From Informed Comment
Liz Sawyer at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the Twitter account of Danielle Stella, the Republican challenger to Ilhan Omar has been shut down after she called for her opponent to be lynched.
Stella managed to combine the worst excesses of Jim Crow punitive policies toward the African-American congresswoman with the most egregious Islamophobic lies. She alleged, with no evidence, that Omar had passed sensitive US government information to Iran, and that if so she should be hanged as a traitor.
Stella responded to the ban by accusing Twitter of being a supporter of terrorism and pedophilia.
Her case shows how problematic is the decision of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to allow political campaigns to lie at will in their paid advertising on that platform. Presumably Stella could still put her putrid and entirely false allegations into a Facebook ad with no repercussions.
Stella seems to have a morally corrupt soul and so I'm not sure it will do any good, but maybe we could begin by explaining that Somalis are Sunni Muslims have have no affinity for the Shiite government of Iran. Most Somalis are moderate Sufi Muslims, and while I don't know for sure, that is likely Omar's own background. Iran persecutes Sufis and discriminates against Sunnis. The fundamentalist extremists in Somalia, the al-Shabaab, are linked to Saudi Arabia, a major foe of Iran. Omar's family fled the instability created by groups like al-Shabaab, and she is perhaps the only refugee presently sitting in Congress (Marco Rubio lied about having that status).
The insane conspiracy theory into which Stella bought was spread by the so-called Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
Negar Mortazavià Š@NegarMortazavi
Looks like FDD has deleted the conspiracy tweet against @ IlhanMN right after I pointed it out, but with no explanation or clarification. Here is the deleted tweet for those who missed. https:// twitter.com/negarmortazavi /status/1200518576307933187 "
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