Daily Beast Contributor Wins $4.1 Million From Neo-Nazi for ISIS Smear
Dean Obeidallah was falsely accused of being behind a terrorist attack by The Daily Stormer, whose on-the-run founder just lost big in court.After Dean Obeidallah wrote a Daily Beast article condemning President Trump’s approach to white supremacist terror in 2017, the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer website falsely accused Obeidallah of being behind an ISIS attack.
Now The Daily Stormer’s founder is being forced to pay him millions for the smear.
Obeidallah, a comedian and radio host, sued Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin for defamation, and on Wednesday a judge ordered Anglin to pay $4.1 million in damages.
“The judge apparently found what they did so atrocious he gave them the most he could in punitive damages,” Obeidallah told The Daily Beast.
He said he plans on giving the money to organizations that combat bigotry.
“This was never about collecting money. If I collect a penny from the Nazis, I’m not going to keep their money. I’m going to give it to organizations that fight hate and bigotry, the very groups Nazis despise.”
Anglin, who has been on the lam for more than a year, didn’t testify, although his father did. The ruling comes as the latest legal strike against Anglin, who is currently avoiding another lawsuit by a Jewish woman who received death threats after Anglin attacked her on his site.
In Obeidallah’s case, the harassment started after he wrote an article entitled, “Will Donald Trump Ever Say the Words ‘White Supremacist Terrorism’?”
“We already had three to four acts of violence, murders, by people who were self-proclaimed white supremacists. The thesis of my article was that, during his campaign Trump demanded we say ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ Why won’t he say the words ‘white supremacist terrorism?’ said Obeidallah, who is Muslim.
“That got the eye of Andrew Anglin at the Daily Stormer who wrote an article the next day quoting my article and smearing me in the first line as an ISIS mastermind.”
“They fabricated tweets that looked real, that said I was involved in the Manchester bombing.”
— Dean ObeidallahThe doctored tweets appeared on the Stormer, a once-popular website that received approximately 3.18 million page views while the article was active, according to Obeidallah’s lawsuit. (The Stormer lost significant standing after it was kicked off its old webhost.)
Stormer readers piled on, sending Obeidallah death threats. The attacks took a toll on him, he said. Whereas Obeidallah once had few reservations about meeting fans, he said he’s now more cautious about scheduling meet-ups with people who reach out online.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/daily-beast-contributor-dean-obeidallah-wins-dolla... 
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