American Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah has filed a defamation lawsuit against a white supremacist website, the Daily Stormer, after it published an article accusing him of being the mastermind behind the terror attack in Manchester.

The Daily Stormer was recently kicked off of its domain on GoDaddy and was denied service by Google and a Chinese webhost. After the controversial website published a hateful, demeaning article about Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville last weekend, the website has been even more ostracized than before.

But on Wednesday, the site was live again for a few hours through a Russian domain. In a new article, the writers praised President Trump and claimed his relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin is responsible for the website’s new domain. But Roskomnadzor, Russia’s watchdog monitoring hateful content on the internet, requested the Russia Network Information Center to take it down, which it did.

Obeidallah filed his suit around the same time, alleging that the Daily Stormer caused him to receive death threats and suffer from emotional distress. The publication first started targeting him after he wrote a piece for the Daily Beast in 2015, in which he urged the Republican Party to speak out against the white nationalists who supported Donald Trump’s candidacy for president.

Today I filed a lawsuit against The Daily Stormer and Andrew Anglin for defamation – there are not two sides to white supremacy. pic.twitter.com/AZxysvqykt

— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@Deanofcomedy) August 16, 2017

In response, the Daily Stormer wrote an article calling Obeidallah a terrorist. Then in June of this year, Obeidallah wrote another article and questioned why Trump wouldn’t use the phrase “white supremacist terrorism.” In response, the Daily Stormer published a text with the headline, “Dean Obeidallah, Mastermind Behind Manchester Bombing, Calls on Trump to Declare Whites the Real Terrorists.”

After that article, some people actually believed Obeidallah was a terrorist, and he started receiving threats. The Daily Stormer even fabricated tweets to look like Obeidallah had written them, taking responsibility for the terror attack in Manchester in May. One of them praised Allah and another said he had fled to safety in Syria.

“Defendants took numerous steps, including mixing fact with falsehood, in an effort to create confusion and convince readers that the entirety of the Article is, in fact, true,” the lawsuit says. The Daily Stormer’s publisher, Andrew Anglin, and ten other people who republished the article are listed as defendants. None of them have responded.

“Right wing publications have come after me for years for everything from my progressive views to the fact I’m Muslim–that’s par for the course. But I had never, ever seen anything like this,” Obeidallah said.

The lawsuit also states that the Daily Stormer is among the 200 most frequented websites in America, with over 3 million monthly visitors. Though it claims to publish news stories, it intentionally spread false information, the lawsuit says. But maybe this suit can help other victims of defamation. “No one deserves to be defamed and threatened online by a racist neo-Nazi mob simply for expressing your ideas and beliefs,” Obeidallah said.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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For the Daily Beast, the past week has been a news outlet’s worst nightmare: earlier this week, a Daily Beast writer decided to do an investigative dive into the gay dating scene at the Rio Olympic village by using the gay dating app, Grindr. Nico Hines’ article, published Wednesday, included details of several different athletes he matched with–height, weight, age, etc. After the article went live seemingly every other web-based outlet on the planet wrote their own pieces about the “sleazy,” and “wildly unethical” story. And on Thursday evening, after heavily revising the article while keeping it up on its site, the Daily Beast removed it entirely.

After removing the article, “The Other Olympic Sport In Rio: Swiping,” editors at the Daily Beast wrote a note condemning their judgement on allowing the article to be written and then revising it while not removing it.

Today we did not uphold a deep set of The Daily Beast’s values. These values—which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world—are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers.

The Daily Beast was founded in 2010 to “seek out scoops, scandals and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots and hypocrites,” according to its editor-in-chief John Avalon. But with Hines’ article, some instead saw the outlet as being similar to the people it claimed to be confronting:

shame on @NicoHines/@thedailybeast. LGBTQ+ people deserve respect. we are not your zoo animals. so infuriating. https://t.co/wgCXgTtFyU

— Tyler Oakley (@tyleroakley) August 11, 2016

Amini Fonua, a gay swimmer from Tonga, posted a series of tweets in response to Hines’ article, expressing his concern that in some countries–such as Tonga–being gay is illegal. 

It is still illegal to be gay in Tonga, and while I’m strong enough to be me in front of the world, not everybody else is. Respect that.

— Amini Fonua (@AminiFonua) August 11, 2016

Imagine the one space you can feel safe, the one space you’re able to be yourself, ruined by a straight person who thinks it’s all a joke?

— Amini Fonua (@AminiFonua) August 11, 2016

Hines has yet to respond to his critics, but the Daily Beast owned up to its mistake, and vowed to never act against its ethics again. “We were wrong. We will do better,” the editors wrote.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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