12/30/2017 / By Jayson Veley
If you still don’t believe that Twitter is set up in a way that intentionally targets conservatives – and only conservatives – for censorship, then you simply haven’t been paying attention.
Earlier this week, the social media giant began a massive purge of users that the company claims are in violation of its new terms of service. As predicted, however, it wasn’t users who were members of the racist Black Lives Matter movement or the violent Antifa group who were being targeted for suppression; it was people affiliated with the alt-right or the far right.
Among the users that were silenced by Twitter were white nationalist Jared Taylor, his group American Renaissance, and Jayda Fransen, the woman whose so-called “Islamophobic” videos were famously retweeted by President Trump. The official standard that Twitter used for this purge is still unknown, although it certainly seems as though being on the right side of the political spectrum had something to do with it.
It goes without saying that content related to white supremacy or extreme racism on the Internet should be condemned and discouraged by all Americans. The problem arises, however, when social media companies like Twitter seek to silence people with those opinions, because as radical and divisive as they may be, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution still applies. Whether its on the Internet or elsewhere, the freedom of speech in America needs to be rigorously defended against those who seek to pervert it or do away with it altogether; the alternative, sadly, is growing tyranny. (Related: Twitter’s crackdown on speech is rapidly turning the platform into a mindless cesspool of conformist stupidity.)
But if Twitter is going to undermine the freedom of speech and force all of their users to comply with their established standards, then at the very least, it would make sense that the social media giant would give the same amount of scrutiny to left-leaning users as they give to those on the political right. Radical leftists should be suppressed just as much as radical conservatives – unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening.
Recently, left wing users have been posting hundreds of hateful and violent tweets regarding Federal Communications chairman Ajit Pai and his decision to do away with the Obama-era net neutrality regulations. “I f#%&ing despise this f#%&ing curry nigger @AjitPaiFCC. Go back to India motherf#%&er,” wrote one Twitter user. “@AjitPaiFCC I will kill you Ajit Pai you f#%&ing nigger,” another said (expletives edited). Yet another user had the audacity to make a “joke” out of the idea of Ajit Pai getting assassinated: “I’m an Indian nigger, someone please assassinate me lol.”
But the horribly racist and hostile tweets didn’t stop there. A user by the name of “xvengence0054” wrote, “Guys we got to do something about Ajit Pai we cannot let this sand nigger take away net neutrality I will not stand for this tyranny on our rights.” A user by the name of “Nine0uh” said, “I want to murder this man. I’m not even being memey or cute. This is some, if I ever see him it’s on sight type business. Keep away from me, Ajit Pai. I dunno what I’ll do.” A Twitter user named “IraCrooks” wrote, “who wanna take one for the team and actually kill Ajit Pai,” and “schneider1492” even argued that the assassination of Ajit Pai would be “justifiable homicide.”
Why exactly did Twitter silence users on the far right but allow those who were making incredibly racist remarks and death threats against the Federal Communications chairmen to speak freely? (Related: Here is a full list of tech tyrants who are censoring websites because they don’t like the content of their speech.) If it seems to you like Twitter is politically biased and actively out to target conservative users for suppression and censorship, the truth is that, frankly, that’s exactly what is going on.
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Tagged Under: Aijt Pai, Alt-Left, Censorship, death threats, domestic terrorism, Donald Trump, FCC, First Amendment, free speech, political bias, political extremism, racism, radical politics, suppressing conservatives, Twitter