Banned from Twitter. Banned from PayPal. And last week, temporarily banned from online Chase banking.
Laura Loomer, 25, is just the latest victim of an increasingly aggressive online discrimination campaign against conservative personalities. Loomer, however, is not taking these bans sitting down. In November, she handcuffed herself to Twitter’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan for two hours beneath an enlarged anti-Semitic tweet by Louis Farrakhan. Why, she asked, was she banned for calling now Rep. Ilhan Omar “anti-Jewish” when Farrakhan wasn’t banned for calling Jews “termites”?
Chaining herself to Twitter’s headquarters was hardly Loomer’s first – or last – political stunt. Three years ago, she entered a voting station wearing a burka and identified herself as Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s close aide. She had no identification but was given a paper ballot to vote nonetheless. Two years ago, she made national news by storming the stage of a New York performance of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” which portrayed an assassination of Donald Trump rather than Caesar. And just this month, Loomer was arrested for trespassing onto California Governor Gavin Newsom’s property while wearing a sombrero in an effort to highlight the governor’s position on illegal immigration.
The Jewish Press: What’s your background?
Loomer: I’m from Tucson, Arizona, and I went to boarding school from age 12-18. I grew up in a pretty dysfunctional household, but I always had a strong sense of loyalty to my Jewish heritage.
My grandfather was actually arrested by the Nazis while he was in medical school and his medical diploma has a swastika on it. So growing up I always felt I had a duty to combat anti-Semitism.
I was also very interested in politics growing up and was very influenced by 9/11. I remember watching the Twin Towers fall on TV and just being inundated with news for the rest of my childhood and teenage years on the war on terror. It sparked my interest in Islam, so I started investigating and came to see that it was very hateful toward Jews and Christians.
Your first major journalistic “stunt” came in college while working for Project Veritas, correct?
Yes. I was president of the college Republicans, and the administration was always giving me a hard time about having conservative events and clubs on campus. I thought to myself, “I bet they would allow an ISIS club if I wanted to start one on campus,” so I asked the school administrators while wearing a hidden camera, “What do I have to do if I want to start a new club?”
They asked me what type of club, and I told them I wanted to have a pro-ISIS club to send aid overseas to ISIS terrorists. The video ended up going viral because the administrators said yes.
I was set to graduate with a 4.0 GPA, but I got kicked out of college a month before graduation simply because I was trying to raise awareness about this.
How do you explain their behavior?
There seems to be an infatuation across American college campuses and institutions with Islam. But if you’re a Jew – especially if you’re a conservative Jew – you face a lot of hostility. I experienced it firsthand in college. There were many Muslims at my university, and the anti-Semitism was unreal. I remember being in class one day and an Egyptian student told me I was a filthy Jew. When I was in high school, a kid from Turkey would call me a kike.
So I experienced anti-Semitism from a very young age, and I try to expose anti-Semites.
And that’s why you were banned from Twitter this past November.
Yes. I was in Minnesota investigating [now Congresswoman] Ilhan Omar, and I confronted her at one of her campaign events about her support of Hamas. I asked her and Rashida Tlaib [also now a congresswoman] if they would condemn Hamas. They refused to. Rashida Tlaib even attacked me.
So when Omar ended up getting elected, I tweeted that it was ironic how Twitter was trying to portray Ilhan Omar’s election as a victory for minorities when she’s very anti-Jewish and Sharia law calls for killing Jews and homosexuals.
So I was permanently banned from Twitter. I had 265,000 followers. I was probably the most prominent female conservative Jew on Twitter when I was banned. But social media companies are anti-Jewish and are very pro-Islam. If you look at the financials of it, you’ll see that the Saudi prince has more shares in Twitter than its CEO, Jack Dorsey.
When you handcuffed yourself to Twitter’s headquarters to protest your ban, you wore the same kind of yellow star the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust. Many people – even conservatives – thought that was going too far. How do you respond?
I don’t think it was. The Jews didn’t have to wear a yellow star when they were being shipped to the gas chambers. The yellow star was what the Nazis placed on them beforehand to identify them, to put a target on their back, to blacklist them from society, to make them undesirables.
