Photo : Katherine Krueger

Laura Loomer, friend to the alt-right and woman who pops up nearly everywhere to scream at public figures, was recently banned from Twitter for making virulently Islamophobic remarks about Minnesota Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar. So on Thursday afternoon, she handcuffed herself to the door of Twitter’s headquarters in New York in protest.




The protest, which began around 4 p.m., involved Loomer wearing an actual yellow star—you know, like the ones Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust—and shouting into a megaphone about how desperate she is to get back on Twitter, which should be enough of a red flag. And to make this even more pathetic: Loomer had only handcuffed herself to one of the office’s double glass doors, allowing NYPD officers and others to freely enter and exit the building through the second door, rending her protest largely useless.

I went to see what was up for myself. When I asked Loomer why she didn’t fully commit to the bit, she said, quite sensibly, that chaining the doors shut completely would be a fire hazard.

Loomer repeatedly shouted out that she’d thrown away the key to the handcuffs. Over the next hour, more and more cops showed up, until there were about two dozen, but none of them appeared too eager to remove her by force.


It’s deeply not worth quoting from the scripted remarks she’d clearly rehearsed—the thrust being the hypocrisy of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey allowing Louis Farrakhan to stay on the site while she’s banned—but Loomer repeatedly shouted she’s a “Jewish conservative woman” and claimed she’s been de-platformed for those identity traits.

Around the time I was leaving, Loomer mostly looked like an extremely cold zoo animal fenced in on all sides by police barricades. It was hovering around 40 degrees, and the sun was setting, but she heroically vowed to stand watch all night. The modestly sized crowd gathered were mostly there to mock her, or promote the Deadspin Awards.

And with Twitter reportedly declining to press charges, she’s allowed to stay as long as she wants. The one-woman crusade continues; we’ll check in later to see if she’s still half-heartedly doing this:


Update, 8:27 p.m. ET: We can all collectively exhale: It’s over, and she lost.