YouTube for racists

In researching an article on a policing scandal in Queensland, Australia, I found myself searching the web for a now notorious video distributed across many video sharing sites. On Google Video, I found what appeared to be the video I was after with outraged commentary referring to the scandal in question. "Excellent! I can use that in my article" I thought to myself. The search link took me to a YouTube-clone video-sharing site that hosted the video and as I watched the video through, it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I mostly agreed with the commentary until the end where the creator had made some comments essentially demanding unlimited free speech rather than condemning the sensationalist policing as I had intended to do. Nonetheless I thought I could probably use it for the article and wondered at the "Podblanc" watermark for a moment as I glanced at a "related video" that caught my eye.

"ANOTHER NIGGER BEAST, ANOTHER RAPED BABY. THIS TIME THE BABY WAS ONLY 8 DAYS OLD".

"Gosh!" says I, "That seems a bit inappropriately stated even if it's true". From the thumbnail it looked like it was a video of a news anchor reading a story about child abuse but I was more interested in what the hell kind of site I had ended up on that hadn't flagged that for title-editing if nothing else.

podblanc: white now

Hmm.

Wikidia doesn't have an entry on this site and indeed it seems to be below the radar everywhere else too. A google on the subject shows me that it's well known amongst the network of white-nationalist sites but apparently not well known elsewhere^*. I felt a little alarmed that I had so easily wondered into such a bad neighbourhood of the net. I understand how these sites keep operating; there's plenty of countries where such things can be hosted without recourse to shut them down, the internet is notoriously difficult to censor and such enormous damage is done to free speech in the process that it's generally considered foolish to try.

The site describes itself thus:

"Podblanc has been online just 18 months, and we are an increasing presence in the formative teaching of White Nationalism on the Worldwide Web."

I was distinctly disturbed by the call for donations to Podblanc at the end of the video ("Be part of the struggle! Donate!"), I'm not sure whether that was placed there by the author or is an automated thing like the watermark, I suspect the latter. More disturbing than their fund raising was their marketing; the frontpage text goes on to request that their users link to them from as many places as possible, presumably to draw people to the site from facebook profiles, blog entries and the like.

The donation text lists an address in Estonia. Bizarrely the domain is owned by a certain "Linh Wang" in Hong Kong who also knows several hundred domains, I guess they're probably running a hosting company of some sort. The primary server appears to be located in the US in Columbus, Ohio. I'm not really that knowledgeable about US laws so I couldn't say whether they're adequate to shut down a site like this but it's not really relevant since they could so easily locate elsewhere in the world.

Podblanc is a white nationalist edition of YouTube.
- www.stormfront.org user:GutaThiudareiks

The purpose of the site appears to be promote cultural awareness of their cause. Their description text requests users to spread "positive global white political consciousness" by linking to their videos "aggressive, repeatedly".

Never Count the Ku Klux Klan Out! - Podblanc video title

The videos run a gamut of mostly identifiable targets, positive messages relating to the KKK and BNP, negative criticisms of Jewish politicians and especially Barack Obama ("Obama the anti-christ" is a common epithet amongst the video descriptions). Genuine crimes involving non-white races and especially African Americans are highlighted with racial epithets and presented as proof of the inferiority of the race in question. Rather a number of videos present attacks on prominent non-whites and some include semi-conspiracy theories such as accusations of Barack Obama being a Muslim or being born outside the USA in violation of USA presidential eligibility criteria.

Jew Sandra Bernhard Injects Ancient Kike Hate Venom Into Goy Palin - Podblanc video title

Ultimately, there isn't a simple solution to something like this. Hating an identifiable group of other people is easy and simplifies many problems that we encounter in our lives, it might not be the most correct way to look at a problem and may in fact be outright wrong but it is certainly easier than trying to understand complex issues and will always be attractive to the weak-minded. Perhaps education is the answer, such hatred is certainly much less acceptable and probably less common in the western world than it once was.

I suppose humanity is a work in progress.

*: It is mentioned briefly on metapedia.org but that itself seems to be a white nationalist alternative to wikipedia.