How the online white nationalist movement trolls the media with fake statements of support
The online white nationalist movement has witnessed years of success in trolling and receiving media attention, by pretending to support people and brands.
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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: the author of this post condemns racism in all its forms, and additionally strongly advises readers to not visit the alt right sites mentioned because this will generate traffic to said sites.
In late 2017, a writers guide from a online Neo Nazi site, the Daily Stormer, was leaked. Written by Neo Nazi Andrew Anglin, the guide details the sites policies on writing articles, such as specifics on how articles are to be structured and how racist ideology should be presented. The final pages of the guide detail the sites various tactics for trolling campaigns. The final two trolling strategies can be proven to have been highly successful.
To summarise the sections content, the guide instructs the reader to either claim a celebrity is racist, or to praise a company or person, with the objective being to garner media attention.
This article will now present the numerous times when these tactics have been effectively used by the Daily Stormer and white nationalist movement, to further inform the discourse on online extremism and provide lessons for the future.
Taylor Swift
As mentioned in the writers guide, a popular target for alt right trolls is celebrity singer Taylor Swift.
Beginning in 2014, the Daily Stormer began to write articles pretending to worship Taylor Swift, calling her an ‘Aryan goddess’.
One article included images of Swift with faked anti Semitic quotes:
Coincidentally to this, in 2015 the feminist writer Camille Paglia wrote a critique of Swift and called her an “obnoxious Nazi Barbie”. Andrew Anglin wrote an article noting the irony of her being called this and the website’s coverage of Swift:
Then, in May of 2016, numerous media outlets wrote about the alleged Neo Nazi fandom of Taylor Swift.
When contacted by Vice news, Anglin continued to feign worship for Swift:
Some sites even believed that the Neo Nazis were genuine and attempted to argue against their “beliefs”.
The interest and concern over Swift’s alleged Nazi fans grew in 2017, with a Daily Beast writer calling on her to disavow the Nazis:
In late 2017, Swift was embroiled in a controversy when she attempted to sue a PopFront a writer who criticised her over her alleged Nazi fans:
This controversy further brought coverage of the alleged Nazi fans and calls for Swift to condemn them:
In December of 2017, the Daily Stormer writers guide was leaked and reported on by the Huffington post, including the section on praising celebrities and Taylor Swift.
In October of 2018 after Swift had endorsed voting for left wing politicians, Anglin wrote a negative article about Swift and admitted further to the trolling campaign:
Note on Taylor Swift campaign: notorious white nationalist David Duke also had a role in this campaign, however it is harder to trace due to his online accounts being censored. This screenshot of an article on his website in which he to talks to Anglin on the subject of Swift can be provided however:
Felix Kjellberg (Pewdiepie)
Felix Kjellberg is the most subscribed to Youtube personality, and also a popular target for alt right trolling campaigns.
In the years 2016 and 2017, Kjellberg controversially made videos containing shock humour referencing anti semitism and the Nazis.
At the same time, the Daily Stormer also employed its strategy of pretending to praise and claiming Kjellberg was a Nazi.
The site temporarily changed its banner to claim it was the #1 PewDiePie fansite, and wrote numerous “positive” articles about Kjellberg.
Richard Spencer also participated:
In February of 2017, a Wall Street Journal article was published accusing Kjellberg of creating anti semitic posts. The article generated a large amount of interest in the controversy, and it also mentioned the praise by the Daily Stormer.
Following this, the Daily Stormer changed its banner to the #1 Wall Street Journal fansite, with images of the three journalists who reported the story.
Other than the Wall Street Journal, numerous other news companies similarly included the Daily Stormer in their coverage of the Pewdiepie scandal, such as Vox, New York Times, and the Guardian.
Coverage often suggested that the Daily Stormer was completely genuine in its “support” for Kjellberg.
A guardian opinion piece even included a literal link to a Daily Stormer article.
In a Daily Stormer article posted on the February 20th 2017, Andrew Anglin wrote:
Following this incident, the Daily Stormer has continued to write articles about Kjellberg, albeit with less media coverage. In 2018 they published numerous articles with barely any content describing Kjellberg as being the #1 of various subjects:
They additionally wrote an article claiming Kjellberg had led a white nationalist march in Estonia.
