Laura Loomer
Laura Elizabeth Loomer is an American political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality known for her far-right politics and commentary. She was a reporter for Canadian far-right website The Rebel Media during the summer of 2017, resigning that September. Prior to June 2017, she worked for Project Veritas with James O'Keefe. Loomer is banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, GoFundMe, Venmo, MGM Resorts, PayPal, Lyft, Uber and Uber Eats. She was also banned from the March 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference after she attempted to confront reporters by chasing them through the conference.
Loomer registered to run in the 2020 election primary to become the Republican candidate for a seat in the House of Representatives against Democratic Representative Lois Frankel in Florida's 21st congressional district.
Early life and education
Loomer was raised in Arizona. She attended Mount Holyoke College, leaving after one semester; she said she felt targeted for being conservative. She transferred to Barry University, from which she graduated with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism. She is Jewish.Views
Loomer has described herself as a nationalist, and has described immigration as a threat to American heritage. Fortune has described Loomer as a "far-right provocateur".Loomer has denounced the alt-right, and has publicly repudiated white supremacist Richard B. Spencer, who coined the term, and has refused to share a stage with him. Loomer has received antisemitic threats and harassment from the alt-right following this dispute. Despite this, Loomer has been described as being part of the alt-right movement, as well as alt-lite.
Cultural critic James Wolcott has described Loomer as "A raging zealot... intent on becoming the agent provocateur."
Anti-Muslim
On November 1, 2017, following a terrorist attack in New York City, Loomer tweeted that she was late to a conference because she could not find a "non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver". She called for the creation of a new ride-sharing company which did not employ Muslims after it became known that the suspect in the attack was a former driver for Uber. Her day-long "tweetstorm" blamed all Muslims for the activities of radical Islamists such as ISIS. Following this, both Uber and Lyft announced that she had violated their guidelines and was banned from using their services. She described herself on Twitter at the time as a “#ProudIslamophobe" and called for a complete and permanent ban on Muslims entering the United States.In August 2018, Loomer disrupted a congressional campaign event for Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar which was attended by House candidate Rashida Tlaib. Loomer shouted questions which implied that Tlaib was antisemitic. In November that year, Twitter banned Loomer from its platform for violating its rules against hateful behavior. According to Loomer, she was banned for a tweet about the newly elected Congresswoman in which Loomer called Omar "anti-Jewish", and described her as a member of a religion in which "homosexuals are oppressed" and women are "abused" and "forced to wear the hijab." Loomer denied that the tweet was a violation. A week following the ban, she handcuffed herself to a door of the Twitter headquarters in New York City in protest while wearing a yellow "Jude" patch. After approximately two hours, police removed the handcuffs with a bolt cutter. Loomer was not arrested.
In February 2019, Loomer traveled to Minnesota with Jacob Wohl, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has previously made high-profile false claims about public figures. Loomer and Wohl stated they were investigating a false and debunked conspiracy theory which held that Omar, U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district and a Somali-American, had married her brother so that he could obtain U.S. citizenship. Vox debunked Loomer and Wohl's conspiracy theory as "largely nonsensical", citing that there is no evidence that Ahmed Elmi, Omar's ex-husband whom Loomer and Wohl claimed to be her brother, was related to Omar in any way; that U.S. law permits a citizen to petition citizenship for their siblings, voiding the need for a marriage; and that Elmi, a British citizen, has never received U.S. citizenship. Loomer had previously accosted Omar with the false rumor at the October 2018 campaign event. On Instagram in 2019, Loomer uploaded a video about Representative Omar, blaming her and all Muslims for 9/11 and asserting "Muslims should not even be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country”.
Right Wing Watch reported that donations solicited by Loomer were going to the address of The United West, an organization which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-Muslim hate group. The Council on American–Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights organization, also refers to The United West as "Islamophobic".
Spreading conspiracy theories
Loomer has promoted a number of conspiracy theories, mostly related to mass shootings. She has falsely insinuated that school shootings in Santa Fe, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, were staged, and that the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shootings was affiliated with ISIS. Loomer implied on Twitter that crisis actors were used for the May 2018 High School shooting in Santa Fe, prompting concerns about the spread of misleading information and conspiracy theories by troll farms and social bots.In July 2018, Loomer promoted the false narrative that a man arrested with bomb-making equipment and illegal weapons had been a "leftist antifa terrorist". The individual in question was instead a conservative whose Facebook profile was filled with pro-Second Amendment memes.
In October, during the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts, Loomer tried to spread the false conspiracy theory that the bombing attacks were a "false flag" operation by the Democrats.
Career
Loomer is a former employee of James O'Keefe, a right-wing activist known for producing secretly recorded, deceptively edited undercover audio and video investigations. Until her resignation in September 2017, Loomer was the New York correspondent for the Canadian far-right news site The Rebel Media, which has been referred to as the "Canadian Breitbart."On March 1, 2019, Loomer had her press credentials revoked by the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, and was banned from the event, after she heckled CNN reporter Oliver Darcy with questions about internet censorship and social media bans. In response to being removed from the event, Loomer stated to Jon Levine of TheWrap:
The reason why I confronted Oliver Darcy is because Oliver Darcy led a lobbying initiative as an employee of CNN to have Alex Jones de-platformed from Twitter. Oliver Darcy is a perpetual victim. He is constantly advocating for people to be banned and silenced. As a member of the media, Oliver Darcy should respect our First Amendment right.
