➤ #WALKAWAY, from p.25
HEALTH & FITNESS
Facebook Group with over 500K members,
they’ve disabled our pages and the personal accounts
of staff and volunteers associated with
the group.”
While Facebook and Instagram, Facebook’s
other major social media platform, and Twitter
had already been taking steps to ban or counter
misleading content about COVID-19 and
the November 3 election, these companies grew
more aggressive following the January 6 rioting
that left fi ve people dead and dozens of police
injured.
Police seized “dozens of weapons and fi rearms,”
and “2 pipe bombs and a box of Molotov
cocktails,” according to a January 7 press
release issued by the union that represents
offi cers in the Metropolitan Police Department
(MPD) that patrols Washington, DC.
Since then, videos have emerged showing the
rioters battling with Capitol police and MPD
offi cers.
The most notable banned user was Donald
Trump, who was “permanently suspended” on
Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of
violence,” the company said. Facebook barred
Trump from posting new content and Youtube,
which is owned by Google, suspended his account.
In a speech to a large crowd near the
White House prior to the start of the rioting,
Trump directed the crowd to march to Capitol
Hill. His subsequent tweets and videos were
seen as delivering a messages that encouraged
the violence.
On January 11, Facebook said it was removing
all “stop the steal” content, a reference to
false allegations that the election was stolen
from Trump, on both platforms. It is also taking
steps to bar any organizing of or incitement
of violence. The platforms will no longer allow
“Praise and support of the storming of the US
Capitol.”
On January 12, Twitter announced that it
was taking steps to halt any effort to use Twitter
to organize violence. It “began permanently
suspending thousands of accounts that were
primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content”
on January 8, and the social media platform
had suspended “more than 70,000 accounts”
by January 12.
QAnon is a conspiracy theory that posits
that a cabal of Satanists who drink the blood
of children are secretly running a global government
that controls the world. It resembles
the anti-Semitic “Protocols of the Elders of
Zion,” a 1919 book that claimed to expose a
secret Jewish plan to control the world. Some
rioters at the Capitol building displayed anti
Semitic clothing that celebrated the Holocaust.
Activists and political leaders on the right
have complained for years that Big Tech, as
Silicon Valley companies are commonly called,
have discriminated against them, but as anyone
who travels on the other side of the political
spectrum knows, the left gets suspended,
or sent to “Facebook jail,” on these platforms
frequently. Straka maintained the right wing
view.
“THIS. IS. TYRANNY,” he wrote of the Facebook
ban. “Big tech is content to muzzle the
masses because it does not fi t their ideological
utopia. They are drunk with power and
staining the very fabric of our American values.”
Straka founded the #WalkAway Campaign
in 2018 after posting a six-minute video in
which he offered a litany of standard right
wing complaints about the Democratic Party.
A 2019 review of his voting record showed that
he had voted just six times since registering
as a Democrat in 2004 and only one of those
votes was cast in a primary. He was received
well among conservatives. He spoke at major
right wing events, such as the Conservative
Political Action Conference, or CPAC as it is
better known, campaign rallies for Trump,
and continues to appear on far right media
outlets.
In 2019, Straka rented a room at the Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community
Center for a #WalkAway Campaign town hall.
Following a community outcry, the Center cancelled
the rental. Straka sued, but the case was
dismissed in 2020.
A permit for a pro-Trump rally at Freedom
Plaza in the nation’s capital, which was fi rst
reported by The Washingtonian, scheduled for
the day before the rioting shows that he was
among the confi rmed speakers, but Gay City
News could not confi rm that he was there. LGBTQNation.
com published a series of tweets by
Straka that suggested he was on Capitol Hill
during the rioting. Straka did not respond to a
call from Gay City News seeking comment by
press time on January 13.
Whether on the left or right, the implications
of having a few private companies owning
and dominating discourse in monopolostic
fashion have been made clear. President
Trump utilized his Twitter acount as his primary
way of communicating with his base,
but all of that \ changed once he was been
silenced on that platform. Straka is still using
a website, as well as his Twitter account,
and is apparently in the process of migrating
the #WalkAway content to Clouthub, which
is yet another social media platform.
“Concerning, very concerning because those
platforms are like a private version of Main
Street,” said Bill Dobbs, a longtime gay activist
and civil libertarian. “On Main Street, anybody
is welcome. When you turn something
private, the owners are in charge…When you
endorse shutting people down, it will come
back to haunt the people who endorsed it.”
Jared Arader, the president of the Lambda
Independent Democrats, a Brooklyn LGBTQ
political club, had a pithier response to the
Straka ban, writing “Good Riddance!” in an
email.
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GayCityNews.com | January 14 - January 27, 2021 31
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