SWASTIKAS IN CYBERSPACE¹: Ultra-Right White supremacy and antisemitism online

A variety of scholars have documented the rise of the United States Right in terms of media and technological innovation. In May 1974, George Dietz joined the John Birch Society and opened an American Opinion Bookstore, which featured John Birch Society material, in Reedy, West Virginia. In May 1995, Don Black set up the neonazi Stormfront site, the first major website by a national race hate organization. White supremacists like Don Black and his Internet associates carried forward George Dietz’s introduction of swastikas in cyberspace. Cultural historians of the Internet know that William Gibson’s novel, Neuromancer, introduced “cyberspace” in 1984 in terms of a “consensual hallucination.” The efforts to translate print media into digital documents, to circumvent national prohibitions on antisemitic materials, and to inspire Right-wing revolutionaries made the Internet-and beyond-an unsafe, unfree place to be without “White skins.”.