The very idea that we should concern ourselves with establishing rules of conduct that guarantee equal treatment for both ourselves & for the racist, murdering fascists who are aiming to carry out genocide & overthrow democratic governments makes no sense.

I appreciate everyone’s commitment to ideas of liberalism & equality but fascism exists outside of liberalism & there are people trying to kill us whose very ideology is based on the idea of there being no equality. They can only defeat us or be defeated.

There’s a reason we had an entire world war over this issue and it’s not because people at the time couldn’t figure out how to come up with a standard for free speech that applied equally to fascists & all the people they were trying to kill.

Furthermore, the idea we have to apply equal standards to all forms of speech implies all speech is equal. By that logic, there’s no difference b/w someone using social media to incite genocide v someone using it to advocate equal rights. Is that really the moral position?

The idea that holding Trump & other fascists to account might later have negative impact on others ignores that it’s already been the case that Black & brown ppl have received unequal policing & banishment online. The only thing new is that they’ve finally banned Trump.

Instead of accepting that our destinies be tied to the fate of the fascist movement, the focus should be on making clearer distinctions between what should constitute violations of social media policies and what shouldn’t.

Trump’s tenure of being allowed to incite violence on social media for yrs followed by an 11th hour ban is not indicative of anything except his privilege as a wealthy, powerful white man. It has no connection to the experience of the average person except as a point of contrast.

Figures of the fascist movement who were much lower on the totem pole with much smaller followings & much less power were banned years ago yet Trump was able to carry on inciting numerous incidents of violence against others. He is not the emblem for a debate on free speech.

If folks are genuinely concerned about free speech—something that should always be concern—we should pause & ask why the convo only moves to forefront when a powerful white man has faced consequences for his speech & not when the most marginalized are silenced on a daily basis.