Shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned, a Twitter user with the handle @redfrnn, who has since deleted his or her or xis account, tweeted: “i’m going to assassinate supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.” The same Twitter user had just before that tweeted a photo of a gun, saying: “im considering buying a mac mini.” Twitter, however, did not find this murderous psychopath to be in violation of their rules, despite the fact that those rules say, “You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people.” Well, sure. You can’t threaten violence against an individual, but Clarence Thomas, he’s a conservative. And not only does Thomas dare to dissent from the Left’s agenda, but he is one of the most powerful individuals in the country who is actively working against it. So would the Twitter fascists mind if @redfrnn or someone else actually did kill him? It’s unlikely that they’d shed a tear, even for the fallen rule of law in our staggering republic.
This is, after all, Twitter, which banned a sitting president of the United States and hasn’t reinstated him. The Washington Post reported on Jan. 13, 2021, that “Twitter banned Trump’s account, which boasted 88 million followers, last Friday after first suspending him for 12 hours the day of the Capitol siege. On Friday Trump again tweeted that he wouldn’t attend the inauguration, as well as saying that his supporters would not be disrespected ‘in any way, shape, or form.’ Twitter immediately dismantled his account, saying the tweets could incite violence.”
So Twitter was ostensibly worried that Trump’s words would somehow incite violence, even though he didn’t call for any and had told the Jan. 6 protesters to proceed “peacefully.” But when it comes now to an open and explicit call for violence against someone who is out of favor with the Leftist elites, Twitter says “redfrnn hasn’t broken our safety policies.”
Twitter has demonstrated this same malicious inconsistency before. On New Year’s Day 2022, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted, “Martyr Soleimani is an eternal reality that will live on forever. His assassins – including Trump & the like – will go down in history’s garbage bin, but of course after receiving retribution in this world for the crime they committed.” That “retribution in this world” bit was a clear threat, but Twitter did nothing to restrict Khamenei’s account.
Nor did Twitter do anything to the account of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps when it tweeted nine days later, “The Islamic Republic of Iran considers vengeance against those responsible for the Baghdad crime to be the right of all believers; whether they are drops in the ocean or bits of sand in the desert they’ll seek vengeance next to the criminals’ homes.”
So the hardcore Leftists who run Twitter allowed Khamenei and the IRGC to threaten Trump, but banned Trump himself after he called for a peaceful protest. And now Twitter is allowing open threats against Clarence Thomas. So whatever happened to Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter? It seems to have simply faded away, and the Twitter fascists are just as much in the saddle as they always were.
Twitter’s blasé response to the threats to Thomas, however, demonstrates anew how deeply corrupt the platform really is, and how desperately an alternative is needed. The primary means of public discourse today are in the hands of ideologues who don’t believe in the freedom of speech and, as is increasingly clear, don’t even believe in the rule of law.
If their hegemony isn’t broken, this is a sure pathway to an authoritarian or even a totalitarian state, in which enemies of the powerful elites, such as Trump and Thomas, can be silenced and even killed if they stray too far from what the guardians of acceptable opinion have delineated as acceptable things to say. Twitter has likewise in the past banned numerous people, including PJ Media’s own Matt Margolis, for enunciating obvious truths such as the fact that Lia Thomas and Rachel Levine are not women but men. Twitter will indulge and enforce these Leftists’ fantasies and forcibly silence people for dissenting from them, while simultaneously remaining completely sanguine about death threats to prominent conservatives.
Enough is enough. If we had a lion-hearted, courageous opposition party, it would open hearings aimed at shutting Twitter down altogether. If we had a Justice Department, it would be looking into prosecuting Twitter for allowing these threats.
But we don’t have either.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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