Sounds Mildly Important

Forbes:

A federal judge today ordered the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and its controversial editor Andrew Anglin to pay $4.1 million to Muslim Comedian Dean Obeidallah for falsely accusing him of being the mastermind behind the 2017 terrorist attack at a U.K. pop concert that left 22 dead.

According to the New York Times, Obeidallah earned the ire of Anglin for a 2015 Daily Beast column that spoke of the “ bone-chilling attraction to Trump by white nationalist groups. It’s almost like they view Trump’s candidacy as their last stand against the changing demographics of America. He’s become the poster child for their philosophy that “White Lives Matter More.’

Daily Stormer readers took offense to Obeidallah’s comment and threatened him with bodily harm over social media and in the story’s comments section, according to the paper.’

In a June 13 ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. of the Southern District of Ohio, noted that the website Anglin founded in 2013 that denigrates Jews and other minorities “acted with actual malice when they published false statements… that Obedallah committed crimes of terror, including murder.” 

Sargus awarded Obeidallah $3.28 million in punitive damages along with $470,000 in economic damages and $350,000 in non-economic damages along with his attorneys fees and costs. He also issued a permanent injunction ordering the removal of any content that describes Obeidallah as a terrorist or a member of ISIS.

Interesting wrinkle:

Enforcing the court’s order may be difficult since Anglin’s whereabouts are unknown and he is thought to be living outside the U.S. He didn’t respond to an email request for comment for this story and didn’t retain a lawyer to fight Obeidalllah’s lawsuit. There also was no discussion of the case on The Daily Stormer website, which calls itself “the most censored publication in history.”

These Daddy State propaganda pimps can operate with some impunity because of the shielding effect of the globalized intertoobz, and by relying on the time-honored tactic of Appropriated Victimhood.

And while we have to be very careful about putting the chill on Free Speech, it's not unreasonable to go after opinion outlets that propagate the kind of outright lies that do real harm to real people.

What's really interesting to me though is the fact that "we the good folk" are kinda quietly starting to rack up some good solid wins against these clowns.

• Alex Jones has been spanked pretty hard
• The NRA is in debt - reportedly teetering on the abyss - having to defend itself from something that might actually be a case that's being made against them for laundering Russian money in order to funnel it to GOP campaigns
• RT and DumFux News are both feeling the effects of a viewership  starting to get hip to their tricks
• KKK got slammed in court not all that long ago too

So, in spite of my oft-stated pessimism (ie: "this joint is done, and we're just arguing about who gets to do what with the corpse)...

...it seems we ain't quite dead yet.