Pamela Geller is one of the US’s most flagrant anti-Muslim activists and campaigners. She pushes hate rhetoric through blog posts, articles she contributes to far-right news site Breitbart, and campaigns. She shot to stardom with the “Ground Zero Mosque” campaign in 2010 after she opposed New York’s Park51 Islamic center project to build a 13-story mosque in an abandoned building in Lower Manhattan.
After Geller married Michael Oshry in 1990, she spent most of her time as a “well-to-do Long Island housewife” until her divorce in 2007. She received almost $4 million in her divorce settlement as well as $5 million in life insurance payments after the death of her former husband. These funds contributed to her campaigns and supported her anti-liberal push on social media.
In 2010, Geller teamed up with another anti-Islamic extremist, Robert Spencer, to take over the Stop Islamization of America organization — an offshoot of the much weaker Denmark-based Stop Islamization of Europe. The most notorious campaign launched by the group was the purchase of public transit advertisements in New York and Miami with racist and insulting messages against Islam, in an attempt to push Muslims to reject their religion. She also hosted a “Draw Muhammad Cartoon Contest” where the winner received a $10,000 prize.
Geller says that the 9/11 attacks were one of the main triggers for her embracing anti-Muslim ideology. She launched her website, Atlas Shrugs, “in honor of right-wing hero and self-described objectivist author Ayn Rand,” where she republished the controversial 2006 Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, as well launching claims that US President Barack Obama is “the love child” of Malcom X, and denouncing Islam at every opportunity.
Geller mixes with notorious far-right extremists and white nationalists across the world. She has been invited to give talks at German far-right organization Pro Koln, the British anti-Muslim group English Defense League (EDL), and is a fan of Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders. She was cited in Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik’s manifesto that was posted online before he killed 77 members of a left-wing camp. Geller wrote that Breivik “was targeting the future leaders of the party responsible for flooding Norway with Muslims” in an apparently sympathetic post.
Geller then formed the Stop Islamization of Nations organization, which joined with its American and European counterparts, of which she is executive director. The organization “seeks to create a common American/European coalition of free people to oppose the advance of Islamic law.”
