Two more conservatives were censored by Big Tech for completely political reasons this week
Scott Presler, a well-known conservative with 260,000 followers on Twitter was banned from Facebook for posting about the murder of Reggie Singh by an “illegal alien.” Alex Van Ness a research analyst for the Clarion Project was suspended from Twitter for twelve hours for calling Chelsea Manning “a guy.” Both incidents demonstrate social media’s clear bias and continuing strategy to designate conservative speech as “hate speech.”
Social media has similar political bans recently. Newsbusters staffer Nick Fondacaro was locked out from his account for 15 hours for criticizing CNN anchor Don Lemon. Evangelist Franklin Graham was similarly banned from Facebook for a post he made two years before. In both cases, social media giants apologized.
The murder of Corporal Singh, allegedly by illegal immigrant Gustavo Perez Arriago, was the perfect juxtaposition between the model legal immigrant serving his new homeland, and the illegal immigrant who reportedly harmed him. His brother, Reggie Singh, appeared with Trump at his visit to the border. Presler commented “Reggie Singh, I don’t know you. I didn’t know your brother. But I want you to know how brave you are. Millions of Americans’ hearts break for your family. We stand with you in protecting our families from criminal illegal aliens.”
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Facebook responded by taking down the post, claiming it “goes against our Community Standards on hate speech” and silencing Presler until January 13.
Alex Van Ness tweeted at Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years for leaking classified documents. Manning stood trial after being accused of “being a traitor who used his training and skills to deliberately and systematically harm the US and provide assistance to al-Qaida.”
Ness’s tweet called Manning by Manning’s biological gender. Saying “You’re a guy” eight times before following it up with “and a traitor.” This was in response to Manning claiming that “they/them is a singular pronoun” eight times.
Both of these incidents were part of a continuing trend where banter/insults and objective facts, if they come from conservative sources, are designated as hate speech. Dr Jordan Peterson described the problem of murkily defined “hate speech” succinctly in a tweet “the crucial question--the Achilles heel--remains: who defines hate? Answer: those to whom you would least want to grant such power.”
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