How It Works > White Nationalism Online

Online sites are increasingly the first meaningful points of contact for young people who become engaged with white nationalism, and the pandemic of 2020-21 likely accelerated that trend.

Many different types of sites can engage young people. The sites listed here are among the most frequently accessed as of 2021. If they appear on a home computer browsing history, a conversation may be called for. But sites come and go: white nationalist groups die and new ones form; some groups are “deplatformed” and shift to new online media. This list is illustrative, but far from complete and will likely soon be dated.

CO•RE does not link directly to white nationalist sites. Using a live link on an unsecured device could compromise your privacy. If you plan to browse a white nationalist website of any kind, we advise downloading security software, such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN), to prevent disclosure of the unique IP address of your device.

4chan

One of the most prominent forums is 4chan, established in 2003 and open to participation without registration. Users are overwhelmingly anonymous, appear to be young (the site was created by a 15 year-old), and discussion is filled with snark and edgy humor. 4chan includes dozens of boards on various topics, but the best known is the /pol/ (Politically Incorrect) board, which is dominated by Alt-Right participants and white nationalist themes. The white nationalist blogger Andrew Anglin claims, “It was on 4chan’s /pol/ that most of the core concepts of what is now the Alt-Right were figured out.” Many of the boards on 4chan are relatively free of Alt-Right content and popular boards focus on gaming and anime, reflecting a young audience. (4chan is technically an “imageboard,” with many posters uploading images; apart from its white nationalist elements, it is permeated with adult content and advertising.)

8kun

Originally 8chan, this forum was among the most active forums for white nationalists under its former name. However, after a string of race-based mass murderers posted manifestos on 8chan, the site was forced to close, re-launching as 8kun. Although 8kun attracts white nationalist participants on its /pnd/ board (Politics, News, Debate), its principal role since its re-launch has been as the main site for QAnon. Like 4chan, gaming and anime are major topics and there is considerable adult content.

Stormfront

A dedicated white nationalist forum, launched in 1995 by a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Stormfront’s banner motto is “White Pride Worldwide.” Posters at Stormfront appear to be older, registration is required to post (though most posters remain anonymous behind screen names), and discussion threads tend to be more focused than those on 4chan or 8kun (gaming and anime are not major topics on this ideologically dedicated board). For example, the “Ideology and Philosophy” thread is devoted to the clarification of white nationalist principles, and a range of sub-forums are devoted to white nationalist issues in European countries.

Patriot Front

The Patriot Front is a white nationalist membership organization established in 2017. Its leader, Thomas Rousseau, founded the group in Texas as a teenager. The organization recruits nationally through flyers, marches, and its website. Patriot Front flyers have appeared in Bloomington. The site theme is patriotism. It includes a “Manifesto” that states, “Membership within the American nation is inherited through blood, not ink. Even those born in America may yet be foreign.” Website visitors can apply for membership online.

Exodus/Americanus

Exodus/Americanus is a white nationalist organization based in Floyd’s Knob, Indiana. Its primary activity is a weekly podcast of about two hours, which is the main content of its website. The podcast is produced by David Aaron Mitchell, who goes by the name Roscoe Jones, and includes guests. The comedic tone of its political commentary is directed towards an audience of young people, and includes Alt-Right edgy humor, as well as content intended purely for entertainment that may not involve white nationalist themes. Donations are accepted, but Exodus/Americanus is not a membership organization. Prior to the 2020-21 pandemic it organized an annual event where vetted Alt-Right podcasters and others gathered.

New Jersey European Heritage Association

The New Jersey European Heritage Association is a local white nationalist group based in central New Jersey. Its activities include posting flyers and stickers, with occasional articles and videos. The site is patriot themed. Because the site invites visitors to download and print the group’s flyers, which include the website’s address, the flyers sometimes appear outside the New Jersey region, and have been reported in Bloomington.

National Vanguard / National Alliance

These two organizations are intertwined historically. They are both offshoots of an earlier form of the National Alliance, which was led by William Pierce, a major white nationalist figure whose novel, The Turner Diaries, has canonical status in the movement. After Pierce’s death the National Vanguard was formed as a break-away group. The National Alliance is a reconstitution of the original, and the two organizations are now complementary. Their sites are interlinked, and they include a variety of essays, podcasts, a 24/7 radio feed, and merchandise links for white nationalist books and CDs. National Vanguard flyers have appeared in Bloomington. Only the National Alliance is a membership group. It is based in Tennessee, where it also operates a church dedicated to “Cosmotheism,” a religion founded by Pierce.

