There are so many of these incidents now, this article could have been three times as long. My latest in Townhall:
“Hate speech is not free speech,” the Left increasingly insists – particularly on college and university campuses. In my new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), I show why the very concept of hate speech is a scam. Here are the top seven:
1. Twitter decides who has the right to “hate speech”
Consider, for example, what Twitter does not consider to be “hate speech.” A Muslim named Obaid Karki, @stsheetrock on Twitter, runs a website headed “Obaid Karki St.Sheetrock’s Painfulpolitics Offensive Comedy Hepcat” and another called “Suicide Bombers Magazine.” He posted this on one of them in late May 2016, just before the European Union and the social media sites announced their new agreement: “Robert Spencer mustn’t [be] featured but lynched…”
Karki’s posted this call for me to be lynched on Twitter. But Twitter refused to delete his account or even remove the threatening tweets.
2. Social Media blocks the truth by deeming it “hate speech”
Videogame developer Mark Kern was suspended from Twitter for writing, “I don’t see why mosques with radical leanings should be excluded from surveillance when the rest of us get our emails collected by the NSA.” The administrator of a pro–Donald Trump Facebook group was banned for arguing that Trump was not anti-Muslim but anti-ISIS.
In early February 2017, they came for me.
On February 7, 2017, referrals to my website, Jihad Watch, from Facebook numbered 23,783, and from Twitter, 1,718. These numbers were generally representative: referrals from Facebook for several years up to that point had averaged between 15,000 and 20,000 a day, and 1,500 to 2,000 a day from Twitter. But on February 10, 2017, those numbers dropped suddenly and precipitously, with only 2,923 referrals from Facebook and 295 from Twitter. That’s around where they have held since then: on March 20, 2017, there were 1,954 referrals from Facebook and 241 from Twitter.
Did thousands of people who used to click through to Jihad Watch articles from Facebook and Twitter suddenly lose interest on February 10, 2017? Of course not. What happened on that day was that Facebook and Twitter began to censor Jihad Watch as “hate speech,” in accordance with the assurances they had given to the European Union.
Blocking the Truth
Facebook, immediately after concluding an agreement with the European Union, began moving aggressively against foes of jihad terror and mass Muslim migration in the West. Nina Rosenwald, the president and founder of the conservative think tank Gatestone Institute, on June 2, 2016 recorded Facebook’s haste to implement the new speech regulations: “On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube. On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert.”
Carlqvist’s crime, according to Rosenwald, was to take note of real crimes by Muslim migrants: “Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feed—called ‘Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” In that video, said Rosenwald, “Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched.” Rosenwald added that the video was adapted from a “research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viral—racking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days. But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship…. ”
Facebook banning anti-jihad opinions
Facebook banned the page of a gay magazine, Gaystream, after it published an article by David Berger, its editor-in-chief, criticizing German gay activists and leftists for ignoring the Islamic root causes of the Orlando jihad massacre. Berger wrote, “Whoever had thought the culmination of masochism and Islam-appeasement by left-green professional homosexuals was already achieved, will now be mistaken: it becomes even more masochistic and perverse.”
5. Deleting jihad awareness
In July 2016, YouTube also invoked “hate speech” criteria, which supposedly it had developed as a tool to use against jihad recruiting videos, to delete a video critical of non-violent Muslim Brotherhood efforts to advance Sharia in the West.
6. The immunity of the censorship of certain social media groups explain a lot
On July 13, 2016, the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), of which I am vice president, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which grants Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube immunity from lawsuits, and thus makes it impossible to challenge their consistent bias against foes of jihad terror and tolerance of jihad terror activity.
Section 230 of the CDA explicitly immunizes Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from challenges to anything they do to “restrict access to or availability of material that” that they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
David Yerushalmi, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, added, “Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have notoriously censored speech that they deem critical of Islam, thereby effectively enforcing blasphemy laws here in the United States with the assistance of the federal government. It has been the top agenda item of Islamic supremacists to impose such standards on the West…. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are falling in line, and we seek to stop this assault on our First Amendment freedoms.”
annmarie says
In America, there is no such thing as Hate Speech. The supreme court has ruled that the American people can say what they want on the internet.
Guest says
But clearly this Section 230 of the CDA allows private online operators to ban anything they want. What is really needed is more courageous online operators that everyone who cares about free speech can defect to.
Joe says
Section 230 of the CDA need to be repealed. Common decency allows people to politely state their position. Facebook has 2 billion users. It also owns Instagram and Whatsapp. They have 3 to 4 times the market share of the next closest competitor in almost every demographic. Yet, they are given full authority to discriminate. Why should they be held to a different standard than other businesses who must serve the public without discrimination?
old white guy says
if you are charged with hate speech, defend your freedom of speech by using the second amendment.
john spielman says
poor zuckerberg-, he may be last but eventually they too will come for him! totalitarian regimes like islam will in the end force everyone to be submit or killed
syzito says
Everyone knows why these groups including the EU bans all forms of facts and evidence against Islam and not other religious belief systems……the followers of Islam [ Muslims ] will kill you. They are afraid to let the truth of Islamic beliefs be known. They fear for their life. That’s the reason the government and the media bans the criticism of Islam.
mortimer says
David Yerushalmi is correct: “Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have notoriously censored speech that they deem critical of Islam, thereby effectively enforcing blasphemy laws here in the United States.”
