“UPDATE: A Facebook representative told Breitbart News that “a block was incorrectly put on [Ms. Geller’s] account on April 25 after a post was mistakenly identified to violate our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy because it included ‘God Bless Hitler’ and we don’t allow praise for hate figures. We removed the block the next day as soon as we identified that Ms. Geller was raising awareness about this content, which we do allow.”
Original Story starts here:
Days after Facebook, along with Google and Twitter, refused to attend a congressional hearing on social media censorship, the social network banned the account of author and free speech activist Pamela Geller for 30 days after she posted an article about Muslim anti-Semitism in Germany.
Geller’s article said that “thanks to the hijrah” [Jihad by immigration] “Islamic antisemitism will drive the Jews out of Europe, succeeding in achieving Hitler’s dream — a judenrein Europe.”
The rest of the post featured an Associated Press article about a German Jewish leader advising Jews in the country to avoid wearing skullcaps in cities due to anti-Semitic attacks in the country.
At the congressional hearing on social media censorship this week, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused conservatives of believing a “conspiracy theory” about social media censorship. They claimed there is no pattern of bias against conservatives on major tech platforms.
And yet, the targeting of major figures on the right continues. This is not the first time Geller has been banned by Facebook for political posts. After the Islamic terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida in 2016, the social network banned both her personal account and one of her organizations, Stop Islamization of America.
Freedom Defence Initiative, another conservative organization run by Geller, was also banned by PayPal, along with Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch, a site monitoring Islamic extremism. PayPal reversed their decision following a public backlash.
Finally, Twitter refused to enforce its content rules when Geller’s daughters were the targets of a vicious harassment campaign on the app. Many of the abusive tweets remain on their platform, their authors unpunished. At the same time, Islamic critics like Tommy Robinson have been permanently banned from the platform for posts containing statistical facts about Muslim grooming gangs in Europe.
If Congress is looking for a pattern of political bias by major social networks, it is hiding in plain sight.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter, Gab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.