If you are a member of a minority that is traditionally courted by the political Left, whether that minority be racial, religious, or sexuality related, there is a price to pay for stepping off of the Leftist ‘Plantation’. Those in these groups who say that ‘the Left is not for me’ often face ostracism, hatred and sometimes other more serious forms of attack from the members of these groups who still, against the evidence, believe that the Left is the only path for liberation.
If you are a Black person in the USA, a Reform or Liberal Jew or a member of the Established Church in the United Kingdom or a gay person in either land, then you can expect consequences for turning your back on Leftism. I have read stories of gay Republicans in the USA who have said that coming out as a conservative was harder and more challenging than coming out as gay because of leftist intolerance. I have spoken to and engaged with centre-right non-Orthodox Jews in Britain who find their right to speak stymied by a small number of well placed Leftists who try to hammer the square peg of leftism into round hole of Torah. Students at British universities who stand up to the Left wingery of the National Union of Students also find themselves at the sharp end of hassle from Leftists for rejecting a Left who see students as ‘their’ property. Across the pond again and I’ve seen some of the appalling insults that have been directed at Black conservatives such as the likes of Thomas Sowell or Larry Elder because they reject a Leftism that they perceive has failed Black Americans badly.
Now we have another case where members of a minority are being attacked, not for reasons of skin colour or for some other immutable part of their identity, but because they are Trump supporting conservatives. I speak here of the two Black American ladies Diamond and Silk who have had their Facebook usage rights severely restricted on very shonky ‘community safety’ grounds. Now I have to say here that I have not watched all of Diamond and Silk’s output but what I saw of it did not incite violence, something that could reasonably be said to be worthy of account restriction, it was merely muscular conservatism and quite forthright support for Trump.
Diamond and Silk are popular You Tube personalities with what looks like hundreds of thousands of subscribers, supporters and others who publicise their work, because they like their pro-Trump views. Because of this high level of support from the public the have attracted some pretty nasty and racially motivated attackers, not from White viewers, but from the Black Left which has called them ‘Uncle Toms’ a foul racialist slur that nobody, let alone Diamond and Silk, deserves.
Diamond and Silk have been making videos since at least Donald Trump threw his hat into the ring for the 2016 Presidential race and they have been significantly messed around with by those in charge of Big Social. They have had You Tube videos demonetised in an effort to starve them of funds and this latest attack by Facebook looks as if it is intended to starve them of support as well.
This Facebook restriction has not come out of the blue. This restriction comes after much to-ing and fro-ing between the Diamond and Silk sisters and Facebook management over issues of censorship of their work. Facebook have refused to say exactly what they’ve done that has caused a ‘community safety’ issue which in itself should raise suspicions that this restriction is being put in place for base political reasons, possibly connected to the upcoming Mid Term elections that are going to occur in the USA.
The restrictions being placed on Diamond and Silk’s means of communication is in my view naked political censorship that cannot really be objectively justified and is more than likely the result of a Left leaning culture that exists among Facebook employees. The lack of fairness in how Diamond and Silk have been treated by Facebook is given credence by the fact that Facebook don’t seem to have a problem with the thugs of Black Lives Matter or various Islamic hate-mongers who continue to exist on Facebook virtually unmolested.
Whilst I accept that Facebook is a private company and is therefore not subject to First Amendment protections and are not required to carry all opinions on their platform, the power that Facebook has does give them a moral responsibility to carry a diverse range of peaceable opinions. I have some sympathy for those who believe that the ubiquity and influence of social media platforms such as Facebook is being exploited by the political Left in order to exclude conservative or dissenting opinion from the public arena. I can also understand why some free speech and conservative activists in the USA are pushing for government intervention on social media to protect intellectual diversity although I worry that this sort of intervention could have negative consequences in terms of government intrusiveness.
Diamond and Silk decided, after much heartsearching and study, to leave the Leftist plantation and as we can see from the way that they are being treated by Facebook, they are being punished for doing so. I wish them well in their fightback against Facebook as their fight is also the same fight for intellectual diversity on social media and in other public spaces that others are carrying on both in the USA and here in the UK
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You can view Diamond and Silk’s work unmoderated by Big Social via their own web page.
