The personal Facebook account of former Breitbart London editor Raheem Kassam was suspended overnight Monday, leaving him unable to administer his accounts at the same time the social media network totally banned English right-wing campaigner Tommy Robinson from their platforms.
Kassam, who edited Breitbart London until May 2018 and is now a fellow at the Claremont Institute, saw his ban picked up by Donald Trump Junior, the son of the President of the United States, who took to Twitter to cast doubts on the motives behind the apparent censorship.
Less than two hours after Mr Trump Jr’s intervention, Kassam’s account was re-activated, he said in a follow-up message.
Kassam told Breitbart London that the take-down of his personal account was bad timing for the social network, as he was just days away from giving an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and was likely now to discuss the censorious attitudes of the Silicon Valley elites in his speech.
He said: “The routine and casual censorship of conservatives has now reached new levels. How Facebook thinks shutting down the account of a main stage CPAC speaker right before the biggest global conservative event of the year is acceptable is beyond me.”
While Kassam’s personal account was disabled, leaving him unable to post messages to his official fan page except through an intermediary, Kassam said he was appealing the decision and hoped to see the ban lifted. This contrasts to the near-simultaneous outright ban of UK citizen journalist and street organiser Tommy Robinson, which is effective across both the Facebook and Instagram platforms and cannot, apparently, be appealed.
Robinson’s ban came just hours after he broadcast an hour-long documentary which, he claims, exposes dodgy dealings by Britain’s state broadcaster the BBC in their attempts to create a programme discrediting him. Robinson told Breitbart London about the ban:
“This is continued censorship which we all knew was coming but its been done instantly because of my documentary which exposed the establishment working with Hope not Hate, working with the BBC in order to destroy my name to the nation. When I exposed what they were doing they’ve put down the pressure to completely delete me from the internet. This has to show people the levels they’re gonna go to silence any opposition to mass migration and the Islamisation of this nation.”
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