The Daily Stormer Is Getting Sued for Fabricating a Comedian’s Tweets
Credit to Author: Louise Matsakis| Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 16:28:13 +0000
SiriusXM radio host and Daily Beast contributor Dean Obeidallah announced Wednesday that he was suing neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer for publishing an article in June alleging that Obeidallah was behind the Manchester bombing, which killed 23 people in May of this year. The complaint was filed in the Southern District of Ohio by Muslim Advocates, a national organization that works to “guarantee freedom and justice for Americans of all faiths,” as well as an Ohio law firm.
According to the complaint, the Daily Stormer’s article labeled Obeidallah as the “mastermind” behind the bombing, and falsely said he “fled to Syria and is wanted by law enforcement for his alleged role in that terrorist act.” The complaint also says that the Daily Stormer “fabricated Twitter messages, purportedly captured from Mr. Obeidallah’s Twitter account.”
In one tweet cited in the complaint, for example, it appears Obeidallah is taking credit for the Manchester bombing. “All glory is to Allah, the magnificent and merciful, for it is only by his grace I was successfully able to execute the manchester bombing,” the faked message reads. The actual tweet said, “Thanks to Trump our allies don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us. Is this what Trump meant by Making America Great?!”
Obeidallah indicated in a phone press conference this morning that he had received death threats and other threats of violence after the article was published about him on the Daily Stormer. In the press conference, his lawyers said that they contacted Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, and asked him to remove the article, but said they received no response.
The lawsuit comes less than a week after a white supremacist march turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, and as the Daily Stormer faces increased criticism.
The Daily Stormer was also dropped earlier this week by tech companies it relied on to operate. Its domain provider, GoDaddy, and its email provider, Zoho, stopped allowing the neo-Nazi site to use their services after it published an article mocking Heather Heyer, who was killed at the white-nationalist march.
Anglin then tried to use Google as a domain provider, but the company quickly also dropped it as a customer. The Daily Stormer was then briefly moved to the dark web, where it faced a DDoS attack. The site has now moved back to the regular web and at the time of writing was up at a .ru web address, a Russian domain.
Obeidallah is not the first person to bring a lawsuit against the Daily Stormer this year. In April, Tanya Gersh, with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued Anglin for conducting an anti-semitic campaign against her and her family.