Montana AG Intervenes in Neo-Nazi Case, Claims Unprecedented ‘Troll Storm’
Montana Attorney General Tim Fox filed a motion to intervene in a federal district court case this week, involving Defendant Andrew Anglin, a writer for the neo-nazi website, ‘The Daily Stormer’ and a Whitefish Real Estate agent Tanya Gersh.
“Anglin put a number of posts up on his blog, The Daily Stormer, calling on his followers to essentially harass a woman by the name of Gersh who lives up in Whitefish,” Fox said. “She is a real estate agent. The troll storm that followed from this harassment was unprecedented and led to her filing a lawsuit in federal district court.”
Attorney General Fox says he is intervening to defend Montana’s anti-intimidation law. Anglin’s accusation is that the law is contrary with First Amendment speech protections under the U.S. constitution, but Fox says that it is not.
“It is not,” Fox said. “It is narrowly defined. Certainly the conduct that he is engaged in. by I think any standard, would be intimidation and certainly something every Montanan should be opposed to. Montanas don’t like to put up with this kind of extreme intimidation by any group and certainly that is why this statue is on the books.”
The anti-intimidation law was passed in 1996 by a ballot initiative and says a person who is “injured, harassed, or aggrieved by a threat or intimidation has a civil cause of action against the person engaging in the threatening or intimidating behavior.”