As far-right sites multiply, activists are moving into their turf. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups gather for the Unite the Right rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House on Aug. 12, 2018. “Dollars” is modest when asked what impact his forum has had on visitors from 4chan or 8chan. “I think that a solid 15% might learn something, think twice.” He gets a little more bullish: “Maybe as high as 30%.” Dollars, who asked to remain anonymous for his own safety, is a veteran of some of the most contentious sites on the internet. For more than 15 years, 4chan and its offspring have become renowned, and eventually infamous, for occupying prime internet real estate. The image boards offer all manner of community for millions of young men (and a few women) around the world. From porn to politics, anime to the occult, the image boards allow users to chat with each other and swap images, all anonymously. 4chan and the other “chans” are interwoven with the chaotic history of the internet. They are where the activist group Anonymous first began. They churned out cat memes and child pornography alike. 4chan was the birthplace of the QAnon conspiracy movement, while 8chan has been instrumental in growing the sprawling cult. They both helped foster the incel (“involuntary celibate”) movement. As 8chan became the hot spot for mass shooters and domestic terrorists to upload their manifestos and crimes, there were calls to have the site knocked offline—by whom, exactly, it wasn’t clear, but it folded quickly into a debate about repealing the U.S. internet law Section 230. And there were free speech defenses by those who may find the language on the chans abhorrent, but who think it should be protected. That tug-of-war continues. But it was the online denizens pressuring internet service providers to cut off 8chan who ultimately proved most effective. For a time. The playbook has now been repeated for a raft of troublesome online websites: the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, Twitter clones Parler and Gab, and a constellation of QAnon fan pages.
via foreignpolicy: ‘Bunkerchan’ Is Trying to Deradicalize Online Nazis