GoDaddy bans neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer for defaming Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer

A web hosting company has pulled a neo-Nazi website after it posted a scathing article about the woman who was killed at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

GoDaddy, which has hosted the domain name for The Daily Stormer since the site was launched four years ago, announced on Sunday it had given the white supremacist site just 24 hours to move its domain to another provider.

“We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service,” GoDaddy said on its official Twitter page.

The Daily Stormer post in question slandered Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed after a car drove at speed into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters in Virginia, for her physical appearance and what it said were anti-white male views.

Ms Heyer was one of hundreds who converged on the city to protest against the largest gathering of white nationalists the US has seen in decades. The rally was attended by neo-Nazis, skinheads, and members of the Ku Klux Klan brandishing flaming torches, carrying assault rifles and wearing paramilitary clothing.

James Alex Fields Jr, from Ohio, is being held in a Virgina jail in connection with the deadly crash near the white nationalist rally. The 20-year-old was arrested on Saturday and charged with second-degree murder and other criminal counts.

In the post, the founder of the site, Andrew Anglin, claimed Ms Heyer has been killed in a “road rage incident”. He also launched into a vitriolic tirade about her appearance, saying she was a “drain on society”.

“Despite feigned outrage by the media, most people are glad she is dead, as she is the definition of uselessness,” Mr Anglin, the site’s editor, said. “A 32-year-old woman without children is a burden on society and has no value.”

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Ms Heyer was born in Charlottesville, the home of the University of Virginia's main campus, and spent much of her personal and working life fighting injustice of all varieties. She worked at a law firm where she helped people who were trying to avoid being evicted from their homes or having their cars repossessed or who required help paying medical bills.

Amy Siskin, a Twitter user, made an appeal to GoDaddy to remove the site in a post which has been shared over 5,000 times, saying: “You host The Daily Stormer - they posted this on their site. Please retweet if you think this hate should be taken down & banned.”

GoDaddy, a domain registrar which has served approximately 17 million customers, has been accused of providing a platform for hate speech in recent months.

The Daily Stormer is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist site which is associated with the alt-right - a political movement which has been accused of racism, antisemitism and misogyny and of sharing an ideology with far-right parties such as the French National Front.

The site, which calls itself “The World’s Most Genocidal Republican Website,” has been identified as the the “top hate site in America” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential bid in 2015, posting a story titled “Heil Donald Trump – The Ultimate Savior” after Mr Trump proposed introducing a total ban on Muslim immigration. The site publishes content denigrating Jewish people, Muslims, people of colour and women.

Violent clashes between white supremacists and anti-fascists on Saturday turned deadly, prompting the state governor to declare a ‘state of emergency’. Three people were killed in total – Ms Heyer and two policemen who died in a helicopter crash while trying to bring peace to the area.