Citizenship American Name Joshua Goldberg | Parents Frank Goldberg | |
Arrested September 9, 2015Orange Park, FloridaFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Alternate name Australi Witness, Tanya Cohen, Madotsuki the Dreamer, MoonMetropolis, European88 Charge(s) 18 U.S.C. S 842(p), The illegal distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction. | ||
Joshua Goldberg to be sentenced
Joshua Ryne Goldberg (born 1994 or 1995) is an American internet troll, who was arrested by the U.S. government for allegedly distributing information about bomb-making techniques as part of an attempt to incite acts of Islamist terrorism on the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. He reportedly did this by posing as a Lebanese-Australian jihadist affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).
Contents
- Joshua Goldberg to be sentenced
- Early life and education
- Australi Witness
- Junaid Thorne and fake jihadist personas
- Caitlin Roper
- Tanya Cohen
- European88 and Reddit
- Michael Slay
- Other personas
- Times of Israel blog hoax
- Philosophy of Rape
- MoonMetropolis
- Unmasking and arrest
- References
Goldberg first received widespread media attention under his alleged Twitter handle "Australi Witness" following the Curtis Culwell Center attack, a terrorist attack on a Garland, Texas exhibit featuring images of Muhammad in May 2015, in which two assailants died in a shootout with police. The "Australi Witness" persona, had, posing as a Perth jihadist, called for an attack on, and posted maps of, the center where the exhibit was taking place, and praised the jihadist attackers in its aftermath, and was retweeted by one of the assailants before the attack. His trial was suspended after it emerged that he had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and anxiety disorder as part of a long history of mental illness, and he was found incompetent to stand trial pending efforts by doctors to return him to competence.
Early life and education
Goldberg is Jewish. He lived with his parents in Orange Park, Florida, a suburb of Jacksonville.
Australi Witness
Australi Witness was an online persona, claiming to be an ISIS-affiliated jihadist from Australia, who was described by Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, as holding a "prestigious position" in online jihadi circles.
The owner of the Australi Witness Twitter handle claimed in an online forum on May 1, 2015 to have a "quite convincing" ISIS account with almost a thousand followers, and expressed a desire to cause "as much chaos IRL as possible", also stating "Ideally, I want to start a race war and a genocide of Muslims."
Australi Witness urged an attack on the anti-Islamic event being held at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, on May 3, 2015, suggesting that "brothers in Texas" to go there "with your weapons, bombs or with knifes [sic]" to "defend your Prophet". The persona also posted maps to the event. Subsequently, two men, identified as Phoenix, Arizona residents Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, were shot dead by police as they attempted to attack the contest. The FBI found that Simpson retweeted a message from the Australi Witness Twitter handle on the morning of the attack. Australi Witness claimed credit for having inspired the attack to multiple media outlets, praised Simpson and Soofi as martyrs, and expressed support for the attack in an interview with Fairfax Media.
Australi Witness posted a 50-page guide online on how to join the terror group ISIS, and later posted a list of synagogues in Australia, ostensibly to encourage his supporters to attack them. He communicated that he was planning an attack in Melbourne to an FBI informant, who posed as a jihadist, and a 17-year-old who pleaded guilty to planning a Mother’s Day 2015 bombing in Melbourne using pressure cooker and pipe bombs, which was never carried out, was found to have been in contact with Goldberg.
According to the FBI, Australi Witness posted to an ISIS-related website that he had recruited two people, one in Los Angeles, the other in Melbourne, to "using guns, shoot up local synagogues when the maximum amount of Jews are praying", stating that "the entire thing was my idea, and I helped them every step of the way".
Australi Witness also claimed to have worked for Amnesty International, asked followers to target Australian cartoonist Larry Pickering, and repeatedly attempted to associate himself with anti-Islamphobia campaigner Mariam Veiszadeh.
Junaid Thorne and fake jihadist personas
Goldberg reportedly set up a fake account in the name of Australian Muslim preacher Junaid Thorne with the alleged intention of besmirching him. Goldberg also allegedly created a number of fake jihadist accounts, which interacted with the fake Thorne account, and then allegedly sent screengrabs of the interactions to journalists, at least one of whom published a fake interaction in an article of The West Australian in April 2015. The fake jihadist personas were also used to besmirch Amnesty International and the Human Rights Law Centre by claiming the fake jihadists had employment ties or donated money to the organizations.
Caitlin Roper
Goldberg reportedly set up a fake Twitter account in the name of anti-sexual exploitation campaigner Caitlin Roper, who allegedly earned his ire because of her efforts to get the video game Grand Theft Auto V banned in Australia. The fake account sent Promoted Tweets that targeted the transgender community.
