The publisher of a neo-Nazi website who launched a trolling campaign against a Jewish woman and her family should have to pay $14 million in damages, a US judge has said.
US magistrate judge Jeremiah Lynch called the harassment campaign, instigated by the Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin, “egregious and reprehensible”.
Mr Anglin targeted Tanya Gersh, a Jewish estate agent in Whitefish, Montana – a town where the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer and his family have sometimes lived.
The trolls claimed that Ms Gersh had unfairly “targeted” Mr Spencer’s mother, Sherry Spencer, as her son rose to notoriety as a figure on the American far right, the Guardian reports.
The Daily Stormer posted Ms Gersh’s name, address, and contact information, along with photographs of her and her 12-year-old son, superimposed on an image of Auschwitz.
It encouraged followers to contact her, later claiming that the comments were protected by freedom of speech.
The estate agent said she received threatening emails, text and voicemails, including promises to drive her to suicide and “endless references to being thrown in the oven, being gassed”.
She said in a 2017 interview: “I’ve been told: ‘You really should have died in the Holocaust with the rest of your people’. Sometimes, when I answered the phone, all I heard were gunshots.”
She claims to have been forced to stop working, due to a fear of exposing clients to harassment, and that she would herself be attacked by someone posting as a potential buyer.
Judge Lynch recommended Ms Gersh receive $10 million in punitive damages – the maximum amount allowed under Montana state law.
The judge also said she should be awarded an additional $4 million for lost earnings and “pain and suffering”.
Mr Anglin had argued unsuccessfully through his attorneys that his writings were protected by the first amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech.
Judge Lynch’s recommendations must now be approved by US district judge Dana Christensen.
