Facebook has finally caved in to pressure from activists. From now on the social media giant will block “praise, support and representation of white nationalism and separatism” from its two platforms: Facebook and Instagram.
This is after the social media giant was sued for allowing a video showing the Christchurch mosque shootings to be uploaded on its platform. Facebook waited until the video had been viewed about 4 000 times before deleting the video. If the victims had been white and the
The Western world has really never had a problem with Islamic extremism. Whenever someone of Eastern Origin commits a heinous crime their media is quick to speculate that whoever committed the crime could motivated by terrorism even without a shred of evidence.
In contrast when white people even the most vile, Dylann Roof, who walked into a prayer meeting taking place at the iconic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina and proceeded to murder nine unarmed black people, the western media and the relevant authorities were extremely reluctant to call him what he was, a terrorist. Why? Well Mr Roof is white so eventually everyone concluded that he was mentally ill. Because white people cannot be terrorists. Everyone knows this, even when they tick every box in the terrorists.
In a blog post explaining this new policy Facebook seem to acknoledge white terrorists have enjoyed a bit more leeway than Muslim extremists too:
Our policies have long prohibited hateful treatment of people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity or religion — and that has always included white supremacy. We didn’t originally apply the same rationale to expressions of white nationalism and white separatism because we were thinking about broader concepts of nationalism and separatism — things like American pride and Basque separatism, which are an important part of people’s identity.
Facebook is again being reactionary instead of being proactive but we neverthless welcome this change.
4 comments
Stick to tech, not race/politics. That’s what this blog is good at, and that’s what it should stay.
White Nationalists using tech to spread hate and propaganda is as tech as it gets. Fake news, cyber-bulling and white supremacy go hand in hand.
There are several white groups that are/were labelled terrorist groups, including the IRA, the Bader Meinhof group and the Weather Underground, to name just 3.
The difference between a terrorist and a mentally ill person comes down to ideology. Terrorists commit their crimes with a political aim in mind. Some lone person who is not working as part of an organisation, and who merely kills random people out of hate, is not a terrorist by the widely held definition of one.
This article is factually wrong on many levels, in addition to being grammatically poor.
Techzim, I hope you raise your game, because I’m getting tired of your journalists not researching stories properly, and then writing their half-baked stories down with pidgin English.
Glad this article stirred you. You are actually wrong Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a religious or political aim. As you can see it’s not limited to political aims at all although strictly speaking white nationalists also have a political aim. Another thing to note is that one need not be a member of a group to meet the terrorist definition. Lone wolf attacks have been called terrorist attacks even when said lone wolf’s links to a terrorist organisation is tenuous at best.
This article does not suggest that there are no white terrorists and this is not a journal where we have to delve in such topics. You will have to agree that there is a propensity in the western media and in politics where people of the white race are only called terrorists after a very high bar of proof has been met. Said bar is not applicable to say people of Middle East origin.