Mediaboss Marketing

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

Defend Europe, an anti-immigrant group that attempts to disrupt humanitarian search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea, recently chartered a boat that was stopped in a Cyprus port, where several members were arrested for forging documents and engaging in potential human trafficking. Since then, pro-Trump media trolls associated with the campaign have been conspicuously silent.

The members were stopped in anddeportedfrom a sea port in the self-declared Turkish state of Northern Cyprus Thursday after spending two days in detention for document forgery and potential human trafficking of 20 Sri Lankan nationals who were aboard the C-Star, the campaigns ship. Turkish Cypriot authorities deported nine crew members, including the ships captain and a German second captainbelieved to beneo-Nazi Alexander Schleyer. The authorities also transferred the director of the company that owns the ship,Sven Tomas Egerstrom, to Greek-controlled Cyprus for further questioning.

Refugee Rights Association advocate Faika Pasha toldThe Associated Pressthat some of the Sri Lankans on board reported having paid a trafficker to be taken to Italy and confirmed that five Sri Lankans remained in Cyprus to claim asylum. (Defend Europe claims the Sri Lankans were actually bribed by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to claim they were seeking asylum.)

Defend Europe is a campaign by anti-immigrant, alt-right activists todisrupthumanitarian search and rescue missions of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. The effortis the brainchild ofGeneration Identity, a pan-European Identitarian movement known for its members high-profile political stunts.

Since the arrest and deportation of the C-Stars crew members, Defend Europe has been doing some damage control on Twitter,claimingthe ship was released and that lies and #fakenews from NGOs have been exposed once again. The next day, the account pinned an image of the groups alleged goals on its feed, one of which was to save migrants in danger of drowning and making sure they get to the nearest non-European safe port.

However, Generation Identitys Austrian co-founder, Martin Sellner, has repeatedly claimed that Defend Europes goal is to take migrants from North Africa back to Libya aviolationof the non-refoulement principle of the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention against sending refugees back to their county if they would be in harms way. In June, Sellnersaid, We want to face those human trafficking ships on the sea. We want to disrupt their doings. And, of course, if you meet an account of people in distress on the sea, save them but bring them back to where they started from. Hereiteratedhis stance a month later, saying that Defend Europe will do everything in our power to make sure that they go back to Africa, where they belong.

Since the detainment of Defend Europe members and their subsequent expulsion from Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, the movements right-wing media allies and pro-Trump trolls have been noticeably mum. As of this pieces publication, Brittany Pettibone, who has actively been reporting in support of Defend Europe from Catania, Sicily,had tweetedonlytwiceon the subject since the incident, both times promoting Defend Europes conspiratorial narrative that NGOs are propagating fake news and hiding something about theiralleged collusionwith international human trafficking rings.

Even more notably,Lauren Southern, a Canadian media troll who made a name for herself denying the existence of rape culture and demonizing minorities and who has been actively involved in the Defend Europe campaign, has not tweeted a single time about the recent incident (though she has retweeted in support of Defend Europe). Online payment service Patreon recentlysuspendedSoutherns account for violating the crowdfunding platforms terms by soliciting donations for the Defend Europe campaign; Southern has sinceresortedto using PayPal. PayPal previouslyfrozeDefend Europes account,sayingin a statement, Our policy is to prevent our services being used by companies whose activities promote hatred, violence or racial intolerance.

Peter Sweden, a previously vocal Holocaust denier who reversed himself inmid-July, has been similarly silent on the recent controversy surrounding Defend Europe. Sweden hasbraggedaboutdisruptingsearch and rescue missions in the Mediterranean and has also beeninterviewedby conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, taking the opportunity tofearmongeraboutcrime in Sweden.

Katie Hopkins, a columnist for British news site MailOnline who regularly appears on Fox News to voice her Islamophobic, anti-immigrant views, has also been silent on Twitter about the C-Stars deportation from Cyprus. Hopkins recentlytweeteda photo of herself with Sweden, which she later deleted. Her involvement with the Defend Europe campaign has beendocumentedby the anti-extremism research and education group HOPE Not Hate.

Tara McCarthy, who hosts a YouTube show alongside Pettibone and who has said, in asince-deletedtweet, that she hopes zero migrants crossing the sea to Europe make it alive, has also not commented on the C-Stars seizure.

According toHOPE Not Hate, pro-Trump propaganda outlet Breitbart, white nationalist site AltRight.com, racial nationalist organization American Renaissance, Nazi website The Daily Stormer, and former Ku Klux Klan leaderDavid Dukehave alsovoiced supportfor Defend Europes mission. As of noon on July 28, none of these outlets or individuals had responded to the latest developments.

The silence of these pro-Trump trolls exposes their opportunism and cowardice. They engage inhigh-profilestuntsto profit and promote themselves and then back away when the going gets tough, as prominent troll Mike Cernovich did when heattempted todenyinvolvement in the Pizzagate conspiracy. The pro-Trump trolls subscribed to the Defend Europe campaign for donations and foreign Twitter followers, but now theyre stuck in a sordid relationship with a movement that is endangering innocent lives and potentially violating international law. It remains to be seen how they willmemetheir way out of this one.

Header image bySarah Wasko / Media Matters

Go here to see the original:
"Alt-Right" Ship Detained In Mediterranean For Apparent Human ... - The National Memo (blog)