National Socialist Movement

Included here as an example of a frankly neo-Nazi organization (it calls itself “An American Nazi Party”), the NSM is a membership organization based in Florida. Its web address includes the coded ‘88’ symbol, standing for “Heil Hitler.” As the logo at left suggests, it explicitly identifies with the Nazi swastika. The website posts and archives podcasts four times a week from a line-up of regular hosts, and an annual convention is coordinated through the site.

Revolt Through Tradition

Included here as an example of a newer style of white nationalist group that does not explicitly raise the issue of race on its website. RTT’s mission as a “metapolitical organization” is directed towards young people “who have fallen under the spell of either Left-wing or neoconservative populism.” The Boston-based group is directed towards young men, and offers members training as metaphorical “warriors” in a culture war, and as more literal warriors through mixed martial arts. Its ideology draws heavily on the writings of the Italian fascist Giulio Evola. RTT appears to be an offshoot of the “Rise Above Movement,” a white nationalist group whose leader operates from Ukraine, where RTT has ties. It is a membership organization that engages in flyering and banner drops, featuring the RTT logo and images of hooded figures. RTT also
communicates through posts on Telegram.

Playing video games is an activity that an increasingly wide range of young people (and older ones) enjoy. It has become a highly social online environment, as players can log on and join friends or teams of players they have not met before. Many gaming sites offer opportunities for players to gather in “lobby” spaces outside the game, where conversation can range from plans for team strategies to topics distant from gaming. Regular players may become members of standing “clans” or “guilds” with stable team membership, where friendly relationships can grow.

White nationalist groups and individuals use online gaming as a recruitment opportunity. While gaming attracts a wide demographic, and nothing makes gamers as a whole more vulnerable to recruitment than others, the gaming community does include the type of young person in search of identity and community that white nationalists target. A few friendly words in a side conversation can test whether a young teammate seems responsive to a race-based message and will be likely to follow up when pointed towards a dedicated white nationalist site.

These sorts of interactions may occur on sites dedicated to specific games, generally owned and monitored by video game companies, or on video streaming platforms that host a wide range of gaming and webcast opportunities. (Among the latter, the DLive streaming platform became a particular focus of white nationalist webcast streaming in 2020.)

Families set their own policies about online use, and once a young person is free to participate in multiplayer gaming, specific online social interactions in those environments are not something that can be easily monitored. The best way to address this issue may be by using the approach outlined in Preventing Engagement: proactively raise the topic and prepare young people to recognize when an apparently friendly online encounter may signal that they have been targeted for manipulation.

Some white nationalist individuals not associated with a group create blogs that promote movement ideas in very personal form. Two of these, very different in style, have had a particularly broad influence.

Daily Stormer

This elaborate and long-running blog is the work of Andrew Anglin, whose major role in American white nationalism is entirely a product of the Daily Stormer site. Although Anglin’s base was originally Ohio, he operates his blog from an undisclosed location overseas as a consequence of a series of pending lawsuits. Anglin’s blog uses an intentionally low-brow and outrageous style that Anglin developed to appeal to boys as young as ten years-old, whom he has stated to be his recruiting targets. The blog presents a stream of news-related opinion posts, authored by Anglin and anonymous writers using screen names. It is sustained by contributions, solicited on the site from “goyim” (non-Jews). The site’s dominant anti-Semitic focus echoes the white nationalist theory of White Genocide, portraying Jews as masterminds of a conspiracy to eliminate the white race.

The Right Stuff

Established in 2012 by Mike Peinovich, The Right Stuff (TRS) blog chiefly offers podcasts hosted by Peinovich and other white nationalists, many using pseudonyms. Like the Daily Stormer, the focus of the TRS tends target Jews as chief adversaries of the white race. Peinovich denies that the Holocaust occurred. His site includes over 700 archived podcasts called “The Daily Shoah,” a name that mocks the Holocaust through ironic reference to “The Daily Show,” a mainstream news-comedy broadcast. TRS is the original source of the (((echo))) meme, which brackets the names of Jews to identify their ethnicity. Another podcast series on the site, “Fash the Nation,” highlights the site’s openly fascist orientation. More current podcasts are behind a paywall, which is the financial basis of the site.

