After Twitter, Facebook. Why social networks are silencing Donald Trump
Rights — di Luca Cereda
For the first time Facebook removes a Trump post for incitement to hatred. Meanwhile Twitter continues to flag his inaccurate posts.
After Twitter, Facebook. Why social networks are silencing Donald Trump
For the first time Facebook removes a Trump post for incitement to hatred. Meanwhile Twitter continues to flag his inaccurate posts.
It is nothing new that Twitter lets nothing slide when it comes to American president Donald Trump. But this time the bird-logo social network is not the only one to have flagged the inappropriate use of its platform by the American billionaire and those running his electoral campaign for the November presidential elections. Facebook has also removed a post published by the White House incumbent's entourage, because it contained symbols used by the Nazis and was therefore potentially capable of inciting hatred. It is the first time Mark Zuckerberg's social network has stepped in to remove a controversial Trump post.
Now Facebook silences Trump too
In the wake of the clash between Trump and Twitter in recent weeks, Mark Zuckerberg had distanced himself, declaring that social networks should not make themselves "the arbiter of truth of everything people say online" — even when the person posting hateful phrases or false information is the President of the United States. That stance had also triggered an internal revolt within the company, leading more than 600 employees to stage a virtual strike against the CEO.
This time, however, Facebook takes a stand and removes a post published the previous day by the Team Trump page, which backs the tycoon in the November presidential race. The post featured an inverted red triangle, closely recalling the one the Nazis used to identify supporters of the Communist Party, topped by a message reading: "Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are destroying our cities and rioting – it's absolute madness. It's important that every American comes together to stop this... it needs to end NOW."
Online back and forth
According to the committee running Trump's electoral campaign, the red triangle is a reference to Antifa, the organisation that supports the fight "against far-right fascism." The campaign committee went on to say this is demonstrated by the "phone cases and water bottle stickers we've seen at the protests." Yet the symbol was first used in the 1930s by the Nazis to identify Communists, and later to represent all opponents of the dictatorship, including social democrats and liberals.
The explanation put forward by "Team Trump" is therefore shaky, to say the least. Indeed, Steve Bannon, the American president's chief strategist until 2017, as well as being a reference point for the American far right and the founder of a "sovereignist school" in Italy at the Certosa di Trisulti, in the province of Frosinone, is a Mussolini sympathiser, as he stated in an interview with BBC News in 2018.
Trump against the censorship of his social media posts
Pro-Nazi or not, that red triangle in Trump's campaign posts carries a sinister symbolic meaning. Regarding the removal of the post, Zuckerberg's company's position was set out by Andy Stone: "We removed it because it violated our policy against hate. Our policy prohibits using a symbol historically associated with identifying political prisoners, when that symbol is used without context that condemns or discusses it."
The events of recent hours are part of a broader context: according to Trump, news outlets and social networks ought to be treated in the same way — legally too. This is the thinking behind his signing of the executive order at the end of May aimed at limiting the ability of social network companies to censor or flag content posted by their users, even when that content is false, inaccurate or stokes social hatred. "This practice of censorship is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large and powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power," the President of the United States wrote some weeks ago.
So ridiculous to see Twitter trying to make the case that Mail-In Ballots are not subject to FRAUD. How stupid, there are examples, & cases, all over the place. Our election process will become badly tainted & a laughingstock all over the World. Tell that to your hater @yoyoel
Meanwhile Twitter's fact-checking of Trump's posts continues
Just a few hours after the incident on Facebook, Trump was hit by another act of censorship, this time by Twitter. The tycoon posted a doctored version of a video that had gone widely viral online since 2019, in which two children — one white, one African-American — run towards each other to embrace.
In the version posted by Trump, a white child is instead seen chasing a Black child, with a caption reading: "Terrified toddler runs from racist baby."
On the social network Trump uses most, administrator Jack Dorsey is not letting up, and beneath the video posted by the American president the following label is prominently displayed: "Manipulated media."
Beyond the health crisis, the situation in the United States is also tense from a social standpoint, owing to the protests of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which have brought the racial question back to the fore.
A new blow from the Supreme Court: Trump will not be able to deport the dreamers
As protests by hundreds of thousands of people continue to engulf at least 30 cities in the wake of the killing by police of George Floyd, an African American who died on 25 May during his arrest in Minneapolis, a blow to Trump's immigration policy has come from the Supreme Court. The highest authority in the American judiciary rejected the plan to abolish the Daca programme, which today protects almost 800,000 people who arrived in the United States illegally as children from immediate expulsion from the country.
These immigrants, known as Dreamers, were able to make use of renewable residency applications, which Trump had cancelled. The president's stroke of the pen was in turn struck down by the Court, which invalidated a part of his crusade against immigration — a central, if not essential, theme of his electoral campaign for re-election to the White House.
These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!
The president entrusted, ironically, to a tweet his thoughts on the ruling: "These horrible and politically charged Supreme Court decisions are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are great and conservative and Republican."