Laura Loomer has been banned from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Uber and Lyft. Now she’s running for Lois Frankel’s seat.
Laura Loomer is living the worst nightmare of every millennial, social media provocateur and political candidate: A ban on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, PayPal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Uber and Lyft.
Her banishment from social media for using hate speech means the 26-year-old South Palm Beacher and GOP candidate for Democrat U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel’s seat in Congress can no longer ignite tweet storms with her far-right rants against Islam, which she believes is "a cancer on society."
Loomer is not able to reach her "millions" of fans to solicit donations for her guerrilla-style journalism and activism — like the time she stood with a pink selfie-stick during the congressional testimony of Jack Dorsey, shouting that the Twitter CEO was trying to "sway the (2018 mid-term) election so Democrats can steal the election."
The outrage and attention that Loomer, like other trolls, thrives on has disappeared, jeopardizing her role as the it-girl among conspiracy theorists and far-right Trump supporters.
"My life is unlivable at this point in time!" Loomer shouted during an interview with fellow social media outcast Alex Jones on his show InfoWars. "Does anyone understand how ruined my life is?"
Her exile from the cyber world would seemingly be a debilitating hurdle — from fundraising to grassroots organizing to daily mobility — as Loomer seeks to organize a congressional campaign less than a year from a primary in which she will have to defeat at least three Republican rivals, all with access to the online tools of modern electioneering.
She’s turned her banishment into a call to action
Her bank suspended her access to online banking. And now she has to hail taxis because she was banned by Lyft and Uber — the consequence of a tweet calling for the creation of "a non-Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver."
But, facing the fate of other de-platformed social media provocateurs, like Milo Yiannopoulos, now a debt-ridden has-been troll, Loomer has turned her banishment into a call to action.
In August, the self-described "most banned woman in the world" filed to run against Frankel, the 71-year-old West Palm Beach Democrat whose 32 years in politics includes 14 years in the Florida House of Representatives, two terms as mayor of West Palm Beach and a seat in the U.S. Congress since 2013.
Loomer’s campaign puts her back in the limelight and on a new stage — one where she can be booed but not banished. Her platform will focus on censorship by "Big Tech," "Jew-haters" in Congress and steadfast support for President Donald Trump.
"So the biggest social media companies that you're probably using every single day, the most powerful tech companies in the world, are taking meetings with Islamic terror organizations to shut down Jews, to shut down Trump supporters, anybody who voices opposition," Loomer said at a dinner sponsored by the Republican Federated Women of South Florida on Sept. 26.
She showed up at Nancy Pelosi’s Napa Valley home
Loomer made no mention of issues that polls show are most important to voters: Health care, insurance and prescription drug costs, Medicare, immigration, gun control, student debt and climate change.
Instead, she focused on how "Big Tech" had ruined her life and stymied her candidacy. Censorship and mainstream media’s liberal bias is threatening the First Amendment and democracy, she said.
She showed the audience a video montage of her exploits:
— Knocking on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home in Napa Valley, Calif. with three "undocumented" men, who she purportedly tricked into trespassing.
— Confronting U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota with false accusations that she married her brother.
— Chaining herself to the doors of Twitter’s New York offices.
Loomer’s stance on other issues will be addressed after she formally announces her candidacy, said Karen Giorno, Loomer’s campaign adviser.
Giorno, a longtime political strategist who held senior positions in the George H.W. Bush administration, served as Gov. Rick Scott’s Director of External Affairs and was a senior political adviser in Trump’s 2016 campaign, predicted Loomer’s campaign "will be the most watched congressional race in the country."
For now, the campaign is focused on fundraising and introducing Loomer to District 21 voters, said Giorno.
"There will be white papers and she’ll be able to talk about this further," Giorno added.
Campaigning without an @
Without a social media presence, Loomer’s campaign will rely on emails, text messages, door-knocking, "chicken dinner" campaign appearances, cringe-worthy verbal attacks and fact-defying hyperbole.
"We have actual jihadists roaming the halls of Congress," Loomer told the crowd. "And where's Lois Frankel?"
Giorno, also a born-again Christian, went further.
"I don’t know how she (Frankel) even calls herself a Jew," Giorno said. "She disgusts me."
Loomer cannot buy ads on Facebook to target District 21 voters. She cannot tweet her opinions on breaking news or advertise campaign events on Facebook. Still, Giorno predicts Loomer will "raise an army" from the millions of fans who once followed her on social media.
"They all have Twitter accounts. They all have Facebook accounts," Giorno said. "These folks speak about Laura through their platforms."
Using their own accounts and the hashtags #LoomerforCongress, fans are posting links to pages for campaign contributions and articles from Loomer’s personal website.
She’s got some social workarounds thanks to right-wing outlets
"If I didn’t think we could reach them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation," said Giorno, adding that it didn’t matter whether those fans are District 21 voters.