YouTube has for many years been a major platform for white nationalists. YouTube recommends videos via a site algorithm that reflects the achoices viewers make. Once a young person accesses a white nationalist video, the site will tend to offer other similar choices that can lead the viewer more deeply into white nationalist or similar extremist content. Recognizing this problem, in 2017 YouTube began taking steps to limit extremist content, initially by disabling comment features, and then, in 2019, by strengthening and more aggressively enforcing policies against extremist content. This has led to a significant reduction of white nationalist presence on YouTube. But video content is much more difficult to monitor than print, and white nationalist videos continue to be posted on YouTube.

White nationalist ideology is expounded in its most intellectualized form in online magazines, often edited by senior figures in the movement, some with academic credentials. The apparent authority projected by these sites can attract older teenagers and college students. Online magazines tend to resonate most strongly with the newer, more mainstream style of white nationalism, which avoids the flagrant behavior and speech of openly neo-Nazi groups, such as the National Socialist Movement, or of groups like the KKK.

These sites present white nationalist views unchallenged and in an apparently authoritative, often academic, style. Young people who frequently visit these sites may be more likely to feel that the lofty rhetoric in these magazines indicates that their factual claims are reliable.

There are many white nationalist webzines. The following three are among the most polished and widely recognized.

American Renaissance

“AmRen” may be the most prominent of online white nationalist magazines. Its editor, Jared Taylor, founded the magazine as a print publication in 1990, and a supporting organization that sustains it, the New Century Foundation, in 1994. After 2012, AmRen has been solely a digital publication. AmRen offers a daily stream of articles and commentaries, many focused on current news stories. The site also includes blog posts, podcasts, videos, and an online store that markets white nationalist books, many by Taylor. Calling itself, “the Internet’s premier race-realist site,” AmRen is an intellectual center for the elaboration of white nationalist ideology. Under the AmRen title, Taylor also hosts national conferences that feature major figures in the American white nationalist movement as speakers, as well as major figures from Europe, where Taylor has frequently lectured. A number of leading younger American white nationalists have gained stature in the movement because of their speaking roles at AmRen conferences: among them, Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes, and Patrick Casey. (Taylor himself is highly unusual among white nationalists in that he does not engage with the movement’s anti-Semitic elements, although he generally has tolerated them without protest. AmRen is not conspicuously anti-Semitic.)

Counter-Currents

Counter-Currents is the journal of Counter-Currents Publishing, established in 2010 by Greg Johnson, formerly editor of The Occidental Observer. Johnson’s editorial focus is international, with many European contributions. The journal’s vision is of a white American ethnostate that is distinctly “pluralistic,” in the sense that, unlike white nationalist movements in Europe, the US ethnostate will incorporate white people of different ethnicities. (The journal’s manifesto is available in six European languages.) Counter-Currents articles have tended to include many devoted to interpretations of European history and philosophy. More recently, however, the magazine has featured more articles written in a provocatively crass style, and its traffic and income have risen significantly. The online site includes free articles, but subscribers have access more content behind a paywall.

The Occidental Observer / The Occidental Quarterly

These two linked online publications are produced by The Charles Martel Society. Both are currently under the editorial control of Kevin MacDonald. The Occidental Quarterly is a subscription publication that imitates mainstream academic journals in presentation and is available in both digital (pdf) and print forms. The Occidental Observer is a free webzine, more likely to be visited by young people. MacDonald is an evolutionary psychologist. His career became devoted to studies of Jewish culture that support the conspiracy theory of Jews as masterminds of “White Genocide.” A high proportion of the items published in The Occidental Observer are in support of the anti-Semitic component of white nationalism.

In addition, white nationalists engage their audiences through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. These two companies have recently begun to enforce platform rules against advocacy of racial antagonism and separatism, and this has diminished white nationalist presence on those platforms. However, white nationalists have regrouped on alternative social media platforms, such as Telegram and Gab.

Kids become active on social media at very young ages, and the forms of social media are constantly changing. Families concerned about encounters with extremism through social media may want to alert young people about this issue by using the proactive approach outlined in Preventing Engagement.

Updated, October 2021

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