Anonymous Denies Taking Down White Supremacist Site Daily Stormer

The Daily Stormer‘s front page has rebranded. From being “America’s #1 Most-Trusted Republican News Source,” as of today it’s suddenly “The World’s Most Genocidal Republican Website.”

Named after the Nazi Der Stürmer, a Third Reich tabloid published by the Nazi regime until the end of World War II, the Daily Stormer recently ran a story on the victim of the Charlottesville domestic terror attack, calling Heather Heyer “fat and a drain on society.”

That prompted host GoDaddy.com to discontinue hosting the site once the story went viral. Already, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate tracking group, had asked GoDaddy to take down the site.

Here's what the nation's leading white supremacist website has to say about women, specifically the woman killed in Charlottesville. pic.twitter.com/wezCRvLW02

— Mary Emily O'Hara (@MaryEmilyOHara) August 13, 2017

That was hardly the last twist in the tale, however. As of Monday morning, the Daily Stormer had rebranded, ostensibly after being taken over by the hacker collective Anonymous.

But Anonymous’s 1.7 million follower-strong Twitter account denied that it had done so and said it was actually a stunt pulled by the site’s founder, Andrew Anglin, in something akin to a false-flag.

If our time line on Daily Stormer stunt is TLDR, @Independent sums it up. https://t.co/FGdFdapvZ0

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 14, 2017

Anglin is a Trump supporter and avowed white nationalist, publishing memes on a range of anti-Semitic, homophobic, and Islamophobic topics. In addition to smearing Heather Heyer, the site also ran pro-separatist coverage of the Ukraine civil war, backing the Russian-speaking eastern rebels who are supported by Moscow. Additionally, the site covered Syria’s Bashar al-Assad favorably. Assad stands accused of the majority of deaths in Syria’s civil war as well as the use of chemical weapons on unarmed civilians.

Anglin has made it no secret what his site’s goals were. After a Washington Post article wrote how the Alt-Right’s penchant for offensive speech was merely used as provocation, Anglin rebuked that idea, writing “The goal is to ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated.”

Anglin’s site hadn’t made it into mainstream Alt-Right circles before today’s takedown. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he was especially bothered when he was overlooked by Milo Yiannopoulos’s article in the Post.

Despite this, according to Alexa.com, a web traffic tracking service, the Daily Stormer often enjoyed more exposure than other Alt-Right sites like that of Richard Spencer, one of the more recognizable faces of the new white nationalism. It was a point of pride for Anglin.

Now it appears Anglin is hoping for one last moment in the sun by hacking his own site.

[Featured Image by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images]