To survive a school shooting is traumatic enough, but to then face a nationwide racist smear campaign that falsely accuses you of being the murderer is even worse. That was the fate of Mustapha Kharbouch, a queer Palestinian student at Brown University. While mourning his fellow students, Kharbouch found himself confronting false accusations. Across social media, attempts by the university to protect his privacy were painted as proof of guilt.

Those who libeled Kharbouch were not anonymous social media trolls but some of the country’s most powerful figures, including prominent plutocrats such as Shaun Maguire and Bill Ackman, government officials like US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, lawmakers such as Representative Anna Paulina Luna, and influencers such as Laura Loomer (who is known to have the ear of President Donald Trump). These figures used their considerable megaphones to try to destroy the life of a private citizen. This racist mob operated with reckless disregard for the truth, likely because they knew that Islamophobia enjoys near-total impunity in the United States. To date, this story has not been covered in mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times. This itself is evidence of now normalized vicious Islamophobia has become.

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To understand Kharbouch’s horrific experience, it is necessary to lay out the facts of two murder cases. The best available evidence indicates that on Saturday, December 13, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente went on a shooting spree that killed two people and injured nine at Brown University. Two days later, while still at large, Valente killed MIT scientist Nuno Loureiro, whom Valente had known in his native Portugal. Valente killed himself on December 16. His body was found two days later. The police and FBI seem to have been extremely inept in investigating the case and broke it only with the help of a Reddit post.

The incompetence of law enforcement allowed racist and Islamophobic conspiracy theories to run wild. The two interrelated conspiracy theories were that Kharbouch was the murderer and that Loureiro was murdered because he was Jewish and an ardent Zionist. The Daily Mail reported that “Israeli officials” believe Loureiro was “assassinated in his home in [a] targeted attack by [an] Iranian operative.” This reporting was nonsense. There is no evidence that Loureiro was either Jewish or a Zionist. As best as can be discovered, Valente’s motives for the murders were personal, based on frustration over his failed academic career.

An AFP fact-check gives a useful rundown of how the smear against Karbouch spread:

The allegations appeared to originate with the anonymous X account “@0hour1,” which repeatedly posted photos and videos of Kharbouch on December 15, sometimes alongside images police had released of the person of interest. The student’s photos and email address were quickly plastered across X, sparking calls for their punishment or death.

Many posts highlighted the student’s documented history of pro-Palestinian activism, while several attempted to compare the individual’s body and gait to a person of interest shown in footage released by police….

Right-wing podcaster Tim Pool and US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon joined in amplifying the narrative, which gained further momentum as Brown University webpages mentioning Kharbouch or listing their contact information appeared to be removed, fueling claims of a cover-up. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman also reshared multiple posts floating the allegations.

To protect Kharboch from doxing, Brown University scrubbed information about him from its website. This was taken by Islamophobes as evidence of guilt.

As Fast Company reports, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire promoted false accusations about Kharbouch, as well as the erroneous theory of the motivation for Loureiro’s murder. On the social medial site X, the journalist Jasper Nathanial posted a video that Maquire had made about the murders and subsequently deleted. Summing up the video, Nathaniel noted:

[Maguire] claims there is “very strong evidence” that Mustapha Kharbouch, a Palestinian Brown student, “likely” committed the murders of two Brown students. He treats Brown removing pages about Kharbouch as evidence of guilt, completely lost on him that this was a response to doxxing like his. He also falsely claims the slain MIT professor was Jewish and frames the killings as part of a history of “pro-Palestinian terrorism” that he says is supported by [Zohran] Mamdani.

In a statement released on Friday, Kharbouch spoke of his experiences: “I woke up on Tuesday morning to unfounded, vile, Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian accusations being directed toward me online. Instead of grieving with my community in the aftermath of the horrible shooting, I received non-stop death threats and hate speech.”

It’s possible that Kharbouch might be able to get some redress through the courts by launching libel actions against those who defamed him. But this legal remedy won’t touch the larger problem of out-of-control islamophobia.

As Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid notes, rabid expressions of hatred for Muslims have become normal on the right in the Trump era. To cite one example, on December 14, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville tweeted, “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult. Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer.” Vile comments like this have become the norm among Republicans, while Democratic pushback has too often been perfunctory. The defamation campaign against Kharbouch could easily have led to his being physically harmed or killed. Unless Islamophobia and other forms of racism are fought head-on, the US is headed for a dark future.