Throughout this weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, the Daily Stormer website — a haven for those who embrace Nazi/white supremacist beliefs — celebrated by publishing the above photo of their idol, Richard Spencer (who was maybe arrested, but probably not, on Saturday). And although plenty of rally attendees have faced public shaming for their tiki-torch participation, the Daily Stormer celebrated their unique visitors, which were elevated as one would expect. The site even boasted about how President Trump did not condemn them in his now-infamous “many sides” speech, but their good times may have hit a logistical stumbling block.
GoDaddy, which has received plenty of criticism over the past several months for hosting the Daily Stormer, has now taken action: “We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service.”
https://twitter.com/GoDaddy/status/896935462622957573
The offending material surfaced when the Daily Stormer published a story about Heather Hayer, the 32-year-old woman who was allegedly murdered by James Fields Jr. (who has since been charged with second-degree murder) when he drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters. As detailed by The Washington Post, Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin disparaged Hayer:
In the Daily Stormer post, Angelin characterized Heyer as dying in a “road rage incident.” He said she was a “drain on society” and disparaged her appearance. “Most people are glad she is dead,” he wrote.
In response to this post, Twitter user Amy Siskand asked GoDaddy to take action after Daily Stormer fans began to threaten her with violence as well.
.@GoDaddy I request you remove The Daily Stormer right away for violating your policy on threatening violence, which is happening now to me.
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) August 14, 2017
And in an odd twist — following GoDaddy’s decision — the Daily Stormer appears to have been hacked by Anonymous (as this screencap suggests). However, this may all be a publicity stunt by those who run the site.
The question now remains … will any domain provider step up to host the site? And will Jason Kessler and his band of merry white supremacists rally in Boston next weekend as suggested? We should find out soon.
UPDATE #1 – 2:00pm EST: Reuters reports that the Daily Stormer has moved its domain registration to Google, which has yet to publicly comment on what may have been an automatic acceptance in the registration process.
UPDATE #2 – 3:00pm EST: The BBC reports that Google has also dropped Daily Stormer … about an hour after they signed up.
(Via GoDaddy & Washington Post)