“Around 25 tweets a day, sometimes more, the majority of them designed to stoke hatred of Muslims,” was journalist Luke O’Brien’s 2018 description of Amy Jane Mekelburg’s work.  

Amy “Mek” Mekelburg is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rise Align Ignite Reclaim (RAIR), a hate organization and website that regularly publishes anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, including that Muslims seek to “infiltrate and destabilize the West.”  

Mekelburg herself has been accused of spreading Islamophobic and antisemitic hate and aligning herself with known-white supremacist groups and individuals since at least 2013. According to O’Brien’s 2018 report, Mekelburg has “called Islam a ‘pervert cult’ and mocked Muslims for ‘lifting their asses’ to Allah. She wanted mosques banned in the United States and called herself a modern-day ‘crusader.’” 

Mekelburg has also promoted hatred against other racial and religious minorities. Her work has included: 

• “encouraging her readers to follow Jared Wyand, a white supremacist and anti-Semite who openly praises Adolf Hitler and denies the Holocaust happened”; 

• “praising… ethnonationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has used anti-Semitism for political gain by casting the Hungarian-American Jewish billionaire George Soros as an evil, globalist puppet master”; 

• and “borrowing propaganda from white supremacists like Kenn Gividen, who runs a racist website and at one point was the presidential candidate for the white nationalist American Freedom Party.” 

Others who have earned Mekelburg’s praise include white nationalist groups such as Soldiers of Odin, Proud Boys and Generation Identity.  

Mekelburg has also spread anti-Black hate, notably promoting conspiracy theories that former President Barack Obama is an “illegal alien” and a “jihadist” and spreading “white supremacist lies about black rape statistics.” 

Following the publication of O’Brien’s report, several known anti-Muslim activists, prompted by a post from Mekelburg, emerged to defend her views. Pamela Geller, known as “one of the most prominent anti-Muslim and anti-Islam activists and bloggers,” claimed that Mekelburg merely had a “different political viewpoint.”  

Laura Loomer, who previously described Islam as a “cancer on society” and has been banned from several major social media platforms for sharing hate speech, and Robert Spencer, who has funded public transit ad campaigns that “cast Islam as a source of violence and intolerance,” also rose to Mekelburg’s defense. 

Mekelburg’s work to spread anti-Muslim hate eventually actualized in the founding of RAIR, which reportedly originally stood for “Resistance Against Islamic Radicals” and claimed its mission was “to stop the Jihadi infiltration of our American communities.” The website had been involved in naming “accomplices” — individuals that Mekelburg “believed were collaborating with jihadi terrorists.” One such “accomplice” was an attorney in Iowa who reportedly made the list simply for donating to the campaign of Mazahir Salih, a Muslim woman running for public office. 

The organization has notably since rebranded itself as “Rise Align Ignite Reclaim”; however, the apparent goal remains to peddle in anti-Muslim hate. 

At least a dozen posts on RAIR’s official website are dedicated to spreading anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and white supremacist conspiracy theories, including the “Great Replacement” theory, which posits immigration and multiculturalism generally as inherent threats to Western countries, and the supposed “Islamization” theory, which spreads fear specifically over the migration of Muslim individuals to Western countries. 

A December 2022 post, for example, spread concern over a “scenario in which large parts of the UK and Europe could resemble Pakistan.” Another titled “Where Should Europeans Flee To When Our Countries Have Been Destroyed?” asks if “we Europeans have an obligation to give away our ancestral lands to foreign peoples from other continents who are infiltrating Europe and are actively hostile to us” and asserts, in what appears to be a vague threat, that “Europeans must stop retreating and start actively defending our homelands.”  

The post, and others that appear on RAIR’s site, are authored by “Fjordman,” a pseudonym for Peder Jensen, an anti-Muslim blogger whose work was reportedly the “main inspiration for Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who in July 2011 killed seventy-seven people, mostly youths, to stop what he claimed was the ‘Islamization of Europe.'”  

Another post authored by Fjordman and reposted on the RAIR website in July 2024 states in no uncertain terms: “At this point, it is beyond absurd to claim that Islamization and population replacement are ‘conspiracy theories’. This is happening rapidly and openly in numerous European cities at the same time.” 

Numerous other RAIR posts attempt to establish unsupported correlations between increased migration, particularly of Muslim individuals, and a rise in crimes and specifically sex-related offenses in various European countries. One March 2023 post seems to draw a vague connection between a rise in sex-related offenses and “Mohammed” being a “top baby name” in Ireland. 

Still, many other posts simply promote hatred and misinformation of Islam and Muslims in general terms. These include posts titled “Warning: Muslims Are Using Professional Sports as the Latest ‘Trojan Horse’ to Infiltrate and Destabilize the West,” “Importing Islam Means Importing Violence,” and “It’s Good To Be Anti-Islam but Not Anti-Muslim.” They include assertions such as “Islam is not necessarily entitled to equal respect and acceptance.” 

RAIR’s apparent quest to spread anti-Muslim hate is so extreme that, in December 2024, it even interviewed, platformed, and praised Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, the anti-Muslim extremist and Saudi atheist who, approximately eight days later, went on to commit the horrific Christmas market massacre attack in Germany to protest Germany’s supposed failure to support ex-Muslim refugees. 

Having spent years spreading conspiracy theories regarding Muslims and minorities in Europe, RAIR appears to be turning to the United States, with its most recent focus to campaign against a Muslim-led community development project in Texas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has come out against the development, reposted a video from Mekelburg, who, borrowing language from known-Islamophobes in Europe, claimed that the community was “the epicenter of a strategic and coordinated effort to Islamize Texas.” 

Key Sources

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