Brendan O'Neill, writing in Spiked Online contends that: 

Facebook and Instagram’s ban confirms that corporate censorship is out of control. 

Only a fool would cheer the banning of Tommy Robinson by Facebook and Instagram. It doesn’t matter if you like or loathe him. It doesn’t matter if you think he’s a searing critic of the divisive logic in the politics of diversity or Luton’s very own Oswald Mosley in Jack Wills clobber. The point is that his expulsion from social media confirms that corporate censorship is out of control. It speaks to a new kind of tyranny: the tyranny of unaccountable capitalist oligarchs in Silicon Valley getting to decide who is allowed to speak in the new public square that is the internet.

Robinson, having already been thrown off Twitter and Patreon, was unceremoniously cast out from Facebook and Instagram yesterday. He had one million followers. So we are not talking about some bedroom-bound imbecile who says mad things to 27 fellow losers on Twitter, but about a public figure, someone who commands an audience and enjoys political influence. His crime, in the eyes of Facebook’s and Instagram’s community-standards cops, was to nurture ‘organised hate’ towards Muslims. He used ‘dehumanising language’ and made ‘calls for violence’, the social-media giants decreed. And therefore he had to go.

There are many disturbing things about this latest act of Silicon Valley silencing of an awkward public voice. The first is the apparent involvement of Mohammed Shafiq, CEO of the Ramadhan Foundation. Yesterday Shafiq boasted about having met with Facebook representatives to encourage them to ban Robinson over his ‘brainwashing’ of his followers into feeling ‘racism’ towards Muslims. This is the same Mohammed Shafiq who once attended an event with Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman, a Pakistani cleric who praised the murder in 2011 of the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, by a radical Islamist who despised Taseer for his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and his calls for the Christian ‘blasphemer’, Asia Bibi, to be released from jail. 

Continue Reading @  Spiked Online

Why Tommy Robinson Should Not Be Banned

Brendan O'Neill, writing in Spiked Online contends that: 

Facebook and Instagram’s ban confirms that corporate censorship is out of control. 

Only a fool would cheer the banning of Tommy Robinson by Facebook and Instagram. It doesn’t matter if you like or loathe him. It doesn’t matter if you think he’s a searing critic of the divisive logic in the politics of diversity or Luton’s very own Oswald Mosley in Jack Wills clobber. The point is that his expulsion from social media confirms that corporate censorship is out of control. It speaks to a new kind of tyranny: the tyranny of unaccountable capitalist oligarchs in Silicon Valley getting to decide who is allowed to speak in the new public square that is the internet.

Robinson, having already been thrown off Twitter and Patreon, was unceremoniously cast out from Facebook and Instagram yesterday. He had one million followers. So we are not talking about some bedroom-bound imbecile who says mad things to 27 fellow losers on Twitter, but about a public figure, someone who commands an audience and enjoys political influence. His crime, in the eyes of Facebook’s and Instagram’s community-standards cops, was to nurture ‘organised hate’ towards Muslims. He used ‘dehumanising language’ and made ‘calls for violence’, the social-media giants decreed. And therefore he had to go.

There are many disturbing things about this latest act of Silicon Valley silencing of an awkward public voice. The first is the apparent involvement of Mohammed Shafiq, CEO of the Ramadhan Foundation. Yesterday Shafiq boasted about having met with Facebook representatives to encourage them to ban Robinson over his ‘brainwashing’ of his followers into feeling ‘racism’ towards Muslims. This is the same Mohammed Shafiq who once attended an event with Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman, a Pakistani cleric who praised the murder in 2011 of the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, by a radical Islamist who despised Taseer for his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and his calls for the Christian ‘blasphemer’, Asia Bibi, to be released from jail. 

Continue Reading @  Spiked Online

5 comments:

  1. He is putting stuff out on Telegram now
    : https://t.me/TommyRobinsonNews

    ReplyDelete
  2. It would be interesting to know where Brendan O'Neill would draw the line at exactly what point does it not become acceptable for tech giants not to publish extremist content online. I am not advocating blanket bans on the likes of Tommy Robinson but the UK could in the very near future be facing a crisis to the very existence of liberal democracy from far-right Brextremists as well the ongoing threat from Islamist extremism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "I am not advocating blanket bans on the likes of Tommy Robinson"

    Sure why would ye? Isn't he doing a great job of positioning the Brit state and its fascist security forces as the saviours of the people? He's a gift to the spooks. In fact he's a gift from the spooks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So nobody has any agency then. All creations of spooks?

      Delete


  4. I’m consistently impressed with B O’N’s grasp of details, and his ability to deconstruct the ‘moral distinctions” his ostensible opponents seek to inhabit as vantage point to judge/attack others from. He is attempting a very noble, thankless and danger thing here, humanising someone who it is fashionable to demonise.

    I wonder why he never went to Uni to have some formal recognition of his skills? If nothing else than to access the job market, not that it seems to have hindered his progress to now.

    I wonder what part of West Ireland his mam and da came from originally too. Another example of those of Irish heritage helping to remind the British about the best parts of their culture, like the Brontë’s, Morrissey,the Gallagher bros in Oasis, Johnny Rotten , Boy George, Francis Bacon,Roy Keane to name a few. This is the best bridge between our peoples.

    ReplyDelete