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If the alt-right had drafted a figurehead to represent them in Silicon Valley, they could not have done much better than James Damore. The former Google engineer is calm, reasoned, and credentialed. He has a pedigree of dropping out of Harvard (despite falsely claiming a PhD). He quotes left-wing icon Noam Chomsky. He cites real scientific journals and is unabashedly socially awkward, even placing himself somewhere on the autism spectrum. Damore knows Silicon Valleys language.

The engineer, who was fired on Aug. 7 by the search giant, denies any connection to the so-called alt-right movement, but Damore has quickly become its mascot in deeply liberal Silicon Valley. Whether he realizes it, his actions are following a path that has catapulted far-right views to mainstream prominence, and left liberal defenders bewildered and appearing hapless.

Damores rise came after internally publishing a 10-page manifesto, titled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber. The leaked presentation went viral, and ignited a national firestorm. In it, Damore cites studies to make the claim that the gender gap in tech is partially caused by innate biological differences between men and women, and accuses Google of favoring women and minorities through hiring practices.

His solution? Damore called on the company to stop what he called illegal discrimination to increase the ranks of women in technology that puts progressive ideals above others. Stop alienating conservatives, he writes (pdf), and promote viewpoint diversity at Google, arguably the most important type of diversity. On Aug. 7, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and his executive team opted to fire Damore for advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace while acknowledging much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.

Damore comes off as a thoughtful, unconventional provocateur. His language is carefully crafted to establish a rational basis for his reviews. As a clean-cut, approachable, and seemingly reasonable figure (we all have biases which are invisible to us and I value diversity and inclusion), he appeals to those who might dismiss other far-right figures.

That, of course, is the point. Intentionally or not, Damore is following a strategy set by figures on the alt-right by presenting versions of its underlying beliefs in more acceptable packaging. By reintroducing core beliefs underlying the alt-right, theyre finding receptive ears in Silicon Valley. Mother Jones magazine reports the movement has a growing number adherents in the Valley (no one knows how many), and online forums like 4chan and Reddits r/The_Donald have catapulted hate speech from obscure Neo-nazi sites to the wider internet. Alt-right leaders are even claiming Silicon Valleys demographic as their own. The average alt-right-ist is probably a 28-year-old tech-savvy guy working in IT, white nationalist Richard Spencer who coined the term alt-right told Mother Jones shortly before the election. I have seen so many people like that.

If the alt-right expands its presence in Silicon Valley, Damore is likely to offer the formula to do so by claiming the mantle of free speech and reason, two cherished values in Silicon Valley. Despite the controversy, Damores essay was a well-structured essay, sourced and interspersed with charts, the work of the graduate student Damore had once been. My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the companys ideological echo chamber, he later wrote in an op-ed for the WSJ (paywall). My firing neatly confirms that point.

Silicon Valleys tech leadership is catastrophically ill prepared to enter this debate. Googles unfamiliarity with how the alt-right operates means it blundered into a PR nightmare with little understanding about the implications of firing Damore, despite what lawyers say is its legal right to do. Conventions are already starting to break down. An all-hands meeting Google scheduled for the search giants 60,000 employees was canceled on Aug. 10 after questions were leaked and Googlers were doxxed, or personally identified on social media. As a political firestorm gathers in the US, Silicon Valley is confronting a world in which the alt-right sits atop the Republican Party, US President Donald Trumps White House and, increasingly, a segment of the tech community eager to spread its views far behind its current base.

Scholars of right-wing movements say Damore, whether intended or not, has positioned himself as the new, milder messenger for an older set of beliefs animating right-wing extremists. By using his newfound publicity to reinforce notions that innate biological traits help explain social inequality, and downplaying the role of discrimination, hes promoting a version of alt-right lite.

Thats a well-worn playbook, says Nicole Hemmer, a professor at the University of Virginia focused on the history of conservatism. Its part of the process of bringing fringe ideas into the mainstream and finding a language that people find suitable, she said in an interview describing right-wing groupss strategy of adopting mainstream spokespeople and ideas to advance incremental forms of their arguments. Its not unique. Hes just mainstreaming it with less virulent language.

