Friday, December 23, 2005

Fox Carolina Hearts White Supremacists

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usWe were talking about this last night at Drinking Liberally (which, since you asked, again more than doubled its attendance). Fox Carolina reporter Tami Birckner last month reported on the online superstore of White Pride, Stormfront.org.

The piece was fluffy and puffy, it intimates that the Stormfront gang are just trying to have some free speech and preserve their natural heritage. It doesn't mention that the reporter is a regular participant at the site's forums or that Stormfront advocates white supremacy. In a very brief visit to one of the site's forums I found lots of fascinating conversation in this Foxy free speech zone, including this: "I do not believe anyone that is actually true to our cause can say they are "White Pride"! In the very beginning Yes you were, but in todays world you can not just be proud of being White. That pride is forced into hatred by the mudds. If you take 10 minutes and look at the war we are in trying to save our race, heritage and nation you will hate the enemy. They hate you for just saying you are proud of being White and will do everything in their power to shut you up and take you down."

Link to the clip is here (Quicktime)

Here's the transcript:
"Stormfront.org
Nov 18, 2005, 09:59 AM

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usIt’s a web site with everything from dating advice and homemaking threads, to discussion boards that focus on news that white activists want to know. Stormfront.org is a web site founded on the belief that the white race is a dying race.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usOne member says, “we really are just white folks that deeply care about preserving a future for our progeny.”

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usThere are more than 65,000 members, and since Stormfront started in 1995 there have been more than 2,000,000 posts. Members live in all parts of the world, with close to 3,000 in and around South Carolina.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usBob Whitaker is a former Reagan administration cabinet member and an active member of Stormfront. He believes diversity and equal rights are at the center of a conspiracy against the white race. Whitaker says, “I’m worried about the disappearance of the white race.” Whitaker says too much is being done to diversify America and not enough is being done to protect people like him. “I’m worried about 2 things. I’m worried about the disappearance of the white race and I’m worried about the fact that no one is allowed to talk about the disappearance of the white race, which is even worse.”

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usBut all Americans are provided equal protection under the law, which means equal treatment regardless of race, sex, religion or national origin.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usJamie Kelso is one of Stormfront’s senior moderators. He uses the screen name Charles A. Lindbergh, a well-known aviator who believed in the preservation of the white race. Kelso says, “I admire Charles Lindbergh as someone who throughout his life took pride in the white race and was very concerned about preserving it.”

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usEven though Stormfront was created by former Ku Klux Klansman Don Black, Kelso says their message isn’t one of hate. “We’re called anti-Semitic, we’re called neo-Nazi, we’re called racist [but] we’re none of that.” Instead, Stormfront members say their message is much more simple. “We don’t hate anybody. The only thing we’re concerned with is that 100 years from now, 500 years from now that there will actually be the kind of white neighborhoods and white nations that our parents and ancestors gave to us.”

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usKelso says Stormfront simply provides a safe forum for people to use without fear of retaliation. “Really the political correctness today, you could even call it vicious. On the Internet you can anonymously talk to other people and open up and say what you want to say. This has really opened up a new chance for people to have free speech."

We knew that Fox shills for the Bush administration and feeds the public heaping doses of fear-based infotainment, but now we know they support nazism, racism, and the preservation of the white race. And Mark Hyman...

You can contact the station here with any comments.

10 comments:

Huw Richardson said...

Not sure what the issue is. Bad reporting is MSM's very lifeblood. Biased reporting all the more so. I don't expect to be told that (name reporter here) is a democrat when s/he talks about the democrats.

The issue seems to be that someone who regularly says something you dislike got coverage you also dislike.

arratik said...

yeah, this has pretty much exploded throughout the blogosphere this morning. i even got a couple of e-mails from out-of-state friends asking "that's near you, isn't it?" and every time i say "yeah, that's the channel i watch family guy and the simpsons on..." i'm pretty sure that someone will be appearing on-screen on the ten o'clock news sometime soon and apologizing for the station's indiscretion while everyone keeps their fingers crossed behind their backs.

but wait a minute... does fox carolina run "the point"? i thought that they were a meredith station, not sinclair...

personally, i wouldn't have even dignified stormfront's existence with a link to their site. why bother giving them a statistic that they can bend in any direction they see fit and use for their own sinister purposes of recruiting? why have your ip address on their server logs? i know that there's no better way to know one's enemy than to see the propaganda that they're being fed first-hand, but there's a limit to what i'm willing to do.

Gordon Smith said...

Huw,

It's not like someone who was in favor of Social Security privatization got some good press, this is the White Supremacy movement being legitimized here.

It's interesting that while the administration and Fox News regularly tell us that the War on Terror is a War of Ideas and that the very thought that we might "lose" in Iraq is anathema, they'll advocate for really bad ideas like institutional racism. Terrorist groups and Stormfront are two sides of the same cultural neanderthalism.

Am I really sitting here having to defend this idea? It's obvious that having mainstream media sources legitimizing hate movements is a bad idea. Perhaps a 'fair and balanced' rebuttal to the story would have been in order, eh?

Gordon Smith said...

syntax,

I took your advice and delinked it.

Huw Richardson said...

If the station was reasonably in tune with the idea of equal time, I'd imagine a second story also covering the bad parts. If the network was what their ad copy says - I'd imagine a rebuttal to both stories from opposing sides.

There are no dangerous ideas - only people who make dangerous use of them. I see nothing wrong with a reporter who has unpopular political views finding a way to weave those views into a story: it happens all the time with theoretically popular ideas any way. Of course I don't believe in "objective reporting". I'd rather have all the biases right out there in honesty.

(I was also surprised at the link - but it provided your comments with some context and let me see for myself the thing you were reporting - and we here do link to other political sites.)

Jim Jenkins said...

"You always want to paint your opponents in the worst possible light," Kelso said of antiracist activists and other Stormfront detractors. "That becomes hard to do when an organization reaches large numbers. It's not plausible to say hundreds of thousands of people are nuts. We're striving to be seen as our own kind of mainstream, and that we're not kooky."

Kelso & Dukes have been working for years to put a happy face on racist extremism. The "issue" is FOX giving them a forum to do so. They've put a great deal of time and energy into changing the image of white supremacists from stupid hicks in white robes and pickup trucks to that of rational solid Americans who just want preserve their heritage.

What they are really advocating is ethnic cleansing. Giving them a positive television commercial and labeling it as news has nothing to do with "biased reporting" or with Democrats vs. Republicans and I would hope that most people don't see it as a he said / she said issue.

Gordon Smith said...

Huw?

"I see nothing wrong with a reporter who has unpopular political views finding a way to weave those views into a story"

They did a commercial for Nazism. You don't find this to be a problem?

I think you're simply stating that speech is free, but please clarify whether you believe that a news program ought to advocate for racism and hatred.

Huw Richardson said...

Screwy - I guess what we understand as a news program oughtn't to advocate for anything. But they do - all the time. And often times commercials are disguised as news. Covert agendas are a major problem.

Following the eugenicist theories of Margaret Sanger, millions of children are murdered every year but no one in the media seems to care. Most media paint the opponents of Sangerites as "stupid hicks in white robes and pickup trucks". But that's because "choice" is a policy against which no one wants to see favourable objections broadcast.

I see non-stopping favourable coverage of this real-life application of these theories as a bigger problem than the rare favourable coverage of ideologies that are limited to a few people.

But I'd rather see a media that left all their real biases out in the open - the public could make choices that way. Logical choice of media consumption can not be made among outlets that pretend to be impartial and "objective".

But, more importantly, speech can not be free unless all speech is free.

arratik said...

and, conversely, free speech isn't free if everyone is forced to listen. i mean, it's not like the ghost of josef mengele is holding the viewers at syringe-point and forcing them to watch a bunch of ignorant, hate-filled crackers spout off a load of extremist garbage.

off buttons are beautiful.

Huw Richardson said...

Didn't know anyone was forced to listen. Off buttons are beautiful.