Tanya Cohen
Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto apologized for believing a hoax allegedly perpetrated by Goldberg under the name "Tanya Cohen" earlier in 2015. During the incident, Goldberg posed as a female leftist Australian activist opposed to free speech. National Review's Charles Cooke described the article that Taranto responded to as "exquisite satire", while Mike Masnick of Techdirt called it "...damn good satire, because it's just stupid enough at the beginning to drag you in and make you believe it, and then, slowly but surely, over the course of a very long writeup, it starts tossing out ever more ridiculous ideas -- drip... drip... drip -- that just, gently, turn up the outrage-o-meter, such that many people don't even realize that it's satire."
European88 and Reddit
On Reddit, Goldberg made thousands of racist posts as a neo-Nazi and moderated many racist subreddits, including the "r/CoonTown" subreddit.
"Michael Slay"
Goldberg posted on the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer as "Michael Slay".
One well-known article by this persona regarding how to recruit people from Reddit (particularly the "r/conspiracy" and "r/Europe" subreddits), described as "fertile ground for recruitment" was commented on by Sam Biddle in a Gawker article.
Upon his arrest and unveiling, the administrator of the site removed his posts.
Other personas
Goldberg made online posts under a number of different pen names including a Daily Kos diary; and Feministing, a feminist blog.
Times of Israel blog hoax
In April 2015, an item was posted on a Times of Israel blog calling for the extermination of the Palestinian people. The article was ostensibly written by Josh Bornstein, a Jewish Australian lawyer, and triggered widespread condemnation. Bornstein immediately disavowed responsibility for the post, which was deleted by The Times of Israel. It has since been accepted that Bornstein was the victim of a hoax.
Initially, it was believed that the hoax was perpetrated by white supremacists. In May 2015, Bornstein faced online threats from Goldberg's Australi Witness Twitter account, and it later transpired that the hoax post was initially perpetrated by Goldberg.
Philosophy of Rape
Goldberg has been identified as the person behind "Philosophy of Rape", a subreddit that advocated corrective rape against "whores and feminazis", and offered tips on how to do so without getting caught.
MoonMetropolis
Goldberg was also active on Twitter, Reddit, Discus.com and others under the username MoonMetropolis, a "free speech absolutist" who was involved with the Gamergate controversy. He would frequently use this persona to criticize the works of his other personas such as Tanya Cohen, arguing against points that he himself had made.
Goldberg also posted strong opinions on the subject of free speech absolutism to the website Thought Catalog, using both the MoonMetropolis name and his own name.
Unmasking and arrest
News reports about the Australi Witness online persona calling for the Garland attack first brought the account to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Australian Federal Police (AFP) alerted the FBI about the real identity of Australi Witness, with the AFP, in turn, being handed the information by two Australian journalists, Luke McMahon and Elise Potaka. However, according to the FBI affidavit filed in court, by the time they received this information from the AFP, their investigation into Goldberg was already well underway. McMahon and Potaka independently tracked and identified the person behind the Australi Witness account after he impersonated Potaka on Facebook, leading to a chain of events which connected Australi Witness to Goldberg. The FBI also directly linked Australi Witness to Goldberg via his IP address.
Australi Witness passed specific information on the manufacture of a bomb targeting a September 11 memorial event in Kansas City, Missouri to an FBI informant, who was posing as a Muslim extremist. According to the FBI, Australi Witness suggested that the informant bomb the memorial in Kansas City after the latter claimed to live near that city, and also encouraged the informant to make the bomb more deadly by adding rat poison to the shrapnel. Australi Witness posted pictures online of what he claimed to be a bomb he was building and emailed the BBC claiming credit for the Curtis Culwell Center attack, and warning that a pressure cooker bomb would be detonated in a "large Midwestern US city" on September 11, 2015.
Goldberg was arrested by the FBI after being identified as Australi Witness on September 9, 2015. After a raid on his home by the FBI, Goldberg allegedly admitted to agents that he had distributed the information about making the bomb in Kansas City. Goldberg appeared in court on September 15, where he was ordered to undergo a 30-day mental health evaluation to determine his fitness to stand trial. If tried and convicted, Goldberg could face up to 20 years in prison.
On December 14, 2015, after an examination by psychologist Lisa Feldman at Federal Detention Center, Miami, US Magistrate Judge James Klindt ruled Goldberg mentally incompetent to stand trial and Goldberg was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment for four months at the Federal Medical Center, Butner. Goldberg again appeared before Klindt on June 15, 2016, and was described by prison psychiatrists as "improving", and that there was a "good chance" of him being returned to competency to stand trial. Another status update was scheduled by Klindt for October 15, 2016.