Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who was banned from Twitter last week after tweeting Islamophobic remarks about newly elected Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, handcuffed herself to the social media company’s headquarters in New York City on Thursday. Loomer did it as an act of protest, claiming that her voice as a conservative Jewish journalist was being suppressed by the company.
The event was live-streamed for several bizarre hours. While wearing a yellow star on her jacket, Loomer held up very large posters of her own tweets and yelled into a megaphone “I want my Twitter,” and compared being banned from Twitter to the Holocaust.
Loomer promised that she would stay outside of the company’s headquarters for “as long as it took” to be given her account back, adding that she threw away the keys for her handcuffs. She told The Verge that she was willing to go to great lengths to accomplish her goals. “If I have to, I’ll pee on myself,” she said. “I haven’t eaten or drunken today.”
A few hours into Loomer’s protest, Twitter announced that they would not be pressing charges, and that she could stay outside of their headquarters as long as she desired. Police offered to use bolt cutters to free her from the door whenever she liked. She proclaimed she wasn’t leaving. But, within an hour of Twitter releasing their statement, Loomer asked to be cut from the door. She was reportedly complaining about the cold.
Her protest accomplished very little. After she was cut free from the front door of Twitter, she still hadn’t been given her account back. All that was really happened was that several confused NYPD officers stood on a sidewalk for a few hours, watching while Loomer yelled. Twitter employees entering and exiting the building barely took notice of her. Oh, and plenty of people who aren’t banned on Twitter made jokes at her expense.
Thankfully she didn’t pee herself, I guess?
