The triggering event, as I understand it, is they did not censor the President of the United States who said something to the effect of riots lead to death. There's two ways to interpret this. One way is that eventually people will get hurt in some way if riots continue. Another way to interpret it was as a death threat to protesters. FB's position was that even if it was a threat, that the protesters needed to know that the President was going to send in the military to come kill them. So they did not censor or otherwise flag the post. This is perceived as FB promoting violence.
He also said he asked to slow coronavirus testing down. When his staff said we were misinterpreting him, he corrected his staff and said he said what he meant. He also used racial slurs to describe coronavirus. How many gaffes before we stop presuming good intent?
Trump is racist no matter what he does. He says neo-nazis and white supremacists should be condemned totally, they claim he said nazis are fine people. NYT, WaPo, etc. call it the Chinese corona virus? No problem. Trump calls it the Chinese corona virus? Racist. So fuck it, it's the kung flu. I think it's a gross thing to say and don't choose that language myself, but fuck everyone's faux offense. Also, people generally have a POSITIVE view of Kung Fu. Positive associations are not slurs. China is not an ethnicity. Good for him going scorched Earth.
Thank you for the clarification. Now I remember reading something about an "antifa" flag, that seemed unconclusive... please, remember I'm a foreigner so my judgement may lack some insights you have.
Actually all this seems absurd. Trump is a politician, actually a public officer, so censoring his speech is a alien concept to me. In my country certain politicians IMHO deserve jail for the outrageous nonsense they say everyday, promoting hate and justifying violence.
But nobody ask newspapers or tv to stop giving them interviews or air time. In a sense Facebook or Twitter are a kind of media, so even if the messages are disgusting, they're still relevant and the public should see them... and act accordingly when the time to vote comes.
It's other politicians who should criticize that speech and put a moderate counterpoint against it. Acting against the messenger seems misguided.
He’s posting factual inaccuracies about mail in ballots. Twitter appended the fact check information, so people could pursue their right to vote. Facebook did nothing
This isn’t due to one single event, it’s a pattern.
>Now I remember reading something about an "antifa" flag, that seemed unconclusive...
You're probably thinking of this case recently where Trump ran ads on Facebook which called out antifa and used the same symbol for them that the Nazis used for leftist political prisoners sent to concentration camps. The ads even had other Nazi dogwhistles included too. Facebook took down those ads.
I have no sympathy for the man and, trust me, I'm not playing dumb. I'm genuinely unable to see the logic in all this.
In a majority system you win by seducing the centrist vote. Why would anybody think it's a good idea to be associated with nazis? Or for that matter, dissolving the police, so his adversaries are trying to outdo him with similar egregious proposals.
What does Biden say about the lootings and the defunding? I can understand that extremist groups somehow justify the violence, but not a presidential candidate or his party. Verizon seems to be a phone company or gigantic ISP. Why does that kind of company takes sides in this fight?
What I find funniest is that over here even media in the opposite end of political spectrum complain when the government leaves them out of election adds.
Yes - it's the election year. Trump is an alien element to the American establishment (republican and democrat alike), they put tons of work into preventing his election, even more work to obstruct his presidency, and now pulled out all the stops to derail his re-election.
Trump did more than you suggest. He used well understood language (“when the looting starts the shooting starts” is a famous quote from a white supremacist) to encourage his supporters to murder/lynch blacks.
His campaign eventually started using Nazi imagery suggesting various opposition groups and protestors should be sent to concentration camps.
Facebook pulled the ad. Around the same time, he used Twitter to (successfully, apparently) incite lynchings.
Pulling a few Trump campaign ads was too little too late, and now people are boycotting Facebook.
I think you're giving Trump too much credit. I find it difficult to believe Trump is highly educated about anything, much less esoteric quotes and symbols used by dead racist people.
Well the most racist stuff I've seen from him have been retweets so that would be my guess. Not sure how well twitter censors out that particular symbol.
Hitler didn’t have much of a web presence, and I guess whatever’s left of the Nazi party hasn’t set one up. However, people have scanned some of the nazi propaganda:
I'm from the US. We surely covered WWII. I don't recall triangles at all. That doesn't mean it wasn't covered, I do remember the star of David looking badges to mark Jews, which is technically two triangles.
I could be wrong, but Trump doesn't strike me as the kind of person watching a lot of the history channel. Or reading history books. Or reading anything at all really.
I feel like I'm being asked to believe that the guy who spent two years bragging about how great black people were doing economically, bragging about funding HBCUs more than any other administration, creating opportunity zones, and implementing criminal justice reform is a secret Nazi. Sure, he's loudly doing all these tangible good things for black people and won't shut up about it, but he's quietly letting the Nazis know he's really one of them.
Trump's audience when he talks about what he does for Black people are "moderate" whites that want to believe Trump isn't racist. He is though, he retweets white supremacist memes regularly and says them in speeches.
He also hires lots of white supremacists both in government and for his campaign work. Some of them have a lot more interest in the history than Trump does.
Look up Stephen Miller. Whether it was Miller specifically-- campaigns have a lot of staff. None of this stuff is conceived and directed by a single person.
You think his marketing team randomly chose from a selection of polygons to run as the primary image on a national ad campaign? The Trump administration loves their dog whistles.
If Trump got a swastika face tattoo and posted a video of himself goose stepping on the white house lawn, do you think we should see that, or should the media censor and hide that from us?
Perhaps it is giving Trump too much credit - the actual blame likely lies with the team running his campaign. All the same, it seems strangely coincidental that he keeps on stumbling into racist material and symbolism.
I mean yeah, it was just a coincidence he restarted his rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa, OK, that he then moved under pressure/outcry. Also a coincidence he used a quote from a racist police chief, and also a coincidence he used a nazi triangle. I mean, sure, it is possible this is all just happenstance.
If in the future he starts talking about campaign bliztkriegs and having his voters celebrating at crystal night parties and his campaign printing "I voted" stickers of dancing people that look like Jim Crow, and then proceed to claim ignorance, just another 3 crazy coincidences, I'm gonna call bullshit all the same.
If anyone doubts that this was an intentional dog whistle to white supremacists: the first sentence of the ad with the nazi triangle had 14 words[1]. His campaign ran 88 [2] on the facebook pages for Trump, Pence, and Team Trump.
These are very well-known references used by white supremacists/neo-nazis they often use as dog whistles.
> Trump did more than you suggest. He used well understood language (“when the looting starts the shooting starts” is a famous quote from a white supremacist) to encourage his supporters to murder/lynch blacks.
Yet somehow it's hard to find this quote in Google if you select range before the events.
