Page 6 - ARUBA TODAY

A6 U.S. NEWS
Wednesday 19 april 2017

Target of online trolls suing neo-Nazi website’s publisher

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN attorneys, said the case
Associated Press could be a blueprint for
A Montana real estate fighting a digital strain of
agent sued the founder white supremacy.
of a neo-Nazi website on “In the old days, they would
Tuesday, saying the pub- have burned a cross on
lisher orchestrated an anti- Tanya’s front lawn.
Semitic “campaign of ter- Now, in the digital age,
ror” that bombarded the they launch a troll storm,”
woman and her family Cohen said.
with hateful messages from The Alabama-based law
anonymous internet trolls. center filed a similar suit in
The barrage of emails, 1998 against a white su-
phone calls, texts and so- premacist who threatened
cial media comments Bonnie Jouhari, a fair hous-
threatened and harassed ing specialist in Pennsylva-
Tanya Gersh and her fam- nia. Jouhari fled with her
ily — including her 12-year- daughter and moved to
old son — with messages another state after her tor-
replete with slurs and Holo- In this undated photo released by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Dan Chung, Tanya Gersh menter posted her address
caust references, accord- poses for a photo. Gersh, a Montana real estate agent sued the founder of a neo-Nazi website and photo on the internet
ing to the federal lawsuit. on Tuesday, April 18, 2017, saying the publisher orchestrated an anti-Semitic “campaign of ter- and branded her a “race
The trolling campaign start- ror” that bombarded the woman and her family with hateful messages from anonymous internet traitor” for her work.
ed in December after Daily trolls. The trolling campaign started in December 2016, after Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin But cases like these are
Stormer founder Andrew published the family’s personal information, including the 12-year-old’s Twitter handle and photo. very rare because many
Anglin published the fam- (Dan Chung/Southern Poverty Law Center via AP) victims are too scared to
ily’s personal information, fish amid talk of a protest “I’ve never experienced tears and wakes up cry- sue or can’t afford a law-
including the 12-year-old’s outside the building. Sherry that kind of fear in my life,” ing. She also said her real yer, said Danielle Citron, a
Twitter handle and photo. Spencer, however, later she said. estate business suffered University of Maryland law
In a string of posts, Anglin accused Gersh of threat- Gersh is represented by the because she had to take professor and author of the
accused Gersh and other ening and harassing her Alabama-based Southern down her website and is book “Hate Crimes in Cy-
Jewish residents of White- into agreeing to sell the Poverty Law Center, which too afraid to answer the berspace.”
fish, Montana, of engag- property. tracks hate groups. Her suit phone. Anglin uses a mailing ad-
ing in an “extortion racket” Gersh, 44, told The Associat- accuses Anglin of invading Her suit, filed in Missoula, dress in Worthington, Ohio,
against the mother of white ed Press that she has been her privacy, intentionally in- Montana, seeks unspeci- for his website, which takes
nationalist Richard Spen- so scared for her family’s flicting “emotional distress” fied damages against Ang- its name from Der Stürmer,
cer. safety that she packed a and violating a Montana lin, who didn’t immediately a newspaper that pub-
Gersh’s lawsuit said she bag and left it on her bed- anti-intimidation law. respond to an email seek- lished Nazi propaganda.
agreed to help Spencer’s room floor for three months The mother of two young ing comment. The site includes sections
mother sell commercial in case they decided to sons said she suffers panic Law center president Rich- called “Jewish Problem”
property she owns in White- flee their home. attacks, goes to bed in ard Cohen, one of Gersh’s and “Race War.”q