I vociferously oppose him, and think liberals have made a huge mistake being soft on anti-semitism lately. But leave that aside. Would just the stuff he has said about white people justify Facebook banning him? If so, that’s a pretty breathtaking assertion of power to police a very complex range of narratives.
Anti-Semitism is literally what he's being banned for. How can you "leave that aside?"
Should FB be able to ban religious leaders who repeatedly, consistently, publicly call for the death of Jews from their platform? If they should be able to ban Milo, then — yes, obviously.
If you're arguing that no one should be able to be banned, I think our opinions differ, but I suppose we're each internally consistent with our values.
I also think facebook should be able to ban people. But I think that Facebook banning someone like Farrakhan, who is famous for being an anti-white extremist in a country where white people enslaved black people, and where white police officers routinely gun down black people, opens up a huge can of worms. It’s an organization where black Americans are almost completely unrepresented policing the spectrum of responses black people are allowed to have in response to their treatment in this country.
Being black in America doesn't give you a free pass on anti-Semitism. If you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you.
Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
> Farrakhan has always been anti-Semitic, and nonetheless many black people have been willing to overlook that.
Have the Jews he's been targeting with death threats been willing to overlook that?
> Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban.
Yup.
> But it's very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
Frankly, on this one, no. Anti-Semitism is abhorrent regardless of what race you are. Being black does not excuse anti-Semitism. Should FB have more black leadership? Obviously yes. And it deserves to be called out on that. But banning someone for explicit, obvious anti-Semitism isn't problematic because they're black.
If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for, that would be something else. But explicitly targeting a minority religious group with repeated, credible death threats (and one that has faced horrifying degrees of ethnic cleansing within the last century, and continues to face persecution in America today, such as the recent San Diego synagogue mass shooting) is unconscionable, and FB is entirely within its rights to ban Farrakhan for that.
Furthermore, you're being obtuse by saying that it's just a matter of Farrakhan "being black." There is a spectrum of views among black people about America. For better or worse, Farrakhan is a culturally significant part of that spectrum. And he's a fixture of black politics. (Here he is standing next to Obama in 2005 at a Congressional Black Caucus event: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-appearances/the-...). Facebook is now silencing all of his messages. I think there is a real question of whether a company that almost entirely lacks black leadership has the moral authority to do that.
> If Farrakhan were banned for being "anti-white," as you previously tried to provide cover for,
I don't know where you got the idea that I was covering for anything. The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone. That leads to the obvious question of whether Facebook would be justified in banning Farrakhan over his anti-white statements. After all, that would seem to follow if "racism" (generically) is a justification for being banned on Facebook. Would you agree that would be a harder question to answer?
Silencing Farrakhan in general on Facebook is a consequence of silencing his particularly horrifying views about Jews and removing access to the platform he uses to spread them. This isn't because he's a culturally significant black man, it's because he's an anti-Semite. The others de-platformed along with him are not fellow black leaders, they are racists and conspiracy theorists who are similarly dangerous and have similarly used these platforms to spread hatred to millions of followers.
> The original post I was replying to didn't specifically mention antisemitism, it said "racism" is justification for banning someone.
While on the one hand you're claiming to only refer to the hypothetical question of a black leader who is anti-white, you also specifically defend Farrakhan's presence on social media, and question whether Facebook should be able to ban specifically him for his anti-Semitism; for example:
> I don’t know how old you are, but I think you’re being ignorant about the full spectrum of what Farrakhan represents. He co-organized the Million Man March, which was a defining event in the 1990s, much like the Ferguson shooting is today . . . Maybe the anti-semitism alone warrants a ban. Maybe any one of his extreme view warrants a ban. But it’s very problematic for Facebook, a company with almost no black leadership, to be making that call.
If we were talking about a hypothetical black leader who was anti-white (and whether you can call that racism is, IMO, up for debate), and who was not virulently anti-Semitic, I would definitely agree that's a harder question to answer; I'd probably be against banning someone like that, for reasons that are long and complicated and that you'd probably agree with. That isn't what happened here, though, and it's not who we've been talking about: we've been talking about Farrakhan, who's in both my opinion and Obama's opinion fairly indefensible.
[1]: https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/02/26/obama-denounces-fa...
[2]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
I'm not "defending" anything--I'm simply stating that it's a complicated issue, while you're denying that there is any complexity. And I don't think we really disagree on much. As you state, you might be against banning him if it was just his anti-white rhetoric. My point simply is that, whatever complexity might exist in that hypothetical does not go away just because there is an alternate, easier basis for banning him. Especially given that, many black people themselves have confronted those issues and have been willing to hear him out for his other messages: http://www.cnn.com/US/9510/megamarch/10-14/march/index.html
> "If the house is on fire, I'm not going to sit there and let the house burn just because I have differences with the person who sounded the alarm and started the water going," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Having Facebook--which has almost no black leadership--make the contrary decision is thorny, is all I am saying.
“The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."
Or implying that Jews are subhuman insects:
“I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.”
Or veiled calls to violence:
“And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.”
Or explicit calls to violence:
"Can that be the holy land, and you have gay parades, and want to permit to have a gay parade in Jerusalem when no prophet ever sanctioned that behavior. How can that be the Israel, how can that be Jerusalem with secular people running the holy land when it should be the holy people running the holy land. That land is gonna be cleansed with blood!"
Seriously, this is cut and dry. There are plenty of other people to lionize for e.g. promoting black bodies. And if wanting to kill all the Jews and loudly, repeatedly proclaiming his belief that they're evil and worthy of death to his religious followers on social media isn't a big enough deal to make it non-complicated, we're talking about the guy who called for the death of Malcolm X and whose religious followers carried out his assassination within months. He is violent and deranged and his followers have acted violently at his behest before.
(Also, respectfully, I don't think Farrakhan's anti-Semitic proclamations feel particularly "cartoonish" to the Jews he's targeting.)