Left-leaning, Jewish online news organization, Jerusalem Post reports that Twitter have blocked accounts which feature the Star of David, branding the symbol “hateful imagery.”
The J.P stated that ‘the images in question ranged from a white Star of David in a graffiti style, to a superimposition of the modern blue star on the flag of Israel spliced with the yellow star Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis, to a montage of yellow stars.’
After being bombarded with concerns, Twitter’s Public Policy page went into damage control, back peddling on the branding by stating that they ‘don’t consider the Star of David as a hateful symbol or hateful image.’
The blocking of accounts was a blitz on the ‘Yellow Star or Yellow badge’ associated with the Jewish Holocaust, allegedly being used by hate groups to target Jewish people. Twitter thanked people for bringing the issue to their attention, and restored accounts wrongly targeted.
While Twitter back-tracked on its suppressing of the Star of David, the U.K based CAA (Campaign Against Antisemitism) reported that Twitter refused to ‘act against abusive tweets’ linked to the anti-Jewish hashtag trend #Jewishprivilege.
An article on the CAA website cited examples which show extremists (what the CAA called ‘radical left-wing anti-Semitism and white supremacist anti-Semites’) joining forces. (For CAA the former ‘blames the Jews for being white’, the latter, ‘for not being white enough.’)
CAA noted that Jews and allies ‘co-opted the trend by attacking it’, but when ‘challenged to take action, Twitter refused’ to do so, claiming that the #jewishprivilige trend did not breach their community standards. In response, CAA has accused Twitter’s terms of service as ‘permitting the platform to be used for the dissemination of racist material.’
This led Stephen Silverman, a director with CAA to call for regulation of social media platforms in line with regulation applied to ‘all other mass media.’
He shot back stating,
“The idea that Jews are a ‘privileged’ group is a slur designed to deny that antisemitism exists and to imply that Jews are a cause of racism towards other minorities… It is horrifying to see that #JewishPrivilege has been one of Twitter’s most popular hashtags of the past 24 hours. Twitter’s refusal to act is not just tone-deaf but brazen.”
CAA and Silverman’s concerns don’t come out of thin air. The problem is that they only mention antisemitism. Silverman’s point certainly carries weight when brought to bear against Twitter’s allowance of anti-white hate, misandry, Antifa, anti-Israel terror group Hamas, pro-LGBTQAII+ bigotry, and Twitter’s almost non-existent policy against pedophilia.
On more than one occasion Twitter has seen trends that mock, smear and demonize Christians, not just Jews. The most prominent was #christianprivilege.
Twitter also allows vile anti-conservative, anti-white organized myths, such as “Trump is Hitler”, “all white people are racist” and “white privilege.”
Twitter does so while its content filters are blocking content and accounts of conservatives. Seemingly based entirely on the yardstick of ideological differences (protecting some, harming others; perhaps even on the basis of melanin).
Such as the increasing censoring of President Donald Trump, the banning of Stefan Molyneux, and Katie Hopkins (whose ban came after a “final straw” criticism of Black Lives Matter).
Add to this the social media block ban on Jewish conservative Laura Loomer, and Twitter’s recent block on all QAnon content.
These are stand out examples of Twitter approving some content, while suppressing others, through a selective interpretation of its terms and conditions.
The CAA and Stephen Silverman’s criticisms of Twitter share Donald Trump’s own concerns about the social media platform. In May Trump responded to selective censoring saying, “Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct…”
By omitting these examples, the CAA and the Jerusalem Post are exhibiting a self-defeating short-sightedness. They see enemies, where they have allies, and allies where they should be seeing enemies.
The real perpetrators, and the root cause of the rise in antisemitism are either ignored or hidden from view.
Fiercely, anti-Trump contributor to the Jerusalem Post, Douglas Bloomfield is representative of this tragic myopia.
In an article from May, he defended George Soros, setting the blame for the rise in antisemitism squarely on the Presidency of Donald Trump. (Bloomfield might have momentarily forgotten that Trump’s son-in-law and close advisor, Jared Kushner is Jewish.)
Bloomfield mentions Trump’s Twitter account, yet provides zero evidence to back up his “Trump is Hitler” insinuation, while completely overlooking the connection between the radical left, leftists in Mainstream Media, and the rise of antisemitism.
Bari Weiss, Ben Shapiro, Avi Yemini, and Melanie Phillips are all Jews. All have been labelled “Nazis and racists.” Look even closer at how the Leftist media, including Leftist Churches (who’ve long abandoned Christ for Karl Marx), demonize Israel, simply for existing.
Antisemitism gets a free pass while the real cause is ignored.
This myopic vision occurs because people are trained to only see white people as racists, and conservatives as Nazis.
It’s this kind of manipulative stigmatizing; this kind of organized myth, straw man mechanism that forms a lot of antisemitic rhetoric. The same stigmatizing is applied to Biblical Christians, and today’s conservatives. It places a lot of them in a position of genuine solidarity with Israel, and the Jewish community.
There is common ground. All it takes is someone willing to acknowledge that it exists. This common ground, despite differences, ignites unity, and it’s this unity that will help pull back the veil. Not just to address the real perpetrators of antisemitism, but to identify its roots, and stop it from doing significant harm.
For ‘man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions, not on conditions. Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. For after all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shima Yisrael on his lips.’[i]
References:
[i] Victor Frankl, 1959. Man’s Search for Meaning, Beacon Press. (p.133)
