Researchers say Jewish blogger who’s banned from the UK is top Islamophobe
Pamela Geller is described as America's “most visible and flamboyant figurehead" when it comes to anti-Muslim sentiment
A Jewish blogger in the United States has been identified by researchers as being one of the biggest peddlers of anti-Muslim hate speech online.
Pamela Geller, who produces the Geller Report, has increased her Twitter following to two million in the last five months, and her influence has now been charted by anti-racist group Hope Not Hate.
Geller is banned from the UK and is described by America’s top anti-racist activists at Southern Poverty Law Center as being “the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead”.
UK-based researchers have now found that her influence is being magnified by 102 bots – unmanned autonomous accounts that automatically tweet or re-tweet content in order to spread it further and wider around the internet.
Researchers say many of these bots only post Geller’s content and are highly synchronised, meaning that they post the same content at or around the same time.
Geller’s organisation – Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) – placed adverts in American cities likening Muslims to “savages” and Islam to “jihad”.
She was strongly criticised by American Jewish organisations, with some cancelling events with her talk, to which she replied with a reference to the Holocaust, saying: “Jewish leadership is on the trains and thinks we will go quietly.”
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