Alex Jones Has Been Banned For Violating Social Media Guidelines… Why Not Louis Farrakhan?
The platform of Alex Jones was drastically diminished this week after Facebook and YouTube banned his social media pages while Apple and Spotify removed his content from their services.
Among many disgusting and absurd things, the InfoWars founder is known for pushing off-the-wall conspiracy theories from claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged, pushing “Pizzagate” during the election, to insisting that the U.S. government was turning frogs gay.
Before being banned from Facebook, Jones was suspended for 30 days in late July after threatening Special Counsel Robert Mueller for, as he alleges, covering up for high-profile pedophiles.
“That’s a demon I will take down, or I’ll die trying,” Jones said on The Alex Jones Show. “It’s not a joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, bitch. Get ready. We’re going to bang heads. We’re going to bang heads.”
Facebook defended its decision.
“More content from the same pages has been reported to us – upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanising language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies,” a spokesperson for Facebook told The Guardian.
Here is what, among other things, Facebook finds “objectionable” according to their Community Standards:
We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence.
We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.
It is unclear what specifically triggered YouTube’s decision to remove Jones from its service except that he had violated their “Community Guidelines.”
Here are a few excerpts from YouTube’s Community Guidelines that may pertain to Jones’ violation:
The YouTube community is important to us and we want to see it flourish. To ensure that this is possible, content that makes threats of serious physical harm against a specific individual or defined group of individuals will be removed.
People who threaten others may receive a strike on their account and their account may be terminated.
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Videos that incite others to commit acts of violence are strictly prohibited from YouTube. If your video asks others to commit an act of violence or threatens people with serious acts of violence, it will be removed from the site.
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We encourage free speech and try to defend your right to express unpopular points of view, but we don’t permit hate speech.
Hate speech refers to content that promotes violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes, such as:
- race or ethnic origin
- religion
- disability
- gender
- age
- veteran status
- sexual orientation/gender identity
There is a fine line between what is and what is not considered to be hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation-state, but if the primary purpose of the content is to incite hatred against a group of people solely based on their ethnicity, or if the content promotes violence based on any of these core attributes, like religion, it violates our policy.
For those who are claiming this violates Jones’ freedom of speech, it doesn’t. This isn’t a First Amendment issue. These social media giants are private companies. They’re not government-owned and can make their own decisions about what content is accepted on their platforms. And it’s only a matter of time before Twitter follows suit.
Alex Jones is a bigoted kook with a huge, toxic platform. But do you know who else is a bigoted kook with a huge, toxic platform?
Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan, founder of Nation of Islam, is an outspoken anti-Semite, homophobe, racist, misogynist, and like Alex Jones, a vile human being. He’s called white people “potential humans,” Adolf Hitler a “very great man,” and literally blamed Jews for 9/11.
Yet, Farrakhan still has his Facebook page as well as his YouTube channels for the Nation of Islam and his own news publication The Final Call.
Just two months ago, Farrakhan uploaded an excerpt from his sermon blasting the “Jewish Power” controlling Hollywood, citing disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein as his example and falsely alleged that the Talmud considers gentile and black women “partly animals.” In another upload, he explained the “origins of homosexuality” began with in the Middle East and claimed that President Barack Obama was “under Jewish influence” when he “tried to introduce same-sex marriage to black people.” He added that it’s “satanic.”
Does that not violate Facebook’s Community Standards?
There appears to be selective enforcement on behalf of these tech companies. Just look at Twitter’s treatment of New York Times hire Sarah Jeong and Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens. Jeong stirred up controversy last week for her years-long history of resurfaced anti-white tweets that never faced any scrutiny from Twitter. Then as a social experiment of her own, Owens took those tweets and substituted “white” with “Jewish” and “black.” And what happened to her? She was immediately suspended. Twitter quickly reversed its decision after facing backlash, calling it an “error.”
Conservatives constantly point out the hypocrisy of punished users versus others that go scot-free. They very often, and predictably, fall along political lines. The real problems arise, as columnist David French accurately assessed, from just how “vague” the concept of hate speech is, when defined by social media platforms. Either all these users should all be punished or none of them should. And because these platforms are apparently incapable of be unbiased judges, none of their users should be banned for so-called “hate speech.” Not Jeong, not Owens, not Jones, and not even Farrakhan.
Frankly, the sudden banishment of Alex Jones may actually embolden him and his followers, as they now see themselves as the victims of a coordinated attempt by their opposition to silence them, which is why it’s a mistake for services like Facebook and YouTube to remove them from their sites. Just because they’re out of our newsfeeds, that doesn’t mean they’re out of our lives. They will gather in the darkest corners of the web and continue to push unhinged conspiracy theories. And that’s exactly why the solution to speech you oppose is more speech, not less.
But since Jones has now been banned by Facebook and YouTube, the next logical step would be to give Farrakhan the same treatment for his hateful rhetoric, right?
[image via screengrab]
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
