A sign of the times

The New York subway in 2013. “American Freedom Defence Initiative” were in fact the hate group Stop Islamization of America, whose founders Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were cited at some length by Anders Breivik in his manifesto in case this charming ad (and the group’s very name) didn’t give enough indication of where these shits stand… even pro-Jewish orgs like the ADL found them egregious.

And, to be honest, I initially viewed the MTA’s disclaimer in somewhat hostile fashion, you know, maybe they didn’t endorse the message but they did endorse they were presumably making from it… however, on further examination I find I was unfair, and they had in fact been forced into running another similar ad for SIOA by a judge in 2012 on First Amendment grounds, and were forced to do the same thing again with yet another SIOA ad by another judge a few years later… to which end the MTA board called bullshit on the whole thing and voted to reject basically all non-commercial advertising. I don’t know how the whole affair ended, the last I can find is something from 2015 in which Geller was shaking her fist about this not being over yet, but I can’t actually find much about them after 2015… SIOA seems to still be a thing under the AFDI name, they have a Facebook page though the latter hasn’t been updated since last year. Are they still up to much? Whatever, though, it was nice to discover the MTA actually did oppose Pam and Bob’s racist bullshit after all…