By Mark Tinkleman |
Facebook has now shut down the Facebook pages for It’s Going Down, Crimethinc, and PNW Youth Liberation Front, along with many more smaller anarchist, antifa, or otherwise ‘left-leaning’ organizations. This is extremely ominous and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
Facebook has been in the news in the last few days for removing a significant number of accounts, pages and groups attached to QAnon. QAnon is an extremely dangerous and delusional movement, attached at its core to the fascists in the White House, and as of yesterday, essentially endorsed by the fascist-in-chief Donald Trump. QAnon isn’t incidental to the rise of fascism either. Refuse Fascism has exposed, enumerated and stressed in numerous ways that fascism requires a mass movement or movements so detached from reality with such a deep blood libel at its core that their members are moved to pursue all methods of redress, even murder or genocide. This is something QAnon provides. But that is not the metric Facebook used to ban or restrict these accounts. Because that is not the target of their censorship.
Instead, they published a screed lumping together white supremacist militias and Trump cultists with “anarchists” and “antifa” who they claim have all “celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, of have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior.”
Seemingly at the direct behest of Attorney General Bill Barr, Facebook has now shut down the Facebook pages for It’s Going Down, Crimethinc, and PNW Youth Liberation Front, along with many more smaller anarchist, antifa, or otherwise ‘left-leaning’ organizations. Read Crimethinc’s statement on this here.
This is extremely ominous and must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. While I don’t know the details of the hundreds of pages affected, from what I have seen, each of these three named organizations has taken basic righteous stands with the people of the world against the fascist regime in the White House.
I know that Refuse Fascism has differences with some of these organizations/websites in terms of analysis, strategy, principles and methods of political struggle. But there is NO “moral equivalence” between those seeking to impose white supremacy and fascism, and those fighting against this nightmare.
The complete de-platforming of these organizations is abhorrent and must be reversed in full. In their statement, Facebook goes on to say that they will also restrict other pages that they can’t justify banning even under this extremely loose and malleable code of conduct. Everyone must recognize that this puts all political speech at risk. This move seems particularly motivated to repress information about what has been happening in Portland and activism across the country in support of those rising up there.
And this censorship is taking place at a time when the regime is preparing to steal an election, when the normal channels of redress are being completely eviscerated. In these moments, those voices who call on people to step outside the bounds of politics-as-usual in the interests of humanity are acutely necessary. Every day, the urgency for people to come together from a diversity of perspectives to refuse to accept a fascist America by driving out the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime grows by leaps and bounds.
In this effort, as Barr and Facebook attempt to become the arbiters of what can be deemed “acceptable” resistance, we must unite all who can be united and defeat attempts divide and conquer. As Refuse Fascism has written:
Don’t allow the ruling forces, or any other force, to divide us or pit us against each other. Don’t fall for “divide and conquer” schemes and divisive actions, reject and rise above petty disputes and sectarian squabbles—reach out BROADLY to UNITE ALL WHO CAN BE UNITED, from different perspectives and viewpoints, around the great unifying objective of driving out, through massive, sustained political mobilization, this regime which has already done such great harm and which poses a grave threat to humanity.
Join together on September 5 in united mass protests demanding Trump/Pence Out Now!
This Nightmare Must End: The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America!
For a deeper understanding of the shameful, dangerous and wrong attacks against Antifa, see: https://refusefascism.org/2017/09/09/a-statement-from-refusefascism-org-responding-to-attacks-on-antifa/
For more on Facebook’s role in political suppression and the rise of the Trump/Pence regime:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/28/facebook-zuckerberg-trump-hate/
https://revcom.us/a/594/questions-on-facebooks-censorship-and-banning-en.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files
For background on how social media serves the state: https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-Internet/dp/1610398025