DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We're going to hear now what it's like to be trolled by white supremacists and also how hard it is for victims to do anything about it. NPR's Kirk Siegler takes us to Whitefish, Mont. That is where neo-Nazis have aimed what they call a troll storm at Jewish residents. And we should note this story has some language that could be offensive to listeners.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: What is trolling? Well, for Rabbi Francine Roston, it meant when her personal information got published online, her phone number, address, then a barrage of harassing emails and Facebook posts.
FRANCINE ROSTON: The messages were very frequently Holocaust themed. We're going to destroy you, your people should have been destroyed, you should destroy yourself, you should go jump in an oven, we're going to come cremate you.
SIEGLER: Her voice starts to shake when she talks about it. Once an anonymous troller even posted that her two kids had better watch out.
ROSTON: And a few comments later, someone said the name of my son. And, you know, I...
SIEGLER: Roston is the rabbi of Glacier Jewish Community, a synagogue without walls, as she puts it, that serves Whitefish and the surrounding Flathead Valley.
ROSTON: I understand free speech but imagery directed towards Jews because they're Jews relating to the Holocaust, the message there is we want you dead.
SIEGLER: This trolling was promoted by a well-known white supremacist from Ohio by the name of Andrew Anglin, he's the publisher of a neo-Nazi website called The Daily Stormer. In articles on his website, he called for a troll storm against Jews in Whitefish. He also planned a march through the streets of town on Martin Luther King Day last year and told people to bring their guns.
ROSTON: At the core of Anglin's campaign was an old, old story of Jewish hatred that the Jews were taking over this pristine white town of Whitefish and driving out the whites.
SIEGLER: The Jewish community in the resort town of Whitefish is tiny. Roston took the threat seriously. The police chief told me they couldn't do a whole lot at the time because these trollers were mostly anonymous and they weren't showing up at her door threatening imminent violence. So they said, go dark, don't engage.
ROSTON: Right. If you saw we have security system around the house that we never had.
SIEGLER: The police believe most of the trollers were coming from outside Whitefish, but Roston wasn't taking any chances. The local rabbi, a progressive social justice activist, bought a gun.
ROSTON: I had a friend fly out and train me in handguns, and I purchased my first handguns. I wanted to make sure that I could protect myself and protect my family.
SIEGLER: That planned march never happened. Anglin and the Nazis didn't show. Whitefish staged its own anti-hate rally in the freezing cold. Now, this kind of trolling has happened elsewhere for sure, but the events in Whitefish are noteworthy because of the timing and who was involved and how vicious it got. There's a lot of arguing over who's to blame, but pretty much everyone in this resort town at the doorstep to Glacier National Park says one person is at the heart of this controversy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD SPENCER: Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory.
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SIEGLER: That's the white nationalist Richard Spencer speaking in 2016. He lives in Whitefish part time. Locals say he's brought unwanted attention to this liberal-leaning pocket of Montana. About a year ago, there was a reported argument that began between a local realtor and Richard Spencer's mom. It was over a building Sherry Spencer owns in Whitefish, which was becoming the focus of a potential protest against her son. The realtor is Jewish and local news reports about the dispute got the attention of Andrew Anglin, who called on his neo-Nazi followers to come to the defense of the Spencers.
That Jewish realtor is now suing Andrew Anglin over his troll storm with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center. She's not giving interviews but her local attorney John Morrison is.
JOHN MORRISON: These are not informational, opinion or any other kind of protected First Amendment communications. These are assaults.
SIEGLER: Montana and the Flathead Valley around Whitefish in particular has long been a haven for extremism. In 1988, the state passed a strict anti-intimidation law, which Morrison says the trolling violated. But where is the line between protected speech and a clear threat of violence, like an alleged verbal assault? The courts have generally said speech doesn't become illegal unless a threat is imminent. Mark Randazza, a prominent First Amendment attorney, says this is hard to prove and it should be.
MARC RANDAZZA: You hear that a lot from people who are trying to engage in censorship, that this isn't a First Amendment issue. Well, the fact that we're talking about it makes it a freaking First Amendment issue.
SIEGLER: Randazza is Andrew Anglin's attorney. I reached him in Las Vegas where he's based.
RANDAZZA: If you believe in freedom of expression, you have to believe in it for Nazis and Klansmen and pornographers and anybody else you might find to be objectionable.
SIEGLER: Randazza stressed to me that he too thinks the memes and the anti-Jewish slurs were awful. Richard Spencer's mom also condemned the trolling. But Randazza says when you put tools in place to restrict speech, it can backfire later.
RANDAZZA: Mr. Anglin, all that he intended to incite and all that he did incite was people expressing themselves.
SIEGLER: People in Whitefish are torn over this case. Their town is dependent on tourism, and they don't want any more negative attention. But on the other hand, the trolling got really hateful and personal. The Rabbi Francine Roston told me that she thinks one of the trollers was the father of someone she knew. And the trollers didn't stop at just the Jewish community. They started going after anyone in town they even thought was Jewish and local businesses that had anti-hate signs posted in their windows.
Before I left Whitefish, I met Jennifer Runnels. She and her young family live in this old farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Her husband inherited it from his grandfather.
JENNIFER RUNNELS: I have my curing rack right over here.
SIEGLER: She has a soap-making business and when she heard about the trolling, she decided to put together gift baskets to give to the trolling victims.
RUNNELS: And I'm not sure who told the news. But the news was there and they interviewed me, so I was on the news that night talking about what we were doing. And then the next morning, I was on The Daily Stormer.
SIEGLER: Andrew Anglin's website. Then came the emails and the posts on Yelp about her business.
RUNNELS: I got fake reviews that said my soap was made with the fat of Holocaust victims.
SIEGLER: She was scared at first, but then she tried to shrug it off.
RUNNELS: They are very misogynistic. They like to use names like whore and slut and bitch.
SIEGLER: Runnels told me people here are sort of resigned to the fact that there may not be any recourse for the trolling victims.
RUNNELS: There was nothing anybody could do, and the police told us that.
SIEGLER: And she says she and her neighbors are bracing for it all to come back if the lawsuit moves forward. And they'll speak out again, she says, and hold more rallies and protests. Lawyers for Andrew Anglin have filed motions in federal court to dismiss the case, but the judge has yet to rule. Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Whitefish, Mont.