Twitter let Iran spew Holocaust-denying lies yet blocked a NY newspaper in the world's 2nd biggest Jewish community from tweeting a reply because it dared probe Hunter Biden. It's a shameful scandal that should outrage every American
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 29, 2020
Yesterday, after America's biggest tech giant bosses were grilled by a US senate committee, a tweet was posted by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In it, he asked: 'Why is it a crime to raise doubts about the Holocaust?'
Under normal circumstances, one of the world's most powerful leaders directly questioning the very existence of a Nazi-orchestrated genocide of over six million Jews during WWII is the kind of hideously inflammatory statement that a major American newspaper like the New York Post would have wanted to report on and respond to.
Not least because New York is home to 1.1 million Jews, the largest Jewish community anywhere in the world outside of Israel.
But the Post couldn't respond.
Not on the same platform, anyway.
Because Twitter has disgracefully locked out the Post's account for two weeks after it reported allegations of financial impropriety surrounding Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter based on the contents of his laptop.
So, Khamenei was able to spew his vile Holocaust-denying filth to his 836,000 followers without any fear of factual rebuttal by a newspaper representing many of the people who would find his comments most offensive.
Just as he was able to tweet on previous occasions that Israel's a 'cancerous growth' which must be 'uprooted and destroyed', and this direct threat: 'We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights the Zionist regime, and we do not hesitate to say this.'
Why has Twitter allowed him to do all this without any form of censorship?
The company's boss Jack Dorsey told senators yesterday: 'We did not find those to violate our terms of service because we considered them 'saber rattling,' which is part of the speech of world leaders in concert with other countries.'
However, the same 'saber rattling' rule doesn't apply to US President Donald Trump, whose tweets are now regularly suppressed by Twitter with fact-check and violence labels.
'Speech against our own people or a country's own citizens we believe is different and can cause more immediate harm,' explained Dorsey.
Hmmm.
Really, Jack?
Dorsey further argued that tweets are only flagged if they contain 'misinformation' or 'misleading' information regarding three different categories: 'manipulated media; public health, specifically COVID; and civic integrity, election interference and voter suppression.'
How then does he defend not flagging up Khameini's Holocaust-denying lies?
It's hard to imagine a worse example of 'misinformation' than that.
Just as it's hard to imagine a worse example of suppressing free speech than the fact Twitter still hasn't unblocked the New York Post's account, so the paper can't respond to the Iranian leader's wicked lies on behalf of its many Jewish readers, on the same platform.
What makes the blocking all the more ridiculous is that Twitter's now changed its rules that they originally said necessitated the blocking.
In a preposterously disingenuous directive, Dorsey told senators yesterday that the Post '[has] to log into their account, which they can do at this minute, delete the original tweet, which fell under our original enforcement actions, and they can tweet the exact same material to the exact same article and it would go through.'
This begs the obvious question, if they are now free to post the exact same thing, why the hell do they have to delete the previous tweet now the rules have changed?
It also poses the more serious questions of why Twitter blocked it in the first place, when there was no good reason to do so, and why it is allowing the leader of Iran to spew Holocaust-denying lies that will cause enormous offence to Jews, but won't let a newspaper read in a city populated by a 1.1 million Jews tweet about factual information that hasn't been denied by the subjects of the story?
I knew Jack Dorsey a few years ago, before he looked like he was auditioning for ZZ Top with his long scraggy beard and nose-ring.
Back then, he was a clean-shaven, ring-free, fiercely intelligent young entrepreneur setting the world alight with his relatively new social media platform.
We had dinner in Manhattan, and he was very smart, entertaining company and a very passionate advocate for freedom of speech.
When I interviewed him for CNN, he told me: 'The nice thing about Twitter is it is inherently public. It is something that people are saying out in the world and there's an understanding, a deep understanding that when they Tweet something, the world sees it. And that's a very, very nice aspect of our service.'
Right, so what happened Jack?
Why have you blocked the New York Post's account from tweeting a front-page story concerning a presidential candidate and his son's self-evidently dodgy business conduct in foreign countries?
I'm equally bemused by the behaviour of his fellow supposed free speech lover, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, who admitted at yesterday's hearings that he also suppressed the Post's story by ordering it to be 'fact-checked' because the FBI had warned him and other tech chiefs to look out for the possibility of 'hack-and-leak' disinformation from foreign actors like Russia in the run up to the election.
But when asked if the FBI specifically cited the Post story as problematic, he said they hadn't.
In fact, there remains zero evidence to prove it came via any nefarious foreign source.
As I've said before, I don't know if Joe Biden has actually done anything wrong other than be the father of a man who has clearly traded off his dad's position as Vice-President for financial gain.
But it is unarguable that Hunter Biden's laptop and the email exchanges contained on it raise legitimate questions that any impartial media organisation should at the very least properly investigate.
You can bet your house they all would if it was Donald Trump Jr's laptop.
Instead, most of the US mainstream media has ignored it, not for journalistic but for political reasons – they are staffed predominantly with liberals who think it may damage Biden's chances of winning and help Trump who they detest with obsessive rage.
To illustrate just how far the MSM has itself gone to suppress even any debate about the Post revelations, my book-promoting appearance on CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter's show last Sunday – one they had aggressively pursued me for weeks to do - was abruptly cancelled after I appeared on Fox and Friends and said the media had a duty to investigate them.
The reason is obvious: I'd be preaching the wrong message, at the wrong time.
I can safely say that wasn't CNN's mantra when I worked there, and absolute political impartiality was mandated.
Joe Biden is the clear favourite to win next Tuesday's election, though I would never underestimate Donald Trump's ability to pull off another miraculous win from the jaws of apparently inevitable defeat.
But the desperate lengths that mainstream and social media companies have gone to protect Biden from potentially damaging stories in the run-up to the election shames them and shames America.
The
bottom line is this: when a Holocaust-denying Iranian president gets
more rights to free speech in the United States than a major US
newspaper, it's not just wrong, it's a scandal.
No comments:
Post a Comment