Damore has not expressed any formal connection or sympathy with the movement, yet his actions after his firing betray more than a passing familiarity with the alt-rights lexicon and figures, says Hemmer. After his dismissal, Damore began arguing his case in public almost immediately. He set up a new Twitter profile with an alt-right friendly handle Fired4Truth and posted a fundraiser on WeSearchr, a site by prominent alt-rightist and Trump booster Chuck Johnson (hes raised about $49,000 so far for financial and potentially legal assistance). He also granted a series of interviews to figures such as Stefan Molyneux, a fringe figure on Youtube who promotes mens rights, part of the constellation of far-right ideologies, before hitting mainstream outlets such as Bloomberg. Since then, he has continued promoting his arguments, most recently on Reddit.

Damore has also given shifting reasons for his apparent affinity for the alt-right. Initially, he pleaded ignorance about many of peoples past and political positionsthats a weakness of mine as Ive been thrust into this, despite having listed several media figures well-known among alt-right followers, as well as a desire to interview with Dave Rubin, a YouTube host known for featuring alt-right celebrities. Damore defended this choice saying he wasnt mentally prepared to argue my points to hostile media (I dont have experience talking to the press). But Damore also made a puzzling claim about his decision to align himself with one of the most controversial alt-right figures: Mike Cernovich, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and blogger famous for promoting the Pizzagate scandal. Damore told his followers on Reddit that we decided to have Mike Cernovich tweet my image because he has 300K followers, without mentioning Cernovichs alt-right allegiances or the identity of the we to in his statement. Damore has not responded to multiple emails and other requests for a response.

Googles decision to fire Damore has given his backers a weapon to accuse the search giant of suppressing speech, and position their own ideas as an antidote to the Valleys idealogical echo chamber. The propaganda value of it is so overwhelming for the alt-right, said Lawrence Rosenthal, director of right wing Studies at UC Berkeley. He called the move by Google tactically a really big mistake that fit into a clear pattern by far-right groups to claims free speech after provoking responses that inject their views into mainstream conversation. The pattern has been whats been going on in universities, he said, as college Republican groups admitted to inviting alt-right figures explicitly to provoke violent protests and claim free speech arguments, the National Review reports. It so easily gives itself to [the idea] that they are opposing free speech.

And that seems to be the genius here. Google made the best decision for its corporate culture, but made a terrible decision for the US more broadly by providing a rallying point for the alt-right.

But even if Damore has no connection with the alt-right, or its most prominent figures, it may matter little in the end: Virtually overnight, Damore has become a credible voice and an appealing martyr for alt-right beliefs, lending credibility to their arguments even if he views are the far-less extreme.

In this, Damore is tracing the footsteps of Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos, if not quite walking in them. Both have managed to divorce their extremist views from their roots in groups like the KKK or neo-Nazi ideology. Yiannopoulos, a former writer for Breitbart, presents himself as a gay, articulate, well-manicured truth-teller for the alt-right who dismisses his critics on free speech grounds with campus appearances eliciting massive, sometimes violent protests. Yiannopoulos has said behind every racist joke is a scientific fact and his seminal alt-right manifesto amounts to an outright apologia for racist white separatism, reports the conservative National Review.

Spencer, too, has cleaned up his act (despite his stated goal of establishing a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans; .[with] peaceful ethnic cleansing), wearing dapper suits, disavowing violence, and casting himself as a dissident intellectual with credentials in philosophy and the humanities from the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago.

But the overarching mission of the alt-right inevitably returns to its roots: making the case for the superiority of the white race. Damore, based on all his public statements, is not a white supremacist. He says he believes in the benefits of diversity and targets what he calls the unfair treatment of white men in politically correct culture. Yet he is firmly placing himself within a constellation of alt-right groups in which he is merely among the most moderate, reasonable, and palatable.

Adherents have scarcely tried to conceal this as a strategy. Alt-right activists in online communities openly discuss ways to recruit intelligent and well spoken speakers that can tailor their speech to the average person writes one anonymous poster. We need to be smart and make the movement appealing to the AVERAGE white person, in pursuit of a white ethno-state. People like Peter Thiel should be the voice of the alt-right, not. [avowed white supremacists] Richard Spencer. Online activists, in their own words, want to move the Overton windowthe range of ideas the public will acceptultimately overturning multi-ethnic democracies, racial and gender equality, and international cooperation.

In many ways, that strategy is starting to bear fruit. The radical right was more successful in entering the political mainstream last year than in half a century, reported the Southern Poverty Law Center this February. The alt-right has managed to redefine overt racism and white supremacy as if they were new, states the Columbia Journalism Review noting the term alt-right itself came from Spencer in 2008 as a way to distance the white supremacist movement he leads from disgraced bigots of the past. The Associated Press warns the term is a euphemism to disguise racist aims and may serve primarily as a public relations device to make its supporters actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience.

