(Washington, D.C.) – A national technology company, DNC Holdings, Inc., continues to provide web registration services for the white supremacist website DavidDuke.com in violation of DNC’s own Terms of Service, according to a recent letter released today by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The Committee, through its James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate requested that DNC Holdingsstop providing services to the site, given the site’s violation of DNC Holding’s terms of service.
“ Sites that share white supremacist conspiracy theories contribute to violence against African Americans, other communities of color and Jewish and Muslim communities. DNC Holdings’ refusal to enforce their terms of service is not only disappointing but upholds structures that allow hate to spread across the internet,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “We urge DNC Holdings to take action that acknowledges the threat posed by the racist content that they are providing services to and promoting.”
DNC Holdings’ Terms of Service explicitly apply to domain registration services. Those terms of service prohibit content that is, among other things, defamatory or hateful. In violation of these policies, the Duke website routinely posts anti-Black content. For instance, Duke has included content on his site calling slavery “the greatest mistake that the country ever made” because it is what brought Black people to the United States of America. In addition, content on the hate site blames the disproportionate infection rates of the coronavirus on biological differences, and argues that Black people are “poorly suited” for northern climates “like Scandinavia or Minnesota.” Duke’s content is also often anti-Semitic. For instance, he claims that “the New York times [is] completely Jewish owned” and has “an interest in sparking [B]lack resentment and [B]lack hatred against white people.”
David Duke is a known white nationalist who uses his website to advocate for white unity and racial separation. Duke is infamous for founding the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana in 1974. Since then, he has utilized pseudo-intellectualism to push a professional, so-called, pro-White agenda, and has created numerous white nationalist organizations. The DNC Holdings-hosted website routinely publishes anti-Black content, including in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
Read the letter here.
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About the James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate at the Lawyers’ Committee – The James Byrd Jr. Center to Stop Hate, at the Lawyers’ Committee, supports communities and individuals targeted for hate and challenges white supremacy by using creative legal advocacy, disrupting systems that enable hate, and educating the general public and policy makers. The Byrd Center’s resource and reporting hotline for hate incidents, 1-844-9-NO-HATE (1-844-966-4283), connects people and organizations combating hate with the resources and support they need. For more information please visit: https://lawyerscommittee.org/project/stop-hate-project/