Enforcing Sharia blasphemy law is tantamount to participating in jihad… verbal jihad.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are silencing the lambs before they are slaughtered.
It is clear that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are selective in their definition of ‘hate speech’ when they permit Muslims to INCITE violence against or SOLICIT the MURDER of critics of Islam with impunity.
Westman says
Politicians railed and the truth is jailed. Call them “leaders” if you must – they are all in the same world club of politicians and multi-nationsl business that considers the citizen to be an economic unit like so many bees working in their hives to make honey. They will harvest it, leaving just enough honey (money) for the bees (citizens) to survive. The bees are never aware that the system is rigged and all the safeguard (government) agencies are compromised by the club.
People like Zuckerberg are new novices in the club, drunk with their newfound influence and like the professional politicians, making certain they have the supply to their influence addiction. The “smartest guy in the room” is rarely the most powerful.and usually finds himself in service to the powerful. This is most obvious in science and technology, the “nerd” world. Political forces intended to use the Atomic Bomb from its inception while Oppeheimer’s team wanted to see if it could be created. This was famously expressed as industry “raped the intellectuals and the intellectuals loved every minute of it.”
Facebook and Twitter, have destroyed “net neutrality” and free speech, being co-opted by the club. This is how the unwritten laws of the club are enforced – access and money. Jihad Watch is getting in the way of the club’s manipulation to economically flatten the world into two levels.
On the surface, it appears that mixing all cultures in one giant vat makes a mediocre mass of usable, exploitible, commonality. However, the destruction of civilizations shows clearly that politicians, and theiir masters, are not the “smartest guys in the room”; The club is betting the economic future of the Western World on mixing down Islam into a toothless commonality of worker/consumer bees. It is a fool’s errand, and a fool’s error.
Ren says
I’m glad I’m Facebook free.
John A. Marre says
Facebook has chosen sides in the war between civilization and Islam. Facebook, like the other “social media”, has chosen to favor the enemies of civilization and to enable them to spread their ideology of hate and nihilism.
Alien Republican says
A few days ago Facebook recommend checking my privacy settings while explicitly referring to a Milo Y. Post I liked.
AzB says
I cannot work out why “banning ” is being selected as the best method for dealing with hardline critique or other kinds of statements.
If i was in their position, i would suggest the following instead: Anytime there is a link to some source which is not advocating violence but does advocate a long hard look at a group, that you introduce links to alternative sources providing the opposite views.
This should also be used for stuff like very hateful haddiths. A general policy of providing collections of viewpoints of different times from which a person then makes up their mind and picks the best option (for them).
if they would do that then it would respect the nature of democratic traditions. Banning stuff has been amajor driver of actual genuine far right views and they will learn that to police this in a consistent way proves absolutely impossible.
It drives the perception of conspiracy more than any other factor. I think their approach is totally flawed and sourced in certain “diversity policy thinktanks” plus a dose of “east german statism” . Fundamentally disagree with this approach not per se on principle, but in terms of practical effects on how people think – especially in relation to the building of a feeling of “insidious state program” and “control” etc.
If they haven’t yet figured out this is the biggest driver of the alt-right, i don’t know when they will.
AzB says
its quite laughable that they cannot police drugs despite 30 years of “war on drugs” but think it might be easier to police opinions, which are intangible things?
Yeah…that’s gonna work.
AzB says
what’s facebook’s counterterrorism strategy. I’m sure they could do a lot of work on that. why always this nonsense word “hate”.
Rational adults have a complex range of emotions and perspectives on all kinds of matters.
Its a type of infantilism. Indulgent to feelings at the expense of discussions. What kind of logic is that to run the world?
The west will learn the hardway just how much of a big mistake it is to pander to the narrative that “avoiding offense” is the primary goal of society.
Lydia says
It’s all part of the globalist agenda.
The end game is a dictatorship under one man with a one world government, religion, and economy. Anyone who dissents is killed. I’ll be first in line.
All the puzzle pieces and blocks are leading up to this, it’s all working for one goal even if it does not always appear to be. It will be obvious once it’s all unveiled.
Andrew Anderson says
I’ve warned my daughter that posting pictures of her beloved pet dogs on Facebook might soon lead to her being banned when their Sharia police spot her ‘offensive’ behaviour!
Carolyne says
I don’t use Facebook. I have no desire to acquire thousands of names of people I don’t know and will never know. I also have no reason to put details of my life on line for the edification of all those people I don’t know. I think Facebook is silly.
Richard Courtemanche says
If big social media such as FB were to block free speech by whatever manners Islam dictates, that would be a tremendous advantage to propel Islam’s advance much faster much little chance of arguments.
UNCLE VLADDI says
We should form a group called ARC – “Anti-Racism Coalition” – to target ONLY the REAL racists – the leftopaths!