Perception is catching back up to reality. As Americas 900 or so far-right wing groups meet at real rallies, alt-right leaders keep finding themselves alongside neo-Nazis and Klansmen, most recently in Charlottesville where Spencer headlined. The Charlottesville protest called itself Unite the Right for a simple reason: the groups share enough beliefs to find common cause with white nationalists and neo-Naziseven if some are explicitly backing away from Nazi flag-waving extremists: Thats all the alt-right stands for, is white nationalism, said conspiracy theorist Cernovich in The Atlantic. They are now indistinguishable.

For angry white mendisaffected gamers, mens rights activists, white supremacists, anti-globaliststhe alt-right is now the rallying cry for communal hatred, writes Tim Squirrell, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who analyzed 3 billion comments in online alt-right spaces. Despite originating in far corners of the internet, right-wing extremists are coalescing to form a group identity, a common language and shared rage at liberalism. Were witnessing the radicalization of young white men, writes Squirrel.

If irony was the old shield of the alt-right, then reason and free speech is the next defense as it enters Silicon Valley. Its easy to dismiss Holocaust jokes by basement-dwelling gamers who call Auschwitz a 5 star resort. Its harder to refute scientific evidence rearranged to reflect right-wing prejudices. Of course, liberals dont help themselves by rejecting and suppressing data that challenges their own worldview rather than the arguments themselves. That gives ambassadors far more serious hearings to advance their aims.

Damores essay is a case in point. Dissected by countless journalists and scientists over the past week, it is not a screed, as some outlets reported, nor does it come off as unhinged. Readers of the piece could be forgiven for believing Damore merely made an unpopular critique of how diversity is promoted in Silicon Valley, and political correctness more generally. The New York Times columnist David Brooks called on Google CEO Sundar Pichai to resign over his decision to fire Damore.

Thats precisely the response that may have been intended. Google has created a martyr. In the process of trying to avoid a hostile workplace, and damage its reputation among woman who want to work at Google (only about 20% of Googles engineers are female, although it is 31% female overall ), UC Berkeleys Rosenthal believes it may have created a bigger problem. [Googles CEO] was probably unfamiliar with the pattern of claiming first-amendment offenses and that this would fall right in the middle of it, he said. My guess was that he had no idea this was going to happen. . I suspect that the CEO of Google was naive and unprepared for this.

As alt-right groups plan more national demonstrations, including a March on Google (potentially called off amid more threats of violence), Silicon Valley is already facing its next test in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Tech companies are cutting off funding, hosting, and online services to neo-Nazi and far-right organizations.

They, in turn, are striking out on their own emboldened by the ability to rally extremists from across the internet to fund and promote their cause. The alternative social network Gab.ai, which champions white supremacists, said its free speech crowdfunding campaign raised more than $1 million.

Get ready for more. Right-wing techies in the Valley increasingly portray themselves as scared victims of persecution or brave defenders of free speech. Breitbarts Rebels of Google series interviews former and current employees about at the company. A former engineer, asked about next steps for ideological dissenters at Google, suggested things are about to change: [We] keep our heads down, keep ourselves from getting fired, keep our asses at work, deliver great results, until theres critical mass. That day is coming.

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James Damore is proving the alt-right playbook can work in Silicon Valley - Quartz

The conservative publication Breitbart this weekendpushed back against being labeled "alt-right," after CNN host Don Lemon ripped the network as a "platform the alt-right."

Stephen Bannon, founding member of the board for the online media company and now former White House chief strategist, also referred to Breitbart as"the platform for the alt-right" in a July 2016 interview with Mother Jones reporter Sarah Posner.

Reporter Tony Lee on Saturday defended the publication, citing a Harvard/MIT study that found Breitbart was not alt-right, and used an alternativequote from executive chairman Bannon explaining his own beliefs, which Lee arguedhas been taken out of context.

Im an economic nationalist. I am an 'America first' guy. And I have admired nationalist movements throughout the world, have said repeatedly strong nations make great neighbors, Bannon toldThe Wall Street Journallast year, Breitbart noted.

The publication's defensive posture comes days after Bannon left his White House post and returned to lead thepublication.

The publication has cheered Bannon's return.

The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today, Breitbart's News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said.

Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda," he continued.

