On Wednesday, March 24th, Facebook announced its big plans to ban hate speech groups from their platform, specifically, White Supremacist and “White Nationalist” groups. This came after the recent Christchurch, New Zealand shooting on March 15th, where a proclaimed White Supremacist tragically took 50 lives and injured dozens more.
Hateful speech that leads to violence is definitely something that should be curtailed. The problem is, most speech that many find to be unsavory is also protected under the first amendment and is not inciting hatred or violence at all.
Bans like this, in theory, should be aimed at any such group, whether it be White Supremacists, Radical Muslim groups, or even The Black Panthers. Even the totally biased Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the “New Black Panther Party” as an extremely racist, violent, anti-white and anti-semitic group, for an example.
One would think based on the precedent being set by Facebook banning White Supremacy groups, they probably banned the New Black Panther Party a long time ago since this is a well established, hateful, and violence-inciting group. Unfortunately, though, that just isn’t the case. A quick peek on Facebook shows that their groups are alive and thriving.
SEE PICTURES BELOW
Even more egregiously, there are actually documented cases in which people are banned for negative sentiments towards those who incite hate by perpetrating false narratives to cause hate and race division, such as the Jussie Smollett incident, where the actor allegedly staged a fake hate crime in an attempt to paint Conservatives and supporters of President Trump in a negative light. In the case linked above, a Facebook user was banned for thirty days for a harmless meme about Jussie Smollett as you can see in the article. Evidence shows that it is very hard for the average Facebook user to believe that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to run a truly fair and balanced hate free platform. It’s almost as if he is pushing one agenda and weaponizing tragedies and random unsavory people to further the cause of socialism and bigger Government.
While hatred on all levels is a morally bad thing, there is a two-pronged problem going on here. The first prong is that limiting non-violent free speech (violence should never be condoned and all reasonable people should agree with that) is a slippery slope because it is hard to define what’s acceptable and what’s not, and the second prong is that people doing the limiting will always play favorites.
The real issue here comes down to who is running the show, and what are the motives behind limiting some groups, but not others. Is CAIR (The Counsel On Islamic American Relations) banned from Facebook for trying to push anti-Christian pro-Islam agendas in our public schools, or for being tied to Anti Semitic Ilhan Omar and designated terror group “The Muslim Brotherhood”? Apparently not.
The takeaway is that we should all strive for peace and acceptance, but at the same time pay attention when big tech plays favorites, especially when second amendment gun rights are involved, as they always are in any politicized shootings, but, for example, not the shootings that happen every day on the streets of Chicago.
Below are more images of some of the aforementioned groups and people who are not banned by Facebook or other
