Airbnb Deletes Accounts Of People Planning To Attend ‘Unite The Right’ Rally
“Alt-right” protesters outside an event featuring Muslim activist Linda Sarsour in New York City in April. Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman August 8, 2017
Airbnb, the hospitality service that lets you stay in apartments and private homes instead of hotels, is deleting the accounts of people planning to attend a massive “alt-right” rally this weekend in Charlottesville, Va., Time reported.
The Anti-Defamation League predicted that the “Unite the Right” rally, organized by white nationalists, could be “the largest public gathering of white supremacists in at least a decade.”
Airbnb said that it confirmed that its users were planning to attend activities the company considered “antithetical” to its community guidelines through routine background checks, giving them grounds to cancel the reservations.
“This is outrageous and should be grounds for a lawsuit,” Jason Kessler, the rally’s organizer, told The Washington Post in an email. “It’s the racial targeting of white people for their ethnic advocacy.”
Kessler was sentenced to 50 hours of community service in May for committing a misdemeanor assault in a confrontation over the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park.
Among those expected to attend the rally are Andrew Anglin, the blogger behind the virulently racist and anti-Semitic website the Daily Stormer, and Richard Spencer, the most well-known “alt-right” figure.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