The president has faced intense backlash over the past week for his response to the violence that erupted in Charlottesville last weekend after a white supremacist rally. Trump held "manysides" responsible for the violence, rather than blaming the rally's organizers.

The alt-right label is often applied to white supremacist, white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups.

See the article here:
Breitbart pushes back on 'alt-right' label - The Hill

Lana Lokteff, pictured, runs an alt-right media company to promote her white nationalist ideologies. But critics say that kind of outspokenness from a growing number of female allies is at odds with how men in the movement view women's roles. Courtesy of Lana Lokteff hide caption

Lana Lokteff, pictured, runs an alt-right media company to promote her white nationalist ideologies. But critics say that kind of outspokenness from a growing number of female allies is at odds with how men in the movement view women's roles.

Last weekend, when white nationalists descended on Charlottesville to protest, it was clear that almost exclusively white, young males comprised the so-called alt-right movement there were women, but very few.

So where were the white women who weren't out protesting in the streets?

For the most part, journalist Seyward Darby discovered, they're online.

"It wasn't easy" seeking out the women of the alt-right, Darby tells NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro. "I spent a lot of time in the underbelly of the Internet Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, 4chan, places like that digging up contact information."

In the Harper's Magazine September issue, journalist Seyward Darby digs into the aims of the alt-right's women allies. Courtesy of Harpers hide caption

Darby dives into the motivations behind the alt-right female alliance in her cover story for the latest issue of Harper's Magazine, "Rise of the Valkyries." She began her reporting around the time anti-Trump activists were organizing January's Women's March, when she wondered: What do the women who aren't in the resistance think about what's happening?

Many of these women came into the alt-right initially as anti-feminists.

"They were people who felt that the feminist progressive agenda was not serving them in some cases they felt like it was actively disregarding them because they wanted more traditional things: home, family, etc.," she says. "And they came into the movement through that channel and then ultimately adopted more pro-white and white nationalist views."

One of those women was Lana Lokteff, a Russian-American from Oregon who co-runs Red Ice, an alt-right media company, with her Swedish husband, Henrik Palmgren.

The couple decided to make this their cause around 2012, Darby says, when they say they saw a lot of "anti-white sentiment." Around the time of several high-profile police shootings of young, black men, Lokteff "felt that Black Lives Matter and these other reactive forces were being unfair to white people and that then sort of spun into a conspiracy about how the establishment, so to speak, is out to oppress, minimize and silence white people."

Lokteff, who promotes alt-right ideologies on the couple's YouTube channel, has been persistently trolled by the men of the movement. Darby wanted to understand what attracts women to a movement that is often hostile to them.

In her piece, she quotes Andrew Anglin, who runs the (now blacklisted) neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer as saying the white woman's womb "belongs to the males of society." And alt-right pioneer Richard Spencer, who acknowledges that women make up a small percentage of the movement, believes women are not suited for some roles in government, reports Mother Jones: "Women should never be allowed to make foreign policy," he tweeted during the first presidential debate. "It's not that they're 'weak.' To the contrary, their vindictiveness knows no bounds."

The thing they are most interested in is promoting the white race and they see [President Trump] as an opportunity someone whose coattails they can ride.

Seyward Darby, on whether alt-right members support Trump

According to Lokteff and other alt-right women allies she spoke to, Darby says, "It's not that men who support the alt-right don't like women, it's that they see women as fundamentally different than men," with equally important roles, which are "to perpetuate white bloodlines, to nurture family units, to inculcate those families with pro-white beliefs."

But the growing contradiction, as Darby points out, "is that people like Lana Lockteff and other women that I spoke to are outspoken."

She adds, "They sort of see themselves as straddling a line between the male and female norms, because they think that at this point in their movement, the more people they can bring in, the more people they can convince that they are on the right side of history, the better, and that includes appealing to more women."

To recruit women to the movement, Darby says, the key is to stoke fear.

Asked how she would pitch the alt-right to conservative white women who voted for Trump, but are also wary of being labeled a white supremacist, Lokteff told her, "we have a joke in the alt-right: How do you red-pill someone? ("Red-pill" is their word for converting someone to the cause.) And the punch line was: Have them live in a diverse neighborhood for a while," Darby says. "She also said that when she is talking to women she reminds them that white women are under threat from black men, brown men, emigrants, and really uses this concept of a rape scourge to bring them in."

And while there are schisms in the aims of alt-right activists, and how best to get there, she adds, "There are some people Lana Lokteff being one of them, Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute who are really trying to find some semblance of civic legitimacy."

