Earlier this afternoon, alt-right Jewish commentator Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to the front doors of Twitter’s New York headquarters, while wearing a Jewish star and carrying a bullhorn and a number of printed-out tweets. She says she’s demonstrating in protest of the alleged shadowbanning of conservatives on the social-media platform, and the “double standard” of allowing figures like anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to remain on the site.
“Twitter is upholding sharia when they ban me for tweeting facts about sharia law,” Loomer shouted early on
in a Periscope livestream that kicked off around 3:45 p.m. Thursday. “I’m here today to stand in solidarity with the millions of conservatives around the world who have been silenced.”
Loomer was
permanently banned from the platform earlier this month for hate speech against Minnesotan Democratic Representative-elect Ilhan Omar. In the offending tweets, she accused Omar of being “pro-sharia.” Around this same time last year, she and several white nationalists including Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler
had their Twitter verification checkmark revoked.
NYPD officers have erected a barricade around her demonstration and moved onlookers away from the Chelsea office’s doors.
Loomer also quoted from a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Larry Klayman against Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter over alleged antitrust violations. Among other things, the suit accuses the companies of having “entered into an illegal agreement to refuse to deal with conservative news and media outlets … to further their leftist agenda and designs to effectively overthrow President Trump and his administration.”
She announced that she had joined the class-action suit today. It’s one of several lawsuits brought on behalf of far-right figures either banned or demonetized by web platforms, none of which have made any significant headway in courts.
Loomer has claimed she will not remove the handcuffs until CEO Jack Dorsey reinstates her account. (She also claims to have thrown away the keys.) A NYPD officer on the scene tells
The Verge that there has been no contact between NYPD and Twitter, although NYPD negotiators are now on-scene speaking to Loomer. A representative for Twitter tells
The Verge it has no comment at this time, but that they are “aware and monitoring” the situation. We will update this story as it unfolds.
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