Activism
2015–2017
In March 2015, Loomer used a concealed video camera to record her conversations with Barry University officials, discussing the idea of starting a club called "Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria." The school apparently asked only that the club's name be changed to "Students in Support of the Middle East." The video of her encounter was released by James O'Keefe with Project Veritas. O'Keefe alleged that Loomer's video captured a university official unfazed at the notion of starting an on-campus organization that would support ISIS. Shortly after the edited video was released by O'Keefe, Loomer was suspended by the university for violating the student code of conduct rules; criminal charges were also filed against her for taping university officials without their knowledge or consent. At the time, Loomer was an honors student in her senior year, the president of Barry University's Young Republicans Club, and majoring in communications.According to a Clinton campaign official, in July 2015 Loomer and two other women posing as supporters of Hillary Clinton attempted to "entrap" campaign workers into accepting illegal cash donations. The official said that the campaign had complied with the law.
On November 8, 2016, the day of the U.S. 2016 Presidential election, Loomer went to a polling station dressed in a burqa and asked for a ballot under the name of Huma Abedin.
On June 7, 2017, at a Chelsea Clinton book signing event in New York City, Loomer asked Chelsea to sign a copy of her new children's book, She Persisted, for Juanita Broaddrick, one of former President Bill Clinton's most persistent accusers. The former first daughter refused to sign it.
On June 10, 2017, Loomer gave a speech to a crowd of anti-sharia marchers in New York City and condemned "liberals who aligned themselves with sharia law." Loomer put a burqa on the Fearless Girl statue adjacent to the Merrill Lynch building.
''Julius Caesar'' play disruption
On June 16, 2017, Loomer disrupted the Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar in New York City, by walking on stage during the live performance shortly after Caesar was assassinated. Before being escorted off the stage by security, Loomer shouted "Stop the normalization of political violence against the right! This is unacceptable!" The play portrayed a "Trump-like" Caesar with a Slovenian-accented wife. Loomer, who is pro-Trump, was arrested for disorderly conduct and trespassing. The Public Theater responded by saying although they're "champions" of the First Amendment, the disruption was caused by "social media". On June 19, Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post wrote that she did not believe Loomer was genuinely offended by the play, and that she was looking for attention and to collect a $1,000 bounty offered by an alt-right individual for disruption of the production.On June 19, 2017, as a guest on the Fox News program Hannity, Loomer admitted she knew that disrupting the Shakespeare in the Park play would result in criminal charges against her. During the interview, Loomer compared the "Trump-like" Caesar assassination to a May 2017 video of former CNN host Kathy Griffin holding a mask of a bloody severed head of President Donald Trump, Loomer called the Caesar play and the Griffin video "assassination porn" and accused the "left" of a systematic pattern of using free speech and art as a pretext to promote violence against Donald Trump and the "right".
On June 20, 2017, The Daily Beast reported that 'Free Laura', a website for soliciting donations for her arrest, was purchased by Loomer's employer Ezra Levant, the owner of The Rebel Media, six hours before the play started, according to domain records. Loomer also promoted a WeSearchr page for donations, which by June 21 had received $12,385 from 241 contributors, more money than the normal penalties for the charges she was facing.
2018
Loomer attended the March 2018 trial of Noor Salman using press credentials, which were revoked after Loomer harassed Salman's family. Loomer returned to the trial the next day and was removed by a U.S. marshal.In April 2018, Loomer disrupted an event promoting James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty. She was taken out of the building by security.
In September 2018, Loomer briefly disrupted a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. Loomer accused Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who was giving testimony before the committee, of censoring conservatives on the platform and of attempting to influence the election in favor of Democrats. Republican Representative Billy Long, who was an auctioneer before joining Congress, drowned her shouting out with an auction chant until she was escorted from the building.
In November 2018, Loomer, represented by Larry Klayman, joined an unsuccessful lawsuit against Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, alleging these companies conspired to censor conservative content.
2019
On January 14, 2019, Loomer and several men she met in a Home Depot parking lot and tricked into following her jumped the fence at Nancy Pelosi's Napa, California, home and set up a tent on her lawn to protest immigration. A Loomer crew member told a reporter it was legal to jump the fence since there were not any "No Trespassing" signs posted.On January 19, Loomer attempted to interrupt a speaker at the Women's March in Washington, D.C. Loomer appeared onstage and shouted "The Women’s March does not represent Jewish people," calling it a Nazi organization. As she was escorted off by security, she continued, shouting "What about the Jews?". A video of the event was posted on Twitter.
On January 30, Loomer and others jumped the wall surrounding the California Governor's Mansion in Sacramento, California. They wore Mexican serapes and sombreros, with one wearing a "large fake mustache", and said they were protesting Governor Gavin Newsom's stance on immigration. They were arrested, given citations, and released within a few hours. The group then provoked a confrontation outside a Mexican restaurant in downtown Sacramento. They live-streamed their activities.
Loomer was banned from PayPal on February 5, 2019. In response, Loomer wrote that she would take action against "the Left wing terrorists and tech tyrants who are trying to shut me down." "I have nothing to lose anymore," she wrote, "so trust me when I say I will stop at nothing to make sure justice is served for the way Silicon Valley has disenfranchised me, falsely accusing me of being a white supremacist, a Nazi, anti-Muslim, a racist, a bigot, and every other smear in the book." Loomer had been banned from Twitter in November 2018 for hate speech against Representative Ilhan Omar, and was also banned from GoFundMe and Venmo.
In May 2019, Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary banned Loomer and several other high-profile far-right extremists from using the company's services for spreading misinformation and extremism. In July 2019, Loomer, again represented by Klayman, filed a defamation lawsuit against Facebook.
In August 2019, Loomer filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Representative Rashida Tlaib that alleged that during the disruption of an August 2018 campaign event by Loomer and others, Tlaib "violently grabbed" Loomer's cellphone while Loomer was questioning her about foreign policy. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the "Video of the incident includes audio of Loomer asking Tlaib if she was "willing to admit … that Hamas is a terrorist organization.""