And even before his recent exploits, Goldberg's dangerous social media fantasies may have had real-world consequences. An Australi Witness tweet in the lead up to an exhibition of pictures of the Prophet Mohammed in Garland, Texas, in May, urged Muslims to go with "weapons, bombs or with knifes". Two men answered the call, and were killed by police. Joshua Goldberg "Australi Witness" praised them as martyrs. Since July he has fed out a series of bomb threats against various targets, including a synagogue in Melbourne and another in Perth. Most recently, he said he was working with others to direct a "pressure cooker bombing" in the United States. But Fairfax Media can reveal that Goldberg's trolling also goes well beyond pretending to be an IS terror wannabe. When Melbourne lawyer, Joshua Bornstein, woke to find a violent anti-Palestinian blog in his own name in the Times of Israel in May, he was subject to global outrage.

That hoax, too, was the work of Goldberg, and he laughed when the finger of blame was mistakenly pointed at white supremacists. Internet troll Joshua Goldberg. Credit:Facebook Goldberg has set up a fake account in the name of Australian Muslim preacher Junaid Thorne, and promoted an illusory friendship between Australi Witness and anti-Islamophobia campaigner Mariam Veiszadeh - the intention both times being to smear them. He has masqueraded as a neo-Nazi blogger called "Michael Slay" on the site Daily Stormer, and as a fictional Australian left-wing anti-free speech activist called "Tanya Cohen". He's caused significant harm to anti-sexploitation campaigner Caitlin Roper by setting up a fake account in her name and then defaming transsexuals. Apart from the thrill of trolling on the world's most sensitive and politically fraught subjects, Goldberg appears to be driven by a single ideology: purist notions of the right to free speech.

The unmasking of Joshua Goldberg's began with a chance encounter. In April, a fake Facebook page was set up in the name of Australian journalist Elise Potaka using a picture from her Twitter profile. The imposter used this fake account to send a private message to one of her contacts, Junaid Thorne. Thorne is a young Islamic preacher with connections to IS supporters. By coincidence, when the Facebook imposter messaged him, Thorne had been chatting to Potaka about a fake Twitter account that had been set up in his name. It soon became apparent, through the language and phrases used, that both were victims of the same online hoaxer. The fake Facebook account had just one "friend": "Joshua Goldberg", and its web address was facebook.com/moonmetropolis. An online search led to a blog and a series of posts published on American website, ThoughtCatalog. The distinct theme here is free speech, and the strong criticism of individuals and organisations calling for limits on hate speech.

"Personally, I find it nothing less than absolutely disgusting and depressing how people who claim to campaign for 'human rights' are so opposed to the most basic human right of all: freedom of speech," Goldberg wrote in one post. The only easily accessible information about Goldberg described him as an "American author and columnist", but he did not appear to have been published by any credible media outlet. Further research showed Goldberg also had a Twitter account, @MoonMetropolis. When confronted via this account, he admitted that he had impersonated Potaka on Facebook and Thorne on Twitter. He claimed he'd had conversations with jihadis who were following Thorne online. In an act repeated with his other hoaxes, Goldberg lured journalists into his deception. He'd already shopped around screengrabs of these conversations with the "jihadis" who followed "Thorne" to at least one reporter, and the West Australian published an article in April describing how the fake Junaid Thorne account had fooled wanna-be jihadis. In fact, in the hall of mirrors created by Goldberg, it was him doing the fooling. Not only had he created the fake Junaid Thorne account, he was also playing the part of the "wanna-be jihadis" in the conversations. Many of his hoaxes were designed to smear people and organisations he perceived as being enemies of free speech. Goldberg told Potaka online it was "pretty stunning" how many jihadis "claimed to be connected with the Human Rights Law Centre ... and/or Amnesty International".

But, masquerading as these jihadis, he was the only one making the connection. One of his personas, "akhi_alaustrali" wrote that he worked for Amnesty, and another, ShamiWitness claimed that he and other IS supporters donated money to the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) because it was "working to outlaw and prosecute anti-Muslim hate speech".











The elaborate Australi Witness persona was established by Goldberg with a similar aim. His online profile described him as a "soldier of IS" who had "worked for Amnesty before joining the mujhahideen". Tweets from this account were incendiary. In the lead up to an exhibition in Garland, Texas, where pictures of the Prophet Mohammed were to be displayed, Australi Witness tweeted the event's address and called on individuals to carry out an attack. Two Muslim men showed up in body armour and carrying assault rifles and shot one security guard in the leg before a police officer on duty shot and killed both. Australi Witness then tweeted his prayer that the dead men be granted a seat next to the Prophet in heaven.









