The notorious hate site Stormfront appears to be running on fumes as its former Klansman founder announces the online forum will restrict access to "sustaining members" and take other steps to cut costs.
Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan member and convicted felon, has complained for years about the costs associated with running the white supremacist forum and threatened to close before, but dwindling donations may finally drive the site out of business, reported Hatewatch.
“I appreciate everybody’s support. But it’s that time of month again, when the big, scary bills hit,” Black wrote. “Our contributions have once again totaled less than $2,000, which is not enough to cover our basic server and radio bills, and this month we no longer have enough personal money to make up the difference.”
The site will be restricted to members who donate at least $5 a month, and Black will archive and shut down Stormfront's main server Friday due to a "financial crisis."
Stormfront's domain was seized after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, after civil rights lawyers filed a notice with Network Solution, which registered its domain.
Black founded Stormfront in 1995 after learning basic computer programming while serving a three-year federal prison term for attempting to overthrow the government of Dominica with other white supremacists in 1981.
The site was central to organized white supremacy for more than two decades, and a 2014 study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found forum members had murdered nearly 100 people in the previous five years, including 77 killed by Anders Breivik in Norway in 2011.
Stormfront has seen its influence wane as younger "alt-right" white supremacists gravitate toward sites such as the Daily Stormer, the Right Stuff and social media platforms, but Black's site still remains popular with older racists.
Black's wife Chloe had been paying the site's bills in recent years and "working full time past retirement age to help support this site," one user wrote this week.
The site's founder said the Stormfront Radio program would continue, but he said this week he could no longer afford to run the site and canceled his upcoming appearance at a League of the South conference in Alabama to celebrate David Duke's 50th year of white supremacist activism.