Amy Mek

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Amy Mek
Born
Amy Jane Mekelburg

1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Rhode Island
Occupations
Years active2013–present
Websiterairfoundation.com

Amy Mekelburg (born 1972 or 1973), known online as Amy Mek, is an American anti-Muslim Twitter user.[1] Her full identity was not known, until she and members of her family were exposed, by some accounts doxxed,[2] by HuffPost journalist Luke O'Brien in 2018, at a time when she had amassed over 200,000 followers.[1]

Background[edit]

Mekelburg is Jewish.[3] She grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and attended the University of Rhode Island, graduating in 1996 with a degree in communication studies.[1] By 2003 she lived in Manhattan's Upper East Side with her husband Salvatore "Sal" Siino.[1] With her husband, she founded a non-profit organization dedicated to overturning the conviction of Paul Cortez, a friend, for second-degree murder, believing him to have been wrongfully convicted.[1] In 2016, she moved to Fishkill, New York to be closer to Cortez, after he was transferred to Green Haven Correctional Facility, while she presented herself as a psychotherapist in the prison system.[1]

Twitter account[edit]

She began her Twitter account in 2013, and had gained 200,000 followers by 2018, with endorsements from figures such as Donald Trump and Michael Flynn.[1] She was then noted to be a very prolific user, tweeting around 25 times a day, the majority characterized as Islamophobic posts, in which she according to O'Brien "anonymously spread hate online for years", including memes.[1] Her account was banned in France and in Germany due to her postings.[1][4] Amy Mek was speculated in 2017 by San Francisco Examiner columnist Maureen Erwin[5] and NBC News reporter Ken Dilanian of being a bot account,[6] although she had been interviewed in a New York Times article about women who supported Donald Trump in 2016.[3]

She also founded the Resistance Against Islamic Radicals (RAIR) organization to advance her views,[1][3] identifying as part of the counter-jihad movement.[7] The organization was later renamed to Rise Align Ignite Reclaim, or RAIR Foundation, with Chris Gaubatz as its president.[8]

Mekelburg's identity was revealed in 2018 by HuffPost journalist Luke O'Brien.[1][2][3] As Mekelburg's husband was fired from his job at the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as a direct result of O'Brien's efforts, O'Brien and his colleagues were also doxxed and in turn received widespread online threats, as her story was promoted on 4chan and by figures such as Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich.[2][9][10] A controversy also ensued as Mekelburg's brother, who did not support Mekelburg's views, owned a café, which was targeted by calls for boycott.[11][12][13] The journalism ethics of revealing Mekelburg and her family's identities have been debated.[14][15][16] Media Matters for America claimed the incident did not constitute doxxing, since O'Brien did not provide a phone number, address or email address for her, and since she uses a real photo and similar name to her real name online.[17]

Mekelburg has later been active interviewing notable critics of Islam, and reuploading videos related to exposing "the truth" about Islam.[3] She received a blue checkmark for her Twitter account in 2022, following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.[18] In 2023, Elon Musk personally responded to a post by Mekelburg showing a video of a Muslim imam who promoted jihad in France which the imam said would make it an Islamic country, with "He is right".[4]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k O'Brien, Luke (June 1, 2018) [May 31, 2018]. "Trump's Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec". HuffPost.
  2. ^ a b c Whelan, Glen (2021). Megacorporation: The Infinite Times of Alphabet. Cambridge University Press. pp. 88–89. ISBN 9781108428026.
  3. ^ a b c d e Friedberg, Brian; Donovan, Joan (August 10, 2019). "On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Bot: Pseudoanonymous Inuence Operations and Networked Social Movements" (PDF). Journal of Design and Science (6): 14–15. doi:10.21428/7808da6b.45957184 (inactive 2024-05-29).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of May 2024 (link)
  4. ^ a b Li, Roland (July 4, 2023). "Elon Musk supports limiting the rights of nonparents to vote". San Francisco Chronicle.
  5. ^ Erwin, Maureen (March 30, 2017). "Searching for proof of Amy". San Francisco Examiner. Archived from the original on March 30, 2017.
  6. ^ Erwin, Maureen (November 23, 2017). "Twitter still turning blind eye to abusive bots". San Francisco Examiner.
  7. ^ @AmyMek (November 26, 2020). "Counter-Jihad fighters like myself have been receiving these same threats for years..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  8. ^ "Unmasked anti-Muslim troll Amy Mekelburg connected to Chris Gaubatz". Southern Poverty Law Center. June 12, 2018.
  9. ^ Bauman, Nick (June 8, 2018) [June 5, 2018]. "A HuffPost Reporter Was Bombarded With Threats. Twitter Suspended Him". HuffPost.
  10. ^ Wilson, Jason (June 14, 2018). "Doxxing, assault, death threats: the new dangers facing US journalists covering extremism". The Guardian.
  11. ^ Crowley, Chris (June 1, 2018). "How a Brooklyn Beer Bar Got Caught Up in a Story About a Hate-Spewing Twitter Troll". Grub Street.
  12. ^ Wilson, Michael (June 6, 2018). "An Online Agitator, a Social Media Exposé and the Fallout in Brooklyn". The New York Times.
  13. ^ O'Hara, Andres (June 7, 2018). "Should A Brooklyn Cafe Suffer Because The Owner's Sister Is A Popular Islamophobe?". Gothamist.
  14. ^ Blair, Taylor; Shah, Paras; Korde-Samos, Roona (December 21, 2021). "Podcast: The Ethics of AmyMek". The Click. American Journalism Online Master’s Program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.
  15. ^ Head, Jason (2018). "Case Study: Doxing and Digital Journalism". Media Ethics. 29 (2) (Spring 2018 ed.).
  16. ^ Kupfer, Theodore (June 8, 2018). "Doxing the Doxer's Doxer". National Review.
  17. ^ Cristina, López G. (June 1, 2018). "After HuffPost profile of anti-Muslim Twitter crusader, 4chan trolls begin organizing database of "leftist journos"". Media Matters for America.
  18. ^ Wilson, Jason (November 16, 2022). "Twitter Blesses Extremists With Paid 'Blue Checks'". Southern Poverty Law Center.

External links[edit]

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