Wade Michael Page used Stormfront.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: An online forum called Stormfront has been discovered in the wake of the Kansas City shootings last week, which claimed the lives of three people at two separate Jewish community centers. The forum has acted as a festering ground for white supremacists to discuss their mutual interests and perhaps even encourage these violent acts.
In fact, one man who used to be quite active on the forum was Wade Michael Page, the white supremacist who injured four people and killed seven, including himself, outside of a Sikh gurudwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin back in 2012.
The Daily Beast reports that Page was an active participant on the online website in the months leading up to his tragic attack in Wisconsin. In fact, users of the website have been responsible for over 100 deaths in the last five years, since President Barack Obama was inaugurated into his first term in January 2009. Although Frazier Glenn Miller, the perpetrator of the Kansas City shootings, was banned by the site years ago, Page was a user in some capacity even when he finally claimed his own life after taking six others.
In the aftermath of the Wisconsin tragedy, more about Page’s life has surfaced. He was born in Colorado in 1971, and served a stint in the US Army from 1992-1998, at which point he was discharged. He returned to Colorado, and lived there from 2000-2010. It was during this time that his white supremacy really grew, as Page became entranced by certain bands that preached anti-minority rhetoric and Page found himself posting to online forums, such as Stormfront.
According to those who knew him at the time, Page was quiet and a loner, but would talk about impending racial wars and the need to wipe out minorities. Unfortunately, no one ever took these seriously, even in spite of the fact that Page had arrests and citations for drunk driving and other, relatively minor legal offenses that showed he was not above breaking the law.
A study, conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), analyzed the posts on Stormfront and other white supremacists online boards, to determine a profile for who these type of men really are. According to that report, “the typical visitor attracted to Stormfront is a frustrated, unemployed, white adult male living with his mother or an estranged spouse or girlfriend. She is the sole provider in the household.”
In a press release, Heidi Beirich, the author of the SPLC study said simply “Stormfront is the murder capital of the racist Internet. It has been a magnet for the deadly and deranged.”
In a statement on his website, Stormfront owner Don Black tried to parlay any guilt aimed at him and the forum, saying “We’re obviously a big website, and any site is likely to have a few unstable people pass through. Facebook, Twitter, and particularly Craigslist have had their share.”
But according to The Daily Beast, “Stormfront saw one of its most significant spikes in 2012 after the Sikh temple shooting. Apparently profiteering from the publicity surrounding the violence, donations to Stormfront jumped from $6,545 in August 2012, the month during which the shooting took place, to $10,032 that October. And that’s not even counting the money that Black makes from clicks on the site’s banner ads.”
So not only are Stormfront and similar sites allowing these kind of people a place to discuss and perhaps even plan these attacks, but it profits off of such interactions. The study hopes to encourage the US government and law enforcement agencies to pay more attention to these “hate sites,” tracking posts and the behavior of its users in order to nip a possible attack in the bud and prevent further killings.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com