UPDATE: Monday, Oct. 29, 2018 at 11:24 a.m. ET
Robert Bowers used the social network Gab.com to threaten Jews two hours before killing 11 people in the Tree of Life synagogue. Gab has been taken offline.
The social network said in a statement on Monday it would be “inaccessible for a period of time” after several web hosting services declined its business. Gab.com said it has also been removed from app stores and refused service by payment processing firms.
Gab.com CEO Andrew Torba said in a statement, in part: “Ban us all you want. Smear us all you want. You can’t stop an idea.”
“The site’s claim of being a marketplace for free speech is a facade,” Joel Finkelstein, a neuroscientist at Princeton University, who directs the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonprofit that studies how hate spreads online, said in an interview.
“It’s very clear that free speech is a coded way of saying the alt-right can say what they want.”
ORIGINAL STORY Published Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018
Acts domestic terrorism last week fueled by the overt racism, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories of the Trump era culminated with a mass murder in Pittsburgh.
Robert Bowers opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday during a Shabbat religious service killing 11 people. Two hours before he committed the murders, the 46-year-old resident of Baldwin, Penn., posted malicious anti-Semitic messages and conspiracy theories on Gab.com, a social network favored by the alt-right.
Bowers wrote: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society or HIAS is a nonprofit that helps Jewish refugees relocate to the United States. But Bowers was claiming that the organization helped transport members of migrant caravans.
Trump claimed the U.S. was under assault by some Central American countries because thousands of people were coming north in a caravan to enter the country.
Bowers “shared a video that another Gab.com user posted, supposedly of HIAS on the US-Mexico border, according to CNN. “In another post, Bowers described HIAS’ overall efforts as, ‘sugar-coated evil’.”
Gab.com is based in Philadelphia and was created as an alternative to Twitter. It’s been used by white supremacists like Richard Spencer, who supported the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. Trump said of the rally that there were “fine people on, on both sides.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement that the mass murder on Saturday was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in the history of the United States.
In a recent report on anti-Semitism in social media, the ADL named Gab.com as one of the perpetrators. Also, in its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, the ADL found that the number of anti-Semitic crimes in the U.S. rose 57 percent in 2017.
After killing 11 people, Bowers, a white male, surrendered to a SWAT team and was taken into custody. He faces 29 charges.
Beginning the week of chaos across the country, on Wednesday, in Louisville Ky., Gregory Alan Bush shot and killed two Black victims, Maurice E. Stallard, 69, and Vicki Lee Jones, 67, at a Kroger store, and told a white bystander “Whites don’t kill whites.” Just 15 minutes before going to the store, Bush unsuccessfully attempted to enter a predominantly Black church.
One of his Facebook profile pictures contains a graphic with the American flag and the words “I Stand,” seemingly a criticism of Black NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality. Trump once referred to NFL players who take a knee as “Sons of b**thes.”
Cesar Sayoc, a staunch supporter of Trump, who attended multiple rallies, was arrested on Friday for mailing 13 homemade bombs. They were sent to Democratic figures critical of Trump, including Rep. Maxine Waters, Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, and those who support Democrats, such as billionaire activist George Soros.
Sayoc used social media to spread conspiracy theories about Sorros. Account handles on his Facebook pages included two violent themes —”Killall Socialist” and “Killgeorge Soros.”
There has been a conspiracy theory floating around social media that Soros’ Open Society Foundations was deploying “rail cars” to transport a caravan of Central American migrants into the U.S.
Kelly Johnston, vice president of government affairs at The Campbell Soup Co., and former secretary of the U.S. Senate under Republican Bob Dole, even shared it on Twitter.