Liberals are racists: they always assume that ONLY White Western people (including, of course, the Jews in Israel,) are INTELLIGENT enough to be guilty of being truly evil, while all their pet “People Of Colour” (including the “swarthy palestinians”) being mentally inferior and all, just can’t help being enslaved by their instincts and emotions into acting as violent animals when frustrated, the poor oppressed little dears, so the liberals will always indulge their crimes, much as one ignores the new puppy as it pees on the rugs.
So here’s their interminably ongoing “narrative” (story):
“SO JUST STOP PICKING ON ALL THE THE POOR HELPLESS MENTALLY INFERIOR SWARTHY ANIMAL VICTIMS, YOU EVIL MENTALLY SUPERIOR WHITE BULLIES! YOU KNOW THEY’RE AT THE MERCY OF THEIR ANIMAL INSTINCTS SUCH THAT THEY JUST CAN’T HELP BEING VIOLENT WHEN CONFUSED, SO STOP BAITING AND CONFUSING THEM, YOU HATERS!”
UNCLE VLADDI says
ALL liberal “hate-speech laws” ARE crimes!!!
“The whole concept of “hate speech” (laws against hurt feelings) is political correctness run amok, a leftist anti-free-speech tool that provides an unlimited excuse to shut down and punish anyone who openly disagrees with establishment dicta. Every totalitarian state has similar laws designed to protect the rulers. Such laws have no place in a free society.”
– Patrick1984 –
But Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977), R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), Virginia v. Black (2003), Snyder v. Phelps (2011) These SCOTUS cases show that unpopular speech is still protected speech.
SO: What is “hate-speech” and why should it be considered a crime if it’s NOT already: a) a threat; and b) slander (fraud)?
If it’s not either PHYSICALLY threatening speech – or emotionally threatening BECAUSE it could physically impact one’s life, like how fraudulent slander causes other people to react to one as if one were a criminal in need of hating and beating – then it’s THE TRUTH: and so it SHOULD cause one the emotional distress of ‘hurt feelings!’ So it isn’t objectively “offensive,” but is, in fact, socially beneficial in that it helps defend society from criminals, whether or not said predictably victim-blaming criminal is subjectively “offended” by their victims being notified about THEIR offenses!
Having no facts to justify their aggressive hypocrisy, all criminals will resort to using emotive ‘arguments’ to justify their crimes by playing the victims. So they (liberals, muslims) can be relied on to try to criminalize hurt feelings and to make offending people, (i.e: the criminals, by accusing them of their crimes) illegal, too!
ALL “Hate-Speech Laws” ARE CRIMES!
“Progressive” criminals – who like all criminals desire an equality of outcome over a true equality of opportunity, and to get it will always try to socially engineer ever-more rights and ever-less responsibilities for them selves, by offloading their responsibilities onto their victims by stealing their victims’ rights – pretend to hold submissive masochism as the highest virtue (for their victims to hold, not them) and the ultimate crime to be causing offense and hurting other people’s (criminal’s) feelings, (i.e: by accusing them of their crimes).
So they want to make it illegal to accuse criminals of their crimes, since that might hurt their feelings and in offending them with the often-painful truth, “make” them commit even more crimes!
Is there anything which really ought to qualify as hate speech and be banned?
NO – not because it’s “hateful” (because that sort of nonsense is only making subjective assessments based on emotions;) and “HATE” is really only the perfectly natural human response of perpetual anger towards ongoing crimes (like islam); without ‘hate’ we would never bother to accuse criminals of their crimes in order to stop those crimes.
Unreasonable false displays of hatred and anger on the other hand, are what the Left is good at – but that’s already illegal, not because of the anger displayed – that’s just the outrageous holier-than-thou virtue-signalling packaging used to disguise their preposterous extortion attempts – but because it’s fraudulent slander.
Such criminal leftists who try to make “hate” into a crime, only ever make it ‘illegal’ to hate crime itself!
Speech which is already disallowed is incitement of immediate violence and death-threats … and even those aren’t illegal, if say they call for the police to use violence to counter ongoing mob violence and looting, or call for the death-penalty for murderers!
….
Further, ALL politicians who craft “hate-speech laws” and ALL cops who arrest people for “hate-speech crimes” and ALL lawyers and judges who prosecute people for them, should themselves be fired and JAILED for putting “hurt feelings” before FACTS!
Especially in the case of islam!
Everyone who defends islam and muslims endorses crime.
Endorsing crime IS a crime, so those doing it are criminals.
Right in the Qur’an is: the permission to murder Jews and Christians (Surah 9:29), to terrorize all non-Muslims (8:12), to rape young girls (65:4), to enslave people for sex (4:3), to lie about one’s true goals (3:54), and the command to make war on all the infidels (9:123) and subjugate the entire world to Allah (9:33).
Are death-threats legal? NO.
Is extortion legal? NO.
Is slavery legal? NO.
Is murder legal? NO.
Is rape legal? NO.
THEN ISLAM IS ILLEGAL!
Rape, slavery, robbery, extortion and murder are never OK!
Everything muslims pretend to see as “holy” is already a crime!
So nobody has a legal right to practice islam anywhere on earth!