Loomer also has a workaround for using PayPal to raise funds. Instead of using the popular online money transfer service employed by many campaigns to raise money, Loomer is using Anedot, a fundraising platform widely used by conservative groups and politicians.
Besides traditional cash donations, Loomer’s campaign initially accepted contributions via Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that allows donors to make anonymous contributions. However, that proved problematic. The Federal Election Commission requires committees and candidates to identify donors and the amount of their contribution.
Loomer does not accept contributions from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also known as CAIR, or white supremacists.
Before Loomer can take on Frankel, she needs to defeat three other Republican candidates in the August 2020 primary. Her opponents, all of whom have social media accounts, are:
— Christian F. Aosta: A Palm Beach State College engineering instructor who promotes energy security and vocational education.
— Victor Garcia da Rosa: He supports the right to choose abortion in extreme cases, wanted more spending in the Department of Veterans Affairs and supported background checks for gun purchasers but was against a national registry.
— Aaron Scanlan: A Realtor and former police officer who, in a campaign video, said he decided to run because people were "trying to turn this country into something that it never was."
Although Loomer cannot use mainstream social media, she does have an account on Parler — an alternative to Twitter primarily used by persons banned from mainstream social media, supporters of Trump and right-wing politicos. There, she has 84,000 followers.
Loomer also uses Telegram, a cloud-based instant messaging service, where she has 12,100 members. YouTube is the only mainstream platform Loomer still has access to. Her YouTube channel has 87,000 subscribers.
Combined, her 183,000 followers on those platforms are a fraction of the millions Loomer said she had before the ban.
She’s a 2015 Barry University graduate
Besides the inconvenience of having to spend $1,000 to buy another cellphone, because Twitter also blocked her phone number and IP address, and the humiliation of having to make wire transfers instead of using Venmo, the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter bans have ruined her reputation and cut her income 90 percent, according to lawsuits filed in Palm Beach County.
"An investigative journalist’s reputation is paramount," her attorney, Larry Klayman of Boca Raton, wrote in the federal lawsuit against Facebook. "Falsely labeling Plaintiff Loomer as ’dangerous’ and falsely accusing her of having engaged in hate and/or violence damages her good will and reputation, making it impossible for her to successfully continue her profession and also harms her personally."
Loomer earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast and emerging media from Barry University in 2015. Loomer claims she was valedictorian of her class but was expelled one month before graduation for secretly — and illegally — recording discussions with administrators about starting a club supporting ISIS on campus.
Loomer said she pulled the prank to expose the administration’s liberal bias and extreme political correctness.
She’s suing Facebook for more than $3 billion
Loomer asked Facebook for a retraction, apology and reinstatement. The social media giant "arrogantly and unlawfully" ignored the request, according to the lawsuit. The defamation is "on-going and compounded each and every day," according to the lawsuit.
To punish Facebook for the damage to Loomer’s career, income and reputation, Loomer’s attorney is seeking 5 percent of Facebook’s $63 billion net worth — more than $3 billion. Loomer should be awarded another $35 million for "actual, consequential, and incidental damages for malicious defamatory conduct," according to the lawsuit.
In its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Facebook’s attorneys argue that because Loomer is a public figure, she must prove that Facebook acted maliciously and knew its statements explaining why she was banned were false or disregarded whether they were false. Also, Loomer had not proven that she did not "amplify or traffic in hate" — the standard Facebook uses to deactivate accounts.
"Permitting the case to proceed would not only discourage platforms from policing their services for objectionable content," Facebook’s attorneys wrote.
If the case is not dismissed and cannot be resolved, a trial is scheduled for Oct. 13, 2020 — three weeks before the November 2020 general election.
In another lawsuit against Twitter and CAIR, Loomer does not specify how much she is seeking. The 39-page lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County Circuit Court in April claims Loomer was banned from Twitter because of "her past run-ins with CAIR Florida and because of her strident criticism of CAIR’s ’favorite daughter,’ Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar."
Both congresswomen are Muslim.
Because Twitter was Loomer’s most important publishing platform, the ban has cut Loomer’s income 90 percent and quashed other business opportunities, according to the lawsuit. Loomer dropped Twitter from the lawsuit and the case was moved to federal court.
Attorneys for CAIR have asked for the case to be dismissed, claiming it "reeks of Islamophobia." CAIR did not instruct Twitter to ban Loomer, but even if it had, CAIR has the right to do so — just as Twitter has the right to ban Loomer, the attorneys wrote.
"There is no First Amendment right to use another’s private property as a forum for one’s speech," CAIR’s attorneys wrote. The judge has not yet ruled on the motion and a trial date has not be set.
For all of the inconvenience, humiliation and loss of income, Loomer sees herself as a victim.
"I have been maliciously defamed and then retaliated against with threats against my life and by the most powerful media companies in the world simply for asking questions as a journalist," Loomer said. "I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done or said."
