GoDaddy, the internet services provider, has gone and shut down Richard Spencer's AltRight.com site...
Forgive my tears, but AltRight.com used to be one of my favourite sites -- although I'm sure it will be back in some form or other.
Anyway, Go Daddy was also the domain registrar for Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer site, which they shut down back in August last year following Charlottesville. This followed an ill-timed article mocking the overweight leftist woman who tragically died in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally.
That fact alone should have warned Spencer to switch his domain from GoDaddy to somewhere else, anywhere else. But he failed to see the danger, probably assuming that he was too handsome and his content too polite and civilised to be shut down in this crude, plebian way.
The decision to shut down the site came after Kristen Clarke, the President and Executive Director of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, wrote to GoDaddy CEO Scott Wagner, unfairly characterising Spencer's site as a hate site that promoted violence.
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| Baby-faced killer (of internet sites) |
In the article Spraguer advocated a state policy of using extralegal violence against illegal immigrants:
"A little bit of lawlessness and savagery in the ranks of border patrol should be encouraged (you see this in Bulgaria and Russia where private citizens and militia do much of the border patrolling, far more effectively I surmise). They are not afraid to dole out a little bit of punishment to their would-be conquerors (megalomaniacal Muhammadens). One of the West’s primary problems is that we have become too law-centered, too law-abiding. Superiors would do well to turn their heads to a little bit of brutality and vengeance by our guys on the border, perhaps even tolerating a massacre here or there."
OK, this is obviously a bit retarded, and reflects Spencer's deep psychological need -- as a soft, pampered frat boy from a rich landowning family -- to LARP hard as a paramilitary hard man from time to time by publishing rubbish like this.
But it is hard to see how a company like GoDaddy, which, as an act of business necessity, has a commitment to a policy of free speech, could shut down Spencer's site on this flimsy basis.
I mean the article is not actually inciting AltRight.com's readership to take up the "border jumper whack-a-mole challenge." Rather, it is stupidly recommending violence as a kind of hidden "Deep State" policy, carried out by law enforcement professionals with the approval of the President. It may as well be about spaceships made of spider's webs...
By taking this decision, GoDaddy's CEO is basically signalling that almost any site which relies on GoDaddy's services could be arbitrarily taken down at any time. It will be interesting to see how this impacts on GoDaddy's share price in the days to come.
Another feature of Kristen Clarke's letter is that she also cited AltRight.com's notoriously unmoderated comment boards as a reason for removing the site.
This is an interesting precedent, as it means that anyone can leave a violent or abusive comment on a site and then complain that the site is promoting "hatred" and "violence," and then expect GoDaddy to remove their domain name from the register. This is effectively a troll's charter.
Under those circumstances, only a complete fool would bother using GoDaddy's services, and only an utter moron would bother investing in them.
Matt Forney gives his take.