On how she understands the term "alt-right"

The answer seems to be different depending on who you ask. ... It's not a formal, structured group. It is more a new term for people who believe in white nationalism, who do not like political correctness, who do not like feminists, who do not like Jewish people, and who generally think that liberalism and diversity have led to the decline of Western civilization. So, I would hesitate to call the alt-right a hate group for instance, but the alt-right does include hate groups.

On being struck by parallels she saw, between the 1920s KKK and Nazi Germany versus today, in how white supremacists saw the role of women

In the 1920s, which is one of the heydays of the KKK, a woman named Elizabeth Tyler became the head of the group's national propagation department, which is essentially sending people out to recruit more members. And she managed to boost the membership by something like 85,000 people. She also founded the first women's wing of the movement. She was considered a seminal figure in the KKK. She was ultimately pushed out, in part, because the men in the movement were threatened by her strength and her power.

On what women bring to these movements

On a very basic level numbers. I think that the people who run these extremist groups, however loose or organized they are, recognized that there is strength in numbers. And to be a truly robust movement women are a large portion of the population. ...

Whether we're talking about white nationalism in the [19]20s, in Nazi Germany, today so much of the ideology is about the importance of family, the importance of protecting the white race, which involves making sure women are there to have children.

On how the language of feminism is being used to recruit women

They do sort of occupy an almost feminist-seeming space in the movement or some of them do, I should say. The ones who are more outspoken, the ones who are trying to bring more people into the movement. But of course, they would never say that. They would never want to be compared to feminists. ... They think that feminists have corrupted what women see as their core desires.

On how women act as a camouflage, to appeal to others they might want to recruit on a more personal level

There's a wonderful scholar named Kathleen Blee at the University of Pittsburgh and she has written a few books about women in right-wing extremism. One of the things she talks about is the role that women play in projecting this image of happy families, communities that are proud of their heritage that it's not so different from your community. And it's a particularly insidious aspect of the propaganda. It's certainly something I encountered and was told repeatedly in my interviews.

On what the alt-right women want

[Lokteff] mentioned to me, people moving to Washington, D.C., getting involved in government. And, speaking to scholars of right-wing extremism, they said to me this is very unusual, usually these groups ... they're very anti-government. And so I think there is definitely a cohort that sees this moment, thanks to Trump's election, as an opportunity to assert themselves on that level.

And I think there are others who want to fight a race war in a much more, I guess, literal way. This is one of the things that's going to be interesting moving forward with the alt-right, is seeing it's a motley crew of people who found each other on the internet and are really starting to, as we saw in Charlottesville, get out into the world and take action. ... And I think that we'll be seeing those fractures widen over the next couple of months and years.

On how these women view the protest in Charlottesville and President Trump's reaction

On the whole I think that they are pleased that they got this attention that they are stoking peoples' frustrations, that they are showing themselves to be a force.

The president's reaction, they're happy with I think. I asked [Lokteff] specifically, I said what do you think about Donald Trump? And she said, "Let's be honest, he's not one of our guys. We've never thought that he's one of our guys." The thing they are most interested in is promoting the white race and they see him as an opportunity someone whose coattails they can ride. The more that he does not disavow the things that they believe in, and either tacitly or directly supports them, the better.

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The Women Behind The 'Alt-Right' - NPR

In the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a woman and two police officers, large technology firms have been reevaluating the role their platforms may play in enabling offensive or even dangerous content.

Theres no question that the neo-fascist alt-right movement has leveraged various web services and social platforms to grow into something larger and more radical than what alt-right types often call White Nationalism 1.0, the network of homespun websites and mimeographed handouts that preceded it.

This is an issue that spans Silicon Valley, unfortunately, and is only now beginning to be addressed, Heidi Beirich, who leads the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Salon. Many companies have sections that expressly prohibit hate and abuse. The problem has always been about their willingness to enforce them.

More companies should take note now, before the next Charlottesville, she added.

Deciding what types of content their services may be used to propagate is fast becoming a difficult question for many tech firms.

Even before Unite the Right, Facebook decided to remove the event page that organizers had set up the day before it took place. Airbnb announced that it was banning white nationalists from renting temporary housing. Since the rally, PayPal has canceled the accounts of several far-right websites, as has Apple. Discord, a group-chat platform originally targeted at computer gamers, announced that it had closed down several alt-right communities after they were used to coordinate event logistics.

