I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the free speech social media platform Gab did nothing wrong and indeed has had much wrong done to them. Gab has, in the light of the appalling and terrible synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, apparently, according to Sargon of Akkad, come under attack from some pretty well connected Leftists and censorious types. Gab has been blamed, even though it has operated strictly within United States Constitutional and legislative boundaries, for providing a facility where the Pittsburgh murder could become radicalised. However I do not see that this is the case. The Pittsburgh murderer would have become a murderous Jew hater with or without Gab or even without the internet itself. People like that have always been able to get hold of neo-Nazi literature in print format and