Additional nuance to the Pewdiepie campaign
It is possible to an extent that the Daily Stormer did genuinely like the shock humour to do with anti semitism on Kjellberg’s YouTube. The writers guide has a section covering trying to hijack mainstream culture, and shares its views on humour and attaching entertainment to Nazi ideas:
Additionally, within its Pewdiepie coverage, the Daily Stormer did occasionally suggest that Kjellberg was helping them with his humour:
Overall, the aforementioned ridiculous claims of Kjellberg being a literal Neo Nazi leader or leading a white nationalist march suggest that the Pewdiepie coverage is an instance of the tactic of praising celebrities to get media attention. However, the possibility that they believed his offensive humour to be helpful to them should be considered.
(Note: just because the Daily Stormer may believe the humour enables them to spread their ideology, this does not necessarily make them correct about the effect of said humour.)
(Additional notes: the Twitter accounts of David Duke has been deleted, however he also praised Kjellberg on Twitter in a similar fashion to the Daily Stormer. Lastly, there was an incident in late 2019 Kjellberg stated he wanted to donate money to the Jewish civil rights group ADL, however was pressured online to rescind his donation. It is also highly probable that the Daily Stormer and white nationalists were involved in this online pressure, but this is harder to trace and substantiate.)
Chet Hanks and his ‘white boy summer’ trend
Chet Hanks is a rapper and the son of Tom Hanks. In 2021 Hanks made an Instagram trend called ‘White Boy Summer’ to promote his new clothing line of the same name. The trend included various fashion rules and changes to behaviour.
The online white Nationalist movement also sought to co-opt this trend. The Daily Stormer has written two articles on the trend, including one claiming it is a Nazi dog whistle and that Hanks beats black women:
(This article contains a more comprehensive study of the white nationalist hijacking of white boy summer).
Papa John’s Pizza
In late 2017, the owner of Papa Johns Pizza, John Schnatter, was embroiled in a controversy when he claimed pizza sales had declined due to the NFL protests (Papa Johns Pizza sponsored the NFL).
In response to the controversy, the Daily Stormer decided to endorse the company, calling its pizza the official pizza of the Aryan Master Race.
Following this mock endorsement, it was reported in several news outlets and the company issued a condemnation of the Nazis.
New Balance shoe company
After the New Balance company endorsed Donald Trump in the 2016 US election, the Daily Stormer then released an article endorsing New Balance shoes:
This instance also succeeded in getting media attention:
Wendy’s restaurant
After the official Twitter account tweeted out an image of Pepe the frog (an online meme co-opted by the alt right), the Daily Stormer then endorsed Wendy’s as the official fast food chain of the alt right:
Steven Crowder
Steven Crowder is a right wing political commentator. In 2016 the online white nationalist movement created a campaign to smear him as alt right. The Daily Stormer made two articles, one falsely claiming he had taken leadership and called for genocide, and another asking if Crowder had gone too far in his anti semitism. Both articles included faked tweets and quotes of Crowder.
(Note: I wanted to credit the site rational wiki for their Crowder article covering and providing information for this incident. The rational wiki article also has links to tweets by David Duke and others in the alt right pretending to support Crowder, however many of these original posts are now deleted).
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar
After Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was criticised for allegedly referencing anti Semitic tropes in regards to Israel, David Duke came out in support of her on his website and on his Twitter account.
This was then reported in media, including by Conservative media opposed to Omar:
Tulsi Gabbard
In 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard was endorsed by David Duke on his Twitter account. This succeeded in getting media attention and a direct response from Gabbard:
Gabbard was also directly questioned about this on the popular American talk show, the View.
Final commentary
The various successes of this strategy expose clear mistakes by the media and commentators in understanding and handling the alt right. Many seem to have made the mistake of believing the “praise” by the white nationalists was actually genuine, when a more closer reading would have revealed faked quotes and clear hyperbolic statements that implied it was a joke. This case justifies having a healthy sense of skepticism about media commentary, and the virtue of evaluating sources independently.
As the age of the internet continues, this case of misunderstanding a trolling strategy should serve as a warning about the dangers of underestimating bad actors online and the credulity. Despite their extremist ideology, the Nazi trolls on the Daily Stormer still had the guile to repeatedly deceive the media and spread awareness of their site. In the future, the question of reporting on these sites should have to satisfy a higher standard of justification than as reporting on an interesting story, and consideration should be given to whether certain statements or actions by these groups have another agenda (such as media attention).
Looking forward to more articles...