One of those Discord chat rooms was used by the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi blogthat has become the focal point for most of the general-interest media discussion about the alt-right and Big Tech. The site, created by former 4chan troll Andrew Anglin in 2013, has long been the target of anti-hate groups like SPLC, particularly after it was discovered that Dylann Roof appears to have been a reader and commenter before he committed mass murder in a South Carolina black church in 2015.

After Charlottesville, however, the number of web users calling for action against the site increased by several orders of magnitude. Web domain registrar GoDaddy came under heavy pressure to cancel The Stormers domain by anti-Nazi social media users.

Within hours of the complaints, GoDaddy informed the Nazi blog that it had 24 hours to find a different registrar for its domain. The Stormers eviction set the site on a desperate search for a company that would accommodate it, including unsuccessful online stints in China and Russia. For most of lastweek, the site could only beread via Tor, an encrypted and anonyous network that requires special software to access which is used by people in authoritarian governments but also by cyber criminals.

After taking aim at GoDaddy, Anglins critics then turned their complaints to Cloudflare, the network infrastructure and security company that stands in front of websites to protect them from hackers and help them deal with large influxes of traffic. Though not nearly as famous as Google or Microsoft, the company has acquired a fair number of dedicated critics who accuse Cloudflare of enabling crime, terrorism and racism. According to Cloudflares detractors, it is perfectly willing to help unsavory groups and individuals when doing so is profitable business.

LastWednesday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince decided to terminate the Daily Stormers account. Anglin told his fans about this via a message posted to Gab, a Twitter clone.The Stormer editor confirmed that the account was his in a message to Salon from a known email address.

In an interview with Salon a few hours after he had booted the Stormer, Prince said that he finally decided to cancel Anglins account after reading statements on the Stormers forum implying that Cloudflare was supportive of neo-Nazism.

The thing this morning that really did it was sort of making affirmative claims that somehow we supported their ideology, hesaid.

Prince also alleged that readers of the Nazi blog had harassed Cloudflare staff members in the past.

They did some things which we thought crossed the line in terms of harassment of our staff and others, Prince said. He declined to provide details when asked, however.

Earlier this year, ProPublica published a story saying that Cloudflare was forwarding the personal information of individuals who had complained to the company about improper usage of its services to whatever website they had reported. According to ProPublica, this resulted in several individuals receiving threatening messages as a result. After the report was published, Cloudflare changed its policies to allowanonymous complaints.

According to Prince, the Stormer generated nowhere near the amount of revenue for Cloudflare that would compensate for the amount of trouble it created.

At some point, if youre enough of a pain in the ass then were just going to say, You know what? Its not worth having you on, he said. Prince added that Cloudflares protection of unpopular blogs and forums has led to lost business from organizations who did not want to be hosted on the same network.

In an email exchange with Salon, Anglin denied any knowledge of harassment of Cloudflare employees. He also claimed that he had never implied that the network operator supported his beliefs.

That is absolutely just made up, the Nazi blogger wrote. I am 99% sure I have not mentioned CF at all since the Charlottesville rally, and if I did it was simply to say that I think they will hold because they have a total free speech policy. What they are saying is just a lie to justify silencing speech. Even if I had joked about they must be secret Nazis, that would still just be joking around, and protected speech.

As of this writing, Cloudflare has not responded to Anglins denial.

The question of what limits on content internet companies should maintain within their ecosystems is particularly challenging, according to Prince. In his comments to Salon and in a blog post, the Cloudflare executive argued that the United States and other countries have mostly ignored critical questions about the role of private companies as the de facto arbiters of speech in a world thats connected via networks that are not publicly owned.

Consistent with past remarks hes made on the subject of censorship and private citizens, Prince said he believed that governments should determine what types of content network companies like his should permit.

That seems like the right place for those decisions to be made, Prince told Salon. It becomes veryrisky when you have what is effectively a cabal of tech CEOs. I have my own political beliefs and perspective. I believe that the content that was on the Daily Stormer site is reprehensible and offensive and disgusting. But Im not sure that my political beliefs should be determining what is and is not allowed. I wasnt elected. There was no process that put me in place.

At the same time, Prince believes that web companies that are trying to sustain a community of users sites such as Twitter or Facebook are on more solid ground to remove content they believe violates community standards.

In a not-so-distant future, if were not there already, it may be that if youre going to put content on the Internet youll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba, Prince wrote in his blog post.

Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group specializing in the internet, released an editorial on Thursday condemning web companies for terminating the Stormers accounts.

