#FreeShia: Was Shia LaBeouf's arrest triggered by anti-Semitic trolling?
Take an Internet-beloved celebrity who courts controversy, add a Trump element and a live camera, and trouble is bound to follow.
Shia LaBeouf's protest art project He Will Not Divide Us, a four-year-long installation, got the actor arrested after just six days. Early Thursday morning, the NYPD escorted a handcuffed LaBeouf away from his setup outside of Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, after the actor reportedly pulled the scarf and pushed an unidentified 25-year-old man.
Before his release, LaBeouf supporters tweeted #FreeShia in solidarity, including Jaden Smith, who appeared on the stream on its Inauguration Day debut.
However, a different picture is emerging of an army of trolls that rallied to co-opt the project, using Nazi rhetoric to provoke the Jewish actor.
LaBeouf has spent the first few days of Trump’s presidency in front of the livestream, chanting the phrase “He will not divide us” and interacting with passers-by, as part of the participatory public art project intended to broadcast live, 24 hours a day for the next four years.
The performance art isn’t about opposition to Trump, LaBeouf told The Associated Press, but rather anti-division.
“I’m just saying, ‘Be nice to each other.’”
Since the start of the project, Trump supporters and neo-Nazis have mounted a campaign against LaBeouf online, plotting how to disrupt the exhibit via 4chan’s politically active message board /pol/ and other private threads, Buzzfeed reports.
Shia LaBeouf kicks off four-year-long protest livestream with Jaden Smith
In addition to holding “Make America Great Again” signs in front of the camera and chanting “Pepe,” the frog meme that the Anti-Defamation League has defined as a hate symbol, the most disturbing protests have involved Nazi-referencing demonstrations. On Sunday, a man approached LaBeouf and said “1488," a neo-Nazi slogan.
As he continued repeating Nazi rhetoric to the camera, a clearly-incited LaBeouf managed to shout him down, repeating "he will not divide us" before chasing him off the lot.
On Thursday, the trolling came to a head with LaBeouf's arrest. However, an unofficial #HeWillNotDivideUs Twitter account posted a video of a man pulling LaBeouf close and saying "Hitler did nothing wrong," before LaBeouf pushes him away. Supporters are claiming that this interaction got him arrested, though police would not confirm whether the arrest was related, according to DNAInfo.
Online trolls may be rallying against LaBeouf, but other parts of the Internet are defending the actor after his arrest.
Not all of Twitter was united in support of LaBeouf, with many critics referencing the actor's history of public stunts.