The presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has coincided with a large spike in white supremacist activity on the Internet, with Jewish journalists targeted in particular, according to a Vanderbilt professor.
鈥淭he Trump campaign has given the white nationalist movement a long-awaited opportunity to spread its message to a national audience,鈥� said , who tracks white nationalist Internet groups and is a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer of anthropology at Vanderbilt University.
鈥淭rump鈥檚 messages about limiting immigration and banning Muslims from the United States have given the movement one of its largest membership boosts in decades, which will have impact long after this election cycle.鈥�
According to Bjork-James:
- The founder of the white nationalist website Stormfront, Don Black, claims a 30 to 40 percent spike in web traffic in 2015 after Trump鈥檚 anti-immigration and ban Muslim speeches.
- The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, was created in 2013. The site went from 1.2 million visits per month in 2015 to 1.9 million visitors per month today.
- Breitbart.com went from 32 million visits per month in 2015 to 75 million visits per month in September of 2016.
- The 鈥渁lt-right鈥� term or Alternative Right was started by white nationalist Richard Spencer and is an attempt to rebrand the racist right as a legitimate part of the political spectrum.
鈥淭he radical right in particular has decided that targeting Jews and ratcheting up anti-Semitic language is a strategy,鈥� Bjork-James said. 鈥淣eo-Nazism is a defining belief in white nationalism.鈥�
Bjork-James鈥� research interests include tracking white nationalist movements and has published her findings in , “” and the chapter titled 鈥溾�� in