Every day I received emails from readers and members of my various Facebook groups, asking for help after having been blocked for posting a story or comment that might offend Muslims.
This is America, not Saudi Arabia. Enough.
I am suing.
The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) is filing a federal lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) under the First Amendment. In a press release, he AFLC explained that “Section 230 provides immunity from lawsuits to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, thereby permitting these social media giants to engage in government-sanctioned censorship and discriminatory business practices free from legal challenge.” The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Jihad Watch.
As the AFLC explained, “Geller and Spencer, along with the organizations they run, are often subject to censorship and discrimination by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube because of Geller’s and Spencer’s beliefs and views, which Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube consider expression that is offensive to Muslims. Such discrimination, which is largely religion-based in that these California businesses are favoring adherents of Islam over those who are not, is prohibited in many states, but particularly in California by the state’s anti-discrimination law, which is broadly construed to prohibit all forms of discrimination. However, because of the immunity granted by the federal government, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are free to engage in their otherwise unlawful, discriminatory practices.”
For years I have documented the outrageous bias of Facebook’s speech policies. Notoriously one-sided, those who oppose jihad terror, support Israel and stand against the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth (sharia) have been systematically blocked and banned. Just last month Facebook took down my page and blocked me after a devout Muslim opened fire on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Facebook said they took down my page because of their rule against “hateful, obscene, or threatening” content.
But it is not hateful, obscene, or threatening to oppose jihad terror such as we saw in Orlando. Truth is not hateful or obscene. What is hateful, obscene and threatening is that Facebook is moving to silence everyone who speaks honestly about the motivating ideology behind such attacks.
After the Orlando jihad massacre, they went into full damage control mode. Orlando showed jihad for what it is. They’re committed to obscuring that knowledge and making sure people remain ignorant and complacent about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat.
They also banned my own account for thirty days. This has happened before — when I get too close to truths they want to cover up. They’re afraid these truths will get out, and that people will start acting to remove the feckless and traitorous leaders who got us into this fix.
And to those of you who say, “Forget Facebook, we’ll do without it,” I say no. I am sick and tired of the suppression of our speech. We are unable to engage in the public square. And yes, Facebook is the public square; it’s where we connect. We have to fight for it. Shouting into the wilderness is not freedom of speech. My Facebook page has close to 300,000 followers, and combined with my pages (SIOA, SION, AFDI), the reach is another 100,000. It’s a critical connection.
Facebook has immense power over organic media — the sharing of our information and news between friends and associates. I would say too much power. They’re trying to change the people by restricting our access to information. Gizmodo reported in May:
Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project… Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all.
“News curators”: what a Goebbels-like term.
Those of us who connect on Facebook have known this for years. We see it. We feel it. Which is why it is critical for our Facebook followers to share our stories on their news feeds. It is up to us to educate people.
Facebook’s unlawful, discriminatory practices have been mandated at the highest levels. In September 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel strong-armed Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook to censor posts critical of the migrant invasion. CNBC reported that Merkel was “overheard confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over incendiary posts on the social network.” What kind of incendiary posts? Pro-jihad terror posts? No: Merkel was angry about posts criticizing her policy of inundating Germany with Muslim migrants.
The CNBC report continued: “On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported. The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that ‘we need to do some work’ on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. ‘Are you working on this?’ Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative.”
This is so typical of the elites. They control policy, they control the media, they control the culture — but they can’t control the people. And this makes them crazy. If they could, they would change the people.
And so they try to change the people by restricting their access to information. My page “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s In the Quran” was taken down from Facebook because it was “hate speech.” Hate speech? Really? The page ran the actual Quranic texts and teachings that called for hatred and incitement of violence against the Jews. So who exactly was responsible for any “hate speech” that may have been present on the page?
When they took down the page, photos of Muslims such as this one were removed.
This is an actual photo of a Muslim holding a sign saying “Death to the Juice” at an anti-Israel rally in New York City. The photo was taken my esteemed colleague Pamela Hall. It is news. Facebook policy dictates that truth is hate speech.
Despite its content being simply factual, the page was taken down. Up only two weeks, it had 10,000 followers. Of course, I started a new page, “Islamic Antisemitism: It’s in the Quran” — like it here. But I suspect that this page won’t live long on Facebook, either. Why is Zuckerberg scrubbing evidence of Muslims inciting people to commit acts of hatred and violence? Why do his policies allow for vicious posts and pages against Israel to stand, but exposing the truth behind that Islamic hate is prohibited? That’s sharia.
Another time I received a warning on our Stop Islamization of America pages (join them!) because of this photo, another actual photo of Muslims daubing a building wall with “Kill the Jews” and “Jihad against Israel.”
I suspect that those pages are in trouble as well. But calls to “rape and dice” me appear on Facebook regularly (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE):
Dexter Van Zile, the Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) writes: “Recently, my correspondents have alerted me to another page on Facebook. The end of the URL includes the phrase ‘The Truth About Jews” and the page itself promotes Blood Libels against the Jewish people.
It’s titled ‘Jewish ritual murder.’ The page has all the stuff you’d expect on an anti-Semitic Facebook page. It has 248 ‘Likes’ and includes anti-Jewish libels from all over the world. The page includes a disclaimer that is simply bizarre: ‘Comments that are offensive, obscene, vulgar, irrelevant to this page or classified as spam will be removed.’ The entire page is offensive and obscene. And the page, which has been in existence since March 2012, is an exercise in vulgar anti-Semitism.
“Yes, people have complained about the page. And yes, Facebook has responded with messages indicating that the page does not violate the company’s community standards.
Will the page eventually be removed? Probably. But why doesn’t Facebook delete this stuff when first apprised of its presence on their website?”
Why, indeed?
And there is so much more. The Blaze recently reported that “a legal group accused Facebook of favoring anti-Semites over Jews following an experiment it conducted. It created two Facebook groups with nearly identical content, but with the words ‘Jews/Israelis’ and ‘Arabs/Palestinians’ swapped.”
Shurat HaDin posted a video entitled “The Big Facebook Experiment,” showing Facebook’s anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias. Their pro-Israel group included a post saying, “Death to all the arabs,” while their pro-Palestinian group included a post saying, “Death to all the jews.”
Then they reported both groups to Facebook. The pro-Israel group was taken down. The pro-Palestinian group wasn’t.
Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat Hadin commented: “Facebook’s management is required to act immediately against the blatant incitement being waged for years against Jews and Israelis in the social network it owns and manages. The in-depth investigation we conducted proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that [Facebook’s] claims of equality in the face of its conduct against any individual or group of people are at best erroneous and false in the worst case.”
Darshan-Leitner concluded: “It cannot be that in 2015 a publicly traded commercial company will carry out a racist policy which so blatantly discriminates in favor of any party. The investigation we conducted proves that indeed there is bias in favor of one political party and against Israelis and Jews in particular. Jews and Israelis around the world should be very concerned over the results of the investigation and understand that the most famous social network in the world is working actively in favor of the Palestinians.”
Facebook is increasingly doing the bidding of vicious Muslim thugs and supremacists. I receive a number of emails weekly from Muslims living in Muslim countries who have left Islam and live in terror and fear of being found out. They plead for help and advice.
One group of Arab ex-Muslims, after having their material repeatedly deleted by Facebook, prepared a petition at Change.org asking Facebook to stop deleting Arab Atheist and secularist groups. Sign this petition.
Frankly, it’s terrible and getting worse. As it continues to seize power and control, the left is on dangerous ground. We well know the bloody outcome of this trajectory. This has to end now.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.
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