Neo-Nazi and noted Tucker Carlson superfan Andrew Anglin is having a real bad week. Apparently, the hatemongering game just ain't what it used to be, and he's had to lay off most of his staff at the Daily Stormer, because his fellow Nazis are just not coming through with the cash to support him anymore. Too bad, so sad.
As first highlighted by Ars Technica journalist Jon Brodkin on Twitter , Anglin published a massive tantrum today in which he screamed at his Daily Stormer readers — only 60 of whom even sent him any bitcoins last month. Said rant was accompanied by a watermarked stock photo of a man with a gun to his head.
Wonkette too is supported only by reader donations; we get that it can be hard sometimes! Except for the part where we are not Nazis, don't teach you about "the Jews," and hardly have any race war at all. Also we are not laying people off but are hiring them instead, like me. Having health care is fun, and I like it. Still, Rebecca said to remind you that she'll doubtless put up her own bitter rant soon, as she does every month. But no race war.
The thing that really hurt Anglin though is the notion that his readers just don't believe in his very important agenda of being a gross Nazi who screams about minorities all day. How are they ever going to get their race war together if these people won't send Andrew Anglin some money to write articles about white genocide?
It is impossible to communicate how depressing this is for me personally. I thought that we were promoting an agenda here that people believed in, but it seems that virtually all of you do not believe in this enough to send $5.
It certainly does not give me hope for the future. This is the only large site promoting this agenda, telling the truth about the Jews, and attempting to save white people. And we're now shrinking an already tiny staff because the overwhelming majority of the readership apparently doesn't give a shit.
Oh, the poor dear. He's depressed. Because no one will give him money to pay people to be bigots. What even is America? Anglin says he may even have to shut down the site's "Race War" vertical, in which crimes committed by people of color are highlighted, for the purpose of getting white people riled up enough to start said race war.
Anglin continued his pity party, laying it on real thick about all of the things he'd given up just to cry about white genocide, because he thought it meant something to his readers.
Honestly, if I didn't have personal reasons for doing this, I would just give up and go make a lot more money doing something else.
You all know what I've been through to run this site. And that is what it is. I am an adult and made these decisions and I'll deal with the consequences. But the lack of support certainly makes me question how much more I should give.
For the time being, I will keep the site running. But considering the lack of support, I can't promise that I'll do it indefinitely. I might prefer to write books, or do something else. I have to think about my own personal future, and seeing as how little this site means to the readers, it's hard to justify putting this much energy into it.
And they say deplatforming doesn't work!
In 2016, the Daily Stormer's traffic surged like never before — thanks to Anglin's endorsement of Donald Trump — propelling it into national notoriety and allowing Anglin to recruit an entire "Troll Army" with which to harass his enemies. Those who found Trump's racist rhetoric appealing quickly found themselves drawn to more overt expressions of white supremacist rhetoric. Prior to that, the only people who really even paid much attention to sites like that were actual Nazis and those of us who write about them.
SPLC
But, in 2017, the site was relegated to the dark web after Anglin and contributor Andrew "weev" Auernheimer cheered for the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville and every domain registrar on earth was like "Oh, no thank you." He has to take all of his money in Bitcoin, also — both because no regular payment system will have him and probably because he owes $14 million to Tanya Gersh , a Jewish woman he led a harassment campaign against after she led a protest at one of Richard Spencer's mother's properties in Whitefish, Montana.
In his rant, Anglin gave readers a variety of ways to send him those bitcoins, one of which involved finding a bitcoin ATM in their city. You'd have to be pretty desperate to fund some loser's sad crusade against Jewish people to bother doing that.
The harder it is to find this shit, the harder it is to make money off of it, the fewer people will be radicalized by it and the less influence it will have. Deplatforming is not a violation of freedom of speech — Anglin is still allowed to say whatever he wants, he just doesn't have anyone giving him a boost. That matters. People are inherently lazy and unless they are already really committed to this shit, they're not going to seek it out if it isn't handed to them on a platter. They also like to join clubs and feel like a part of something bigger than themselves — and that's one of the main ways people get radicalized. Now that the site can't really have comments and even their bulletin board doesn't work, that element is gone as well. It's no wonder no one cares enough about his "agenda" to give Andrew Anglin any of their hard-earned bitcoins.
There is little question that the Daily Stormer and sites like it helped Trump's candidacy — by riling his supporters up about shit like "white genocide" and George Soros. Even if all of his supporters were not overt white supremacists, having that base of meme-ing troll psychopaths not only energized his campaign, but made his rhetoric look mild in comparison. The deplatforming of major white supremacist hubs like the Daily Stormer could end up hurting him in 2020.
Now it is your OPEN THREAD.
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You win the musical theater dorkatude award. *clapclapclap*
Well, ain't that a damn shame?