Facebook Removes Farrakhan “Jewish Termites” Rant, Remains on Twitter

Facebook Removes Farrakhan “Jewish Termites” Rant, Remains on Twitter

Breaking Israel News

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By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz October 22, 2018 , 5:17 pm

He who conceals hatred has lying lips, While he who speaks forth slander is a dullard.” Proverbs 10:18 (The Israel Bible™)

At Aretha Franklin’s funeral from left to right: Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and President Bill Clinton. (Credit: Twitter screen capture)

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/115610/facebook-removes-farrakhan-rant/

On Thursday, Facebook removed a video of Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam movement, in which he compares Jews to termites. Twitter allowed the video to stand, saying it does not constitute hate speech.

The video appeared on social media last Wednesday with the caption, “I’m not an anti-Semite; I’m anti-Termite”. In the video, Farrakhan gave a sermon in which he compared Jews to termites.

“To the members of the Jewish community that don’t like me, thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet because of your fear of what we represent I can go anywhere in the world — I’m not mad at you because you’re so stupid,” he said at the speech in Detroit. “So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater — you know what they do — call me an anti-Semite, stop it! I’m anti termite!”

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and married to Marc Mezvinsky, a Jew, tweeted a harsh rebuke for Farrakhan as well as for the crowd laughing in response to the anti-Semitic comment.

Bill and Hillary Clinton were criticized for sharing a stage with Farrakhan at Aretha Franklin’s funeral last September, though Farrakhan has called Hillary a “wicked woman,” referring to her as “Satan.”

Farrakhan posted the video on Facebook to his 960,000 followers. Facebook announced on Thursday that they were removing the video from their platform, stating that it violated their community standards. A Facebook representative told The Wrap that it constituted “tier 1 hate speech”. A Tier 1 violation, according to Facebook’s community standards, includes attacks comparing a person or group of people to “animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior.” Tier 1 infractions also prohibit “violent” and “dehumanizing speech.”

Twitter refused to take down Farrakhan’s offensive tweet, claiming that its policy banning dehumanizing language announced in September had not yet gone into effect. This policy was described in a company blog post as “language that treats others as less than human… Examples can include comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic), or reducing groups to a tool for some other purpose (mechanistic).”

As reported on Buzzfeed, Twitter already has a policy against hateful conduct and prohibits attacking people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, and serious disease.

Twitter’s lack of response drew derision from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.

This is not the first time Farrakhan has used Twitter to denigrate Jews. Earlier this year, he posted tweets about “the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” Twitter responded at the time by revoking his verified status.