideology and philosophy, culture and customs, science, technology and race, among many others. Don Black, former Ku Klux Klan leader, founded the site in the early 1990s as a “resource for those courageous men and women fighting to preserve their White Western culture, ideals and freedom of speech and association a forum for planning strategies and forming political and social groups to secure victory" (source).
This site has a become a valuable resource indeed for those in support of the white nationalist movement. With groups like the Aryan Nations calling for the recruitment of more members in certain states (Aryan Nations California Recruiting) to polls asking "Which country is key for white survival?" (Russia), Stormfront.org is spreading the message of white nationalism to all corners of the world.
After browsing through posts on the site, the most common post I found posed the question, "What exactly is Aryan? It would seem that as a group in support of an Aryan homeland here in the United States, it would be simple for all members to agree on a common definition of the term that holds such valuable meaning to them. However, members of the site are having a hard time describing the term in a nutshell.
The most common description of an Aryan on the site described them as a person with light skin, hair and eyes. However, many posts (like this one) have gone to a more all-encompassing description, stating that Aryans "seem to have been predominantly, although not exclusively, of light hair and eye color. The majority of them probably had light colored hair like blond, red or light-medium brown and light colored eyes like blue, grey or green, although there were some with dark brown or black hair and brown eyes as well." An additional post goes so far as to list all categories of people who can be described as Aryan (mostly Indo-European peoples).
Another common post seems to be the exact origin of the Aryan peoples and "Are only some Whites Aryans?" Russians, Northern Indians and White Persians have all been deemed the original ancestors of the "Aryan race." Also, users have disagreements about who is considered to be an Aryan, stating all whites are Aryans to all white Europeans and even going as far as to say "all whites are Aryans with the exception of those who fornicate with mongrels." All this confusions leaves only one question for me, who exactly is an Aryan?
This confusion over the defintion of an Aryan, a main part of white nationalist ideology, is comical and embarrassing to their cause. Those supporters of white nationalism should be able to easily and clearly agree on who/what is considered an Aryan, not have extensive posts on a site dedicated to the white nationalist movement and not be able to define a key term behind their movement.
What does white nationalist discussion of Aryans have to do with the Aryan Nation? What does this reveal about Aryan Nation and importance of stormfront?
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting post, because I found something similar on Stormfront the other day. My blog is about current anti-Semitism in the US, and I found a post that was explaining why Jews are not White. The contributor said something along the lines of "even though they claim to be White and look White, they are not." But another contributor disagreed. They said that most Jews these days actually are "basically" White, because they are not the original Jews. Jews, s/he said, look like Arabs and come from the Middle East. This was interesting because I wouldn't have expected a White Nationalist to claim that today's American Jews are actually "mostly white," but he did go on to specify that they are not Aryan, because Aryanism requires a sense of White Pride as well as pure whiteness (as opposed to "white" American Jews which are descended from Arabs).
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