GoDaddy said it’s giving the boot to Radical Agenda, a website run by Christopher Cantwell, the “crying Nazi” who gained notoriety last year as a result of his participation in the violent “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Radical Agenda was asked to move its domain to a different registrar after GoDaddy’s digital crimes team determined that the site was in violation of its rules against promoting and encouraging violence, Newsweek first reported Thursday.
“GoDaddy does not condone content that advocates expressions of hate, racism or bigotry,” the web hosting company said in a statement. “However, we generally do not take action on complaints that would constitution censorship of content and that represents the exercise of freedom of speech and expression on the internet. While we detest the sentiment of such sites, we support a free and open internet and, similar to the principals of free speech, that sometimes means allowing such tasteless, ignorant content.
“In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging or otherwise engaging in violence against any person, we will take action,” the statement said. “After reviewing the RadicalAgenda.com website, GoDaddy determined that content on the site clearly crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence.”
Mr. Cantwell told The Washington Times that he removed the offending content and has transferred the site to a domain registrar other than GoDaddy.
“I believe they acted in error because of media hysteria,” Mr. Cantwell said. “More broadly, domain level censorship is a serious problem that leftists would be wise to become concerned about. Eventually, we’ll be the ones in power.”
The Radical Agenda site was launched in 2015 by Mr. Cantwell, 37, and mostly contains episodes of his thrice-weekly podcast of the same name. Newsweek reported earlier this week on an anti-Semitic rant aired during a recent Radical Agenda broadcast, and GoDaddy said it would sever ties with the site when reached for comment.
“Someone has to step in,” Radical Agenda guest Andrew Auernheimer said during the episode in question, Newsweek reported. “If you don’t let us dissent peacefully, then our only option is to murder you. To kill your children. To kill your whole families. There is only one thing absent free speech that we can do to express our dissent and that’s to slaughter you like dogs, and you’re gonna have it coming and your children will deserve to die.”
Mr. Cantwell told The Times that his guest’s comments appeared on a program “that is marketed as fiction.”
“All I said was that there will be only one option left if they take away our right to peaceably dissent and assemble on the internet,” Mr. Auernheimer told The Times. “I did not tell anyone to commit an act of violence. These people are consistently liars and criminals. They deserve what’s coming.”
Mr. Auernheimer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Public internet records for Radical Agenda indicate Mr. Cantwell updated its domain registration Friday, but the identity of his new registrar couldn’t immediately be ascertained.
Mr. Cantwell, who participated in the infamous far-right Charlottesville rally in August, was profiled thoroughly in a widely-watched video report published by Vice News afterwards. He earned the “crying Nazi” nickname a few days after he uploaded a video to the internet that showed him sobbing in response to learning he was the subject of a related arrest warrant. He was ultimately charged with two felonies and is currently under house arrest.
“I am not a Nazi,” the self-described white nationalist told The Times on Friday. “I believe it is necessary for the genetic integrity of my race for us to have a homeland, with an explicitly racial immigration policy, where we do not share a system of government with other ethnic groups who have interests diametrically opposed to ours.”
Three people ultimately died in connection with Unite the Right, including two state troopers and a counterprotester, Heather Heyer, according to police.
GoDaddy similarly cut ties with The Daily Stormer, a website associated with Mr. Auernheimer, after its publisher penned a crude article mocking Heyer hours following her death. The Daily Stormer subsequently cycled through more than a dozen different domains as the result of a monthslong round of web address whack-a-mole before winding up on dailystormer.red in late November.
A similar registrar spat, meanwhile, briefly disrupted access last year to Stormfront, the internet’s longest-running white nationalist website.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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