— This beautiful little ski town seems like an unlikely target
for an invasion of white supremacists.
— It's a great town.
The people that come here are people that love outdoor activities.
They are incredibly hardy.
— Whitefish is a really healthy town of mind, body and soul.
— But this town happens to be home to Richard Spencer,
who became America’s most famous white nationalist
after he neatly encapsulated fears about the Trump administration in one simple gesture:
— Heil Trump!
Heil our people!
Heil victory!
— When Richard Spencer stood up in front of the world
and did a Nazi salute in Washington D.C.,
it changed everything in Whitefish.
— Activists noticed Spencer had registered his non-profit at his mom’s property in town.
Tanya Gersh, a realtor, had a conversation with Spencer’s mom, Sherry Spencer.
— Sherry Spencer called me and Sherry said, “Tanya, what do I do?”
“I don't believe in the ideologies of my son.”
And I said, “Sherry, if this were my son,”
‘I would sell the building and I would donate some money to a human rights cause.”
And she said,
“You’re right, Tanya. That’s what I should do.”
“Will you help me?”
— Later, Sherry said Tanya pressured her to sell against her will.
She posted an email from Tanya in which she asked Sherry
to make a public statement against her son and donate proceeds to a charity she’d worked with.
That was catnip for Andrew Anglin, who runs a neo-Nazi site,
because Tanya is Jewish.
— Do you know no one has ever even told me a Jewish joke in my all my life?
Do you know I had no idea I was a minority?
— The final conclusions that I came to
were that it’s necessary to have an extreme version of conservatism.
This is the only way we’re going to save western civilization and the human race—
the white race, in particular.
— He posted Tanya’s address and phone number,
her husband’s contact info and her son’s social media accounts,
and urged his fans to troll them—
which they did.
Anglin threatened to hold a skinhead parade in downtown Whitefish,
though he couldn’t make it happen.
Now, the Southern Poverty Law Center is suing Anglin on Tanya’s behalf.
Supporters have already raised over $100,000 for Anglin’s defense,
and have called his actions “lawful, First Amendment-protected criticism.”
Anglin and Sherry Spencer declined to be interviewed after repeated requests.
— We were afraid for our safety.
The Nazis made me feel like this was all my fault,
and I was the dirtiest of the dirtiest,
ugliest, disgusting human being you could ever imagine, you know?
— What he was trying to do was to make her life miserable.
He didn't like her because she was Jewish, you know,
and so, we have filed a lawsuit against him.
— In just over over 24 hours after their call,
Tanya emailed Sherry a listing agreement,
a proposed statement for Sherry to make denouncing the alt-right,
and news that she might have already found a buyer.
— Tanya did speak out about this political issue, right?
So, does that open her up to Andrew Anglin’s political speech, as vile as it might be?
— No, nothing that anyone has ever claimed Tanya has done,
much less what she's actually done,
could possibly justify the vitriol that's been launched against her.
— I think people understand that what he did to her is mean.
But how is it illegal?
— If I had 700 of my friends call you day and night and, you know,
say the vilest things, if I attacked your children,
I think, from a commonsensical point of view,
we know that that's way beyond any kind of free speech line.
And that’s what he’s done.
It's not the first time he's done it,
but we want to make it the last time he's done it.
— SPLC made its name suing hate groups out of existence,
winning multi-million-dollar judgments against KKK groups who terrorized locals.
Not only is this is SPLC’s first case of digital harassment,
it is their first case against the alt-right.
It argues Anglin violated Montana’s anti-discrimination act,
and seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
— Before this happened, did you know much about trolls and online harassment?
— You know, you hear about the bullying that goes on in high school,
with the Facebook and all this kind of stuff.
I had never seen an attack on a community,
or an attack on a set of businesses, in a community like that.
— Tanya counted 700 harassing messages.
They sent her Holocaust memes.
They called so much, she had to turn off her phone.
They filled up her voicemail.
They called her her husband’s law office so much, it had to close for a while.
They harassed other stores in town.
They mailed threats disguised as holiday cards.
— So did you get a lot like that?
— Yeah.
— Where they would, like, try to trick you into listening?
— Yes.
When they started doing that, I had to stop answering my phone completely.
— Yeah.
— So the crematorium ones hit me in a really different way,
because they're not talking just about me.
They're talking about...
history, my history.
— They're reveling in, like, this global tragedy.
— Right, as if it's no big deal.
As if it's... as if they can throw it around.
It's one thing to hate somebody.
It's another thing to find out that people really believe that the Holocaust was a good thing.
— Yeah.
— That...
that still takes my breath away, to tell you the truth.
It’s...
— You know, in a prior generation,
Andrew Anglin would have burned a cross on Tanya's lawn.
In today's world, he's launched a digital storm.
What we're trying to do is bring tried and true principles into the digital age.
— This is very new.
Internet terrorism is very new.
If I didn't say this is not okay, and make a very, very strong stand against it,
and just pretend like it didn't happen to me because I was scared,
how many other people is Andrew Anglin going to do this to?