As Donald Trump maintains a resounding lead among likely Republican voters nearly a year before the presidential election, the real estate mogul’s message is resonating strongly among a much more niche group of Americans: white nationalists.
Stormfront, an online message board established 20 years ago by former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist Don Black, is upgrading its web servers in order to handle a surge in traffic attributed to the GOP front-runner’s campaign, Politico reported Thursday.
Specifically, Mr. Black said the businessman’s rhetoric — particularly his comments about Muslims — have made his site more popular than ever.
“Demoralization has been the biggest enemy and Trump is changing all that,” Mr. Black told Politico. “He’s certainly creating a movement that will continue independently of him even if he does fold at some point.”
Mr. Black said that Stormfront has been experiencing 30 to 40 percent more traffic than usual each time Mr. Trump had made the news as of late after making remarks concerning Muslims, and that surge has forced him to shop around for new servers to keep his website afloat.
As of Thursday morning, 25 of the 30 most recent discussions on Stormfront’s “Politics & Continuing Crises” forum revolved around Mr. Trump, including a 17-page thread revolving around the candidate’s plan to establish a moratorium keeping Muslims from coming to the United States.
“As long as he’s causing chaos and havoc with the citizens, he’s fine with me,” former KKK leader and White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger told Politico. “I love it.”
Others vying for the Republican nomination have blasted Mr. Trump in recent weeks for his anti-Muslim remarks, and a petition in the U.K. seeking to ban him from traveling there has garnered more than 370,000 signatures and will soon be debated by Parliament.
Mr. Black, coincidentally, has been banned from the U.K. since 2009 for “promoting serious criminal activity and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.