The fake jihadi also urged followers to target Australian cartoonist Larry Pickering, who has previously depicted the Prophet Mohammed. Over the months, the Australi Witness twitter account and related blogs attracted significant media attention. Journalists in Australia reported on it without verifying the real identity of the user. Terrorism analyst and director and co-founder of the SITE Intelligence group Rita Katz was quoted as saying Australi Witness held a "prestige" position in online jihadi circles and was "part of the hard core of a group of individuals who constantly look for targets for other people to attack", and actively seek recruits for IS. But there was something amiss. As well as linking himself to Amnesty, "Australi Witness" also claimed a friendship with lawyer, anti-Islamophobia and anti-hate speech campaigner, Mariam Veiszadeh. Veiszadeh is a Shiite Muslim – an unlikely favourite of a Sunni IS supporter. She has also been openly critical of IS.







Meanwhile, under his real persona, @MoonMetropolis, Goldberg was criticising Veiszadeh and her views. He also criticised Amnesty, linking to his own article "Amnesty International's Free Speech Hypocrisy".











On April 9, Goldberg hit out at another prominent Australian. In the weeks leading up to that date, Goldberg had tricked newspaper the Times of Israel into accepting his blog posts as those of Australian employment lawyer, and Jew, Josh Bornstein. On April 9, Bornstein woke up to a furious global reaction to an overnight post in his name which called for the "swift and merciless extermination" of Palestinians. Feminist Naomi Wolf labelled him "deranged", "genocidal" and "psychotic". Realising it had been duped, the Times took down the post, then printed a retraction and apologised. Bornstein went public, saying he'd been hoaxed. He blamed white supremacists, having traced online chatter about the hoax back to an American neo-Nazi blog.

Goldberg, using his Twitter account @MoonMetropolis, was the first person to tweet about the hoax.



Goldberg also used his Twitter account to promote his own handiwork, which he himself described as "demented", by directing people to an archived version of the article.

Potaka had already been talking to Goldberg, and had identified herself as a journalist. She and freelance journalist Luke McMahon decided that McMahon would confront him via Twitter, asking: "How long are you going to keep it up?" The brief confrontation led to an internet relay chat room. Without hiding his identity, McMahon entered Goldberg's world. In exchanges over several months, Goldberg admitted to being behind a web of fake online identities, including the Australi Witness and Bornstein hoaxes. He boasted about evading detection for the Times of Israel attack. Disturbingly, he asked for help obtaining Bornstein's real life address saying: "I want to freak him out even more". "That guy has no idea. He thinks Daily Stormer (US Neo-Nazi website) did it," Goldberg told McMahon.

At the same time, he claimed credit for a similar attack on Australian activist, Caitlin Roper, who had earned his ire for her efforts to get the video game, Grand Theft Auto V, banned from Australia because of its violent and sexist content. A fake account was set up in her name, with her photo, which then tweeted targeting the transgender community. The tweets were promoted using Twitter's target advertising.

He admitted responsibility in conversations with McMahon for multiple other online personalities including neo-nazi "Michael Slay", and a parody of a left-wing human rights activist, "Tanya Cohen". Research into his fake accounts showed that they were almost always linked back to his own Twitter handle, @MoonMetropolis, via retweets or comments. In some cases they interacted directly with Goldberg's victims.

He boasted to McMahon that the number of journalists fooled by the Australi Witness account was, "Too many to list, and some "terrorism experts" commented on it too. One of them said I was a senior ISIS recruiter." Analysis of Goldberg's social media footprint - including the accounts of his online friends - pointed to a very real young man, who has recently turned 20 and been living with his family in Orange Park, Florida. Once Goldberg's identity was confirmed, Fairfax Media handed its information over to Federal Police, who then notified US authorities. On Friday, Australian time, that information led to his arrest.

It appears the Federal Bureau of Investigation was able to establish more than just fantasy behaviour. A police affidavit sworn after his arrest says that, between August 19 and August 28, Goldberg "distributed information pertaining to the manufacturing of explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence". US Attorney Lee Bentley III, said Goldberg instructed a "confidential source" how to make a bomb similar to two used in the Boston Marathon bombings two years ago that killed three people and injured an estimated 264 others. He sent five web links to sites that provided instructions that could be used to make explosives as part of a plot to explode a bomb on September 13 at a memorial ceremony in Kansas City, commemorating the 9/11 the terrorist attacks. To Potaka and McMahon, before his arrest, Goldberg explained why he had such an obsession with Australia. It was, he said, the most "anti-freedom of speech country in the English speaking world". Australia's left was "unspeakably stupid". He pointed to the controversy over the Abbott government's failed attempts to amend Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the "massive outrage" that occurred when Attorney-General George Brandis said, "People do have a right to be bigots, you know". In the US, where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, nobody would have been as outraged, he said. Before becoming the US's latest terror suspect, all that anyone knew of Goldberg was that he'd been active online for six or seven years, and banned from several forums for trolling and anti-social behaviour. In online forums, he has said he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that he was diagnosed with clinical depression at age 11.

He's said in the past that he has a "difficult time understanding feelings". And to McMahon he once wrote: "I don't really take pleasure in anything".

