Within hours of his identification, Robert Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people in a gun massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday, was revealed to have made antisemitic comments on social media, particularly Gab.com.
By Monday afternoon, Gab had been taken offline. A slew of companies including PayPal, GoDaddy and Gab’s hosting provider pulled their services to Gab, rendering the site inoperable.
What is Gab?
Gab is a social network for the far right, established in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter. The site’s founder, Andrew Torba, claimed it wasn’t for one particular group and that Gab’s mission was free speech.
In reality, it became a haven for right-wing hate speech and its purveyors, some of whom had been banned from Twitter or Facebook. It was previously in the news after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it was reported that several participants used Gab to plan the event. After Twitter began cracking down on hate speech earlier this year, kicking a number of avowed white supremacists off the platform, many of those newly banned users moved to Gab.
Mainstream conservative figures like Milo Yiannopoulous, Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter used Gab or endorsed it as a platform for free speech. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson interviewed Gab’s founder on his show. But Charlottesville cracked the facade, and after last weekend, Gab’s place in internet history was sealed: “Gab has become known as the social media base for a man who committed what is believed to be the deadliest act of anti-Semitism in American history,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen on Monday. “The obscure new face of right-wing extremism revealed itself.”
What did Robert Bowers post on Gab?
Before opening fire on a congregation attending Shabbat services in the Tree of Life synagogue, Bowers had copiously posted anti-Semitic remarks on Gab. “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a k*** infestation,” he wrote in one post. The morning of the attack, he railed against the Jewish refugee organization HIAS, claiming it “likes to bring invaders that kill our people.” He then signaled the start of his rampage: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
And after the attack made national headlines, Gab commenters posted anti-Semitic remarks about the victims. Vanity Fair noted that one user named @EmilyAnderson wrote, “I can’t wait to hear about how many lampshades the alleged synagogue shooter made out [sic] these jews in Pittsburg,” followed by three laughing cat emojis.
Is Gab definitely dead?
That is unclear. Even as the site went down, Torba was defiant, posting an open letter on Gab.com: “Gab has been no-platformed by essential internet infrastructure providers at every level,” he wrote. “We are the most censored, smeared, and no-platformed startup in history, which means we are a threat to the media and to the Silicon Valley Oligarchy.”
Torba wrote that his team would be “working around the clock to get Gab.com back online.” And he issued a challenge: “No-platform us all you want. Ban us all you want. Smear us all you want. You can’t stop an idea.”
