Racist Twitter trolls launch attacks on Canadian environmentalist

Racist Twitter trolls launch attacks on Canadian environmentalist

Attacks began after Faisal Moola messaged Tim Hortons and thanked them for dropping adverts by a company involved in pipeline project

Hadani Ditmars in Vancouver
Friday 26 June 2015 14.58 EDT

A prominent environmental scientist in Canada has become the target of racist attacks on social media after expressing his support for a fast food chain’s decision to stop running adverts by a company involved in a controversial pipeline project. Faisal Moola, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, and a director of one of Canada’s largest environmental organisations, was subjected to hundreds of abusive tweets after directing a message to the Tim Hortons chain.

The restaurant group recently announced it would no longer run adverts on its restaurant televisions for Enbridge Inc because of its proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would cross British Columbia to the Pacific Coast.

Moola’s 21-word tweet in support of the decision – “@TimHortons Thank you for decision to drop the #Enbridge Ads from Tims TV. This decision is good corporate stewardship#cndpoli@SumOfUs” – was met with a barrage of abuse.

“I was called a foreign-funded extremist, a terrorist, a radical and anti-Canadian,” Moola told the Guardian. “I was told to ‘go back where I came from’, to ‘stop destroying the economy’.”

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/26/racist-twitter-attacks-canadian-environmentalist