Stormfront, Jew Watch, a million other long-forgotten hate sites, and the Usenet hate groups they sprung from, on the other hand, had very much been a thing for years by the time Something Awful and 4chan appeared.

I talked about this before on the old site, but white supremacists really are a core, primordial demographic of the Internet, alongside Trekkies, computer scientists (duh) and, of course, furries. Not to imply they're four discrete groups—there's obviously a TON of overlap among them all.

Also, people say “4chan” like they're talking about the whole site when in this context, it's really only referring to /pol/; even the other boards, toxic as they could be, knew to stay away from that cesspool until it broke containment in the mid-2010s.

I mean we all were, that's why we're posting here now

But Free Republic was founded in 1997 and while they don't hold a candle to 4Chan even Matt Drudge, in 1999, felt like they were too racist.