We strongly believe that what GoDaddy, Google, and Cloudflare did here was dangerous, the organization said in an essay credited to executive director Cindy Cohn, senior global policy analyst Jeremy Malcolm and international director Danny OBrien.

They continued: If the entities that run the domain name system started choosing who could access or add to them based on political considerations, we might well face a world where every government and powerful body would see itself as an equal or more legitimate invoker of that power.

Slate technology writer Will Oremus agrees, suggesting that while left-leaning activists may feel triumphant about getting the Stormer and other sites kicked off the web, they ought to consider the larger implications of asking for network-level content restrictions.

The distinction between the Daily Stormer and an antifa site, or even a Black Lives Matter site, might seem clear as day to those urging GoDaddy to intervene against the former, he wrote in a column last week. Yet if our president himself finds them equivalent, it isnt hard to imagine a private tech-infrastructure firm deciding to ban the latter along with the former.

For his part, Anglin complains that the systematic dismantling of his online presence has made him an unperson. He also suggested thathis site would not be the last one targeted for removal from the internet for expressing unpopular opinions.

Anglin has addressed similar issues before, such as after he was banned from PayPal in 2015.One would think that banning a person from using a service because of their belief system is a clear violation of civil rights legislation, but apparently PayPal is not concerned, he wrote at the time.

He continued: I understand that people take issue with the civil rights laws themselves I obviously do but if PayPal is not allowed to deny service to people who are Black or gay or worship satan, it cannot be tolerated that they would be allowed to deny service to a White man who believes Whites have a right to exist.

Freedom of speech is not the real issue, however, according toBrandi Collins, a campaign director at Color of Change, one of many left-leaning groups that has been pressuring Silicon Valley to clamp down on hate sites.

These companies set a precedent for not working with hate sites years ago when they cut off mug-shot extortion sites, Collins told Salon. This has not been a free speech issue for these companies in the past, and it isnt one today. They are punting, clear and simple.

Regardless of where techs top firms decide to draw the line, theirdecisions may not ultimately matter, however, as an alternative web ecosystem catering to free speech absolutists and alt-right sympathizers is already beginning to emerge.

We WILL have corporations taking sides on free speech so we must build our own corporations, that will take our side, tweeted Pax Dickinson, the former CTO of Business Insider who was fired in 2013 after his racist viewpoints were exposed. On Wednesday, Dickinson said he would launch his own domain registrar when and if he could raise enough capital to do so. Several other alt-right technology firms (who informally call themselves alt-tech) have been launching copies of such services as Patreon, PayPal and Wikipedia.

Gab, the Twitter clone to which Anglin retreated after being banned from Cloudflare and most DNS services, said on Tuesday that it had raised more than $1 million to expand its operations. The companys press release making the announcement was illustrated by a meme of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supposedly typing shut it down, a variant of a common anti-Semitic meme. On Twitter, the company was even more ecstatic: 1 million dollars raised by THE PEOPLE to make speech free again and say FUCK YOU Silicon Valley elitist trash. Thank you all!!!!!!!!

In an interview, Gabs chief communication officer Utsav Sandujasaid the company was not anti-Semitic and that the Zuckerberg meme was nothing more than a joke.

For us, were ambivalent, we dont care whatsoever, Sanduja said. Our site truly is about free speech. And the beautiful part about free speech is that people are allowed to disagree with horrendous views, with deplorable views, with views that may be seen as contentious with civil society.

Hecontinued: Were of the opinion that when you start banning users and removing them off the internet, you will send them to the dark web where there is real criminality.

Not everyone appears to be convinced by Gabs claims of nobility.On Thursday, Google banned Gabs app from its Play Storefor allegedly violating its hate speech policy. Apple has never allowed Gabs program into its App Store. Gab is a Cloudflare customer, however.

The Daily Stormer, meanwhile, returned to the regular web on Friday, by way of a.lol domain and under the shieldof BitMitigate, a Cloudflare competitor.

We are offering protection to the Daily Stormer simply as a protection of free speech, BitMitigate owner Nicholas Lim told the Washington Times.

In regards to whether or not customers will react negatively: I am sure that they will, but if this progression continues, unfortunately, we may live in a society where they may not be able to react at all.

The site was soon forced back onto the Tor network, however, as Namecheap, the web registrar which had hosted the dailystormer.lol domain announced that it had terminated Anglins account. In a Sunday post on the Namecheap company blog, CEO Richard Kirkendall argued that the Stormerwas inciting violence rather than engaging in political speech.

