However, despite the long-term downward trend in organized activities by Ku Klux Klan-affiliated groups, both watchdog groups reported that the number of KKK nationwide chapters in the United States nearly tripled in 2015, from 72 to 190. Largely due to the heavy decentralization of the organization during the latter half of the 20th century, the Klan's support base in terms of size and scale has been difficult to measure as of 2016, the estimated membership of the Klan ranges from 3,000 to 6,000 individuals, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), respectively. #OpKKK was a series of social media protests and hacktivist campaigns launched by an international network of Anonymous hackers in November 2014 in retaliation to threats of violence made by the Ku Klux Klan against protesters during the 2014 anti-police riots in Ferguson, Missouri.Īs a result of the campaign, several KKK-affiliated websites and social media accounts were breached, vandalized or otherwise rendered inaccessible through the means of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and other hacking methods in addition, personally identifiable information of at least 350 alleged members and 18 KKK-affiliated online communities were doxxed, including their photographs, names and home addresses. In addition to the launch of Stormfront, several white nationalist and KKK-sympathetic online forums and communities surfaced during the late 1990s to early 2000s, including Redwatch, The Daily Stormer and Metapedia, among others. In 1995, American white nationalist Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, co-founded a bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which quickly grew into one of the most prominent online forums for white nationalism, racism and neo-Nazism. With the advents of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, the digital presence of post-World War II white supremacists and neo Nazis continued to grow. The Usenet has been widely cited as an early example of an online hub that played a vital role in fostering extremist ideologies and practical information on how to commit acts of violence in real life, such as instructions on bomb-making. The online activities of the KKK can be traced back to the establishment of anonymous white supremacist newsgroups on Usenet since as early as the 1980s.
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