Shia LaBeouf's protest website hacked

Written by . Published: April 10 2017

Actor Shia Labeouf's anti-Donald Trump protest website was targetted by a hacker on Monday (10Apr17), when an anti-Semitic message briefly appeared online.


The Transformers star launched hewillnotdivide.us on 20 January (17), the day of the new U.S. President's inauguration, and encouraged members of the public to take a stand against the controversial real estate mogul-turned-politician by chanting the phrase, "He will not divide us" into a camera, initially stationed outside a museum in New York, with the footage streamed live online.

However, the art project's website was hijacked early on Monday, the first day of Passover, when a cyber criminal replaced the text on the home page to read, "14/88 #JewsWillNotDivideUs", adding, "coming in 2018 by Shia Labeouf".

The numbers reference two popular white supremacist symbols.

The offensive message was promptly removed, and the original homepage has since been restored.

Shia, whose mother is Jewish, has yet to comment on the controversy, but it's not the first time he has faced anti-Semitism over the project.

Days after its launch at New York's Museum of the Moving Image, the actor became involved in a scuffle with a man who had reportedly approached the star and began shouting Nazi rhetoric, prompting Shia to fight back.

He was arrested and charged with assault and harassment, but the counts were dropped in late March (17) due to a lack of evidence.

The protest piece was subsequently shut down and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where it remained for a few weeks before relocating again to the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, England.

The website hack doesn't come at a great time for Shia - he was kicked out of a popular Los Angeles-area bowling alley last week (05Apr17) following a verbal spat with a bartender.