Ive examined the website carefully. It purports to disclaim violence. But, these words are profoundly hollow as the actual text supports both viewpoints as well as groups that specifically promote violence. As an example: It doesnt take a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that White men + pride + organization = Jews being stuffed into ovens.This statement clearly incites violence and endorses wholesale eradication of Jews through genocide championed by the Nazis.

Like Prince, Kirkendall wrote that his decision was made with great discomfort.

Let me be frank here and Ill repeat, this was the right decision for the human race but it was also an existential threat for our company. Registrars need a set of guidelines just as the internet does that empowers or requires them to remain neutral and a clear judicial process to solve these types of issues quickly and effectively. These matters should not be solved in the courts of public opinion because public opinion is not always right.

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Big Tech, the alt-right and the unknown future of the internet - Salon

Last year around this time (and the year before that), I was arguing with some of my fellow conservatives about the insanity of finding any common cause whatsoever with the so-called alt-right. The issue wasnt that every avowed nationalist who claimed membership in the alt-right was a Nazi or Klansman. It was that the alt-right was open to Nazis and Klansmen. And why wouldnt these newly minted white supremacists welcome such pioneering organizations to their cause?

Right-wing cynics, hucksters and opportunists deliberately blurred these distinctions in the name of a right-wing popular front. Steve Bannon, now a White House consigliere, is by most accounts not a bigot in his personal dealings. But when he ran Breitbart.com, he had no problem making it a platform for the alt-right. Internet entertainer Milo Yiannopoulos was a Breitbart star for his defenses of the alt-right and its supposedly hilarious Holocaust jokes. He was only let go (and disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference) when it was revealed he was equally broad-minded about some expressions of pedophilia as he was about some expressions of Nazism.

In Bannons case, and in the case of so many on the right who pulled their oars to the beat of Bannons drum, the motivation wasnt racism or anti-Semitism; it was the need to win at all costs (or to make a profit).

Win what? Well, that varied. At first it was the war on the establishment, including Fox News. Then one alleged civil war on the right or another. And, ultimately, the fight to get Donald Trump the nomination and the presidency.

As the primaries wound down, the imperative for unity intensified. Why look under rocks when you can use them as stepping stones to victory? Besides, Trump was making it as clear as possible that he welcomed support and praise from any quarter.

The rights game of footsie with the alt-right ostensibly ended when Trump won. Bannon disavowed them once he made it to the White House. Like France after the liberation, it seemed everyone was suddenly a member of the resistance and nobody was a collaborator. At least, that is, until Saturday, when the president invited speculation that the old popular front is still operational.

Whatever its status at the White House, the alt-right thinks it will replace the traditional right. It wont, for the simple reason that the vast, overwhelming majority of conservatives are patriotic and decent, just like Americans generally. They dont want anything to do with people who want to overthrow the Constitution and set up racial Bantustans.

No, the real threat to traditional conservatism is the mindset that made it possible to form even a theoretical alliance with the alt-right in the first place: the idea that winning and fighting are self-justifying.

Over the last decade, many on the right have convinced themselves that the real problem with conservatism is a lack of will. They admiringly quote left-wing activist Saul Alinsky admiringly and claim that we have to be like them by doing whatever is necessary to win.

During the campaign, when Trump attacked the ethnicity of an American judge or the parents of a fallen Muslim U.S. soldier, the response from his defenders on the right was usually, At least he fights!

Such amorality was warranted, many explained, because if Clinton had won, America would be over. National security official Michael Anton, then writing from the safety of anonymity, dubbed it a Flight 93 election and argued that conservatives must do anything for victory or accept certain death. In an interview with New York magazine, Anton went further. If we must have Caesar, he said, who do you want him to be? One of theirs? Or one of yours (ours)?

The election is over. Yet that spirit not only endures, it has intensified. Trumps conservative critics, or apostates as Conrad Black calls us, face the same ultimatum. The choice, for sane conservatives, Black writes, is Trump or national disaster. Black is hardly alone in making this or similar cases. The upshot of them all is that the test for sane (or real or good or true) conservatives is loyalty to the president, not to any coherent body of ideas or ideals. Even truth takes a back seat

Id point out that such thinking could invite the worst and most opportunistic creatures to infiltrate the movement. Except they already have.

Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. Email him at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @JonahNRO.

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Conservatives Must Purge the Alt-Right - Lynchburg News and Advance