How does a leading neo-Nazi website that has railed against Hispanic immigrants expand its audience beyond a loyal base of U.S. white supremacists? By publishing a Spanish-language edition, of course.
The Daily Stormer — infamous for orchestrating internet harassment campaigns by its « Troll Army » of readers — recently launched El Daily Stormer as a « news portal » tailoring its racist, anti-Semitic content for readers in Spain and Latin America.
Andrew Auernheimer, a notorious computer hacker and internet troll who writes for the English-language site, says the Spanish edition fits their mission to spread Hitlerism across the world.
« We want our message to reach millions more people, » he said in a telephone interview.
Hate sites have realized that the U.S. has no monopoly on white nationalists and other far-right extremists, says Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. Others, such as Stormfront, already created multilingual forums.
« The white supremacist movement has really viewed itself as past borders, reaching out to white people in other countries, » Beirich said.
The law center represents a Montana real estate agent who sued The Daily Stormer’s founder, Andrew Anglin, last month for unleashing an anti-Semitic « campaign of terror » against her family.
Anonymous trolls bombarded Tanya Gersh’s family with hateful and threatening messages after Anglin published the family’s personal information in a December post that accused Gersh and other Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, of engaging in an « extortion racket » against the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer.
Anglin’s site takes its name from Der Stürmer, a newspaper that published Nazi propaganda. It includes sections called « Jewish Problem » and « Race War. »
El Daily Stormer titles its anti-Semitic section « Judiadas, » an offensive term with roots in medieval Spain, where it was invoked to justify genocidal attacks on Jews.
The Spanish site also includes appeals for donations and unpaid articles, and a forum where people complain about Chile and Argentina filling up with « negros, » referring to people from Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay.
Auernheimer, known online as « weev, » said a team of volunteers is writing original content for the Spanish-language site. The site’s appeal for unpaid collaborators says being a dissident « has never been a lucrative activity, » and that it is looking for writers « willing to risk everything for the survival of our race. »
« We have a big Spanish-speaking population on our forums, so it was an easy direction to branch out into, » he said.
About 40 percent of The Daily Stormer’s 3.2 million unique monthly visitors are in the U.S.; the Spanish edition has added fewer than 10,000 since its recent launch, Auernheimer said.
Surpassing Stormfront as the top U.S. hate site hasn’t been a financial boon for The Daily Stormer, which calls itself « 100 percent reader-supported. » Anglin complained in January that a Ukrainian advertising company had banned them, leaving an Australian electrician as the site’s only advertiser.
« We don’t have revenue commensurate with a publication of our size, » Auernheimer said.