And that’s exactly what these big tech companies and left-wing organizations are doing. They’re making lists, and as a result, conservatives are being banned, de-platformed, silenced, and attacked in public. These are Nazi tactics. I felt it was a perfect representation.
I think it’s egregious that someone like Ilhan Omar is allowed to post hateful comments about Jews and Israel, but a conservative Jew like myself is not allowed to call her an anti-Jewish Muslim congresswoman. I’m sick and tired of people in the media trying to make it sound as if Muslims are the minority. There are two billion Muslims on this planet and only 15 million Jews.
I think Muslims have become the most protected class of people in this country, and I don’t think it’s a surprise that we’re seeing an increase in hate crimes against Jews in America now that we have these two Muslim women in Congress. I’m completely against Muslims being integrated into law enforcement and government positions. I don’t think it should be allowed, and I think it’s abhorrent that we’re allowing Muslims to take their oath on the Koran, which calls for the killing of Jews and Christians.
Many people argue that Islam need not be anti-Western. They claim that even though the Koran contains many anti-Jewish and anti-Christian statements, these only apply to Christians and Jews who lived 1,400 years ago, not to their modern-day descendants. How do you respond?
I think there’s only one form of Islam. I think it’s ridiculous to classify Muslims in terms of radicals and moderates. Every single Koran I’ve ever seen calls for the killing of Jews and Christians. Being a Muslim means living your life according to the teachings of Mohammed. To try to reform the teachings of Mohammed is a form of apostasy.
So people who say there’s a moderate form of Islam are not real Muslims…. You also have to remember that Muslims are encouraged in the Koran to lie to advance the cause of Islam, so just because a Muslim tells you they’re moderate and don’t support ISIS or Hamas doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth.
You’ve been banned from Twitter and PayPal, and just last week you were locked out from Chase online banking. These companies are all private, but they also get government benefits and tax breaks. That being the case, shouldn’t the government forbid them from banning users for their political views?
Yes, they should. Twitter claims to be acting as a platform and thus gets protections and immunities, but if it’s going to discriminate against conservatives, and ban me for saying Ilhan Omar is anti-Jewish but allow others to tweet “Gas the Jews” or “Hitler was a great man” or “Jews are termites,” then it really is a publisher and [its tax breaks] can’t be justified.
How do you understand all this censorship against conservatives? Even if it’s legal, it seems highly un-American.
I think censorship is increasing because these companies are trying to get payback against conservatives and President Trump, who was really the first presidential candidate to use social media the way he did to captivate people. I think it’s a direct response to Hillary Clinton losing.
Some people have suggested that it’s time for conservatives to found their own social media companies. What do you think?
What are conservatives supposed to do? Start their own banks, too? People are now getting banned from accepting money on PayPal or having a Chase bank account. People have tried creating their own platforms. Look at Gab [an alternative to Twitter]. They tried to create their own platform, but they’ve been removed everywhere.
Google owns the app stores, and Google hates Trump and conservatives. And Google is in business with the Muslims. They’re making jihadi apps so the Saudis can track their wives, and they have blasphemy apps too. No one wants to talk about these things.
So, I’m surprised that political affiliation isn’t already included in our national discrimination laws, but it should be.
You’ve broken the law on several occasions to make a political point. You’ve trespassed on government officials’ property, stormed a congressional hearing, etc. Are you trying to fight fire with fire? What’s your thinking?
I do think you have to fight fire with fire, and I think you have to give the left a taste of their own medicine. I also think that sometimes you have to take risks to make a statement.
The left has no sense of ethics whatsoever. They don’t care about rules, so why should we? Why should I care about optics and rules when jihadi congresswomen are perpetuating hate and causing a rise in hate crimes against Jews in America?
Besides, my tactics are pretty tame compared to what leftists are doing. I’m not beating Trump supporters in the street. I’m not wrapping myself in a Palestinian flag and putting a post-it note over Israel on a map like Rashida and Ilhan are.
Any new stunts in the works?
I have a couple of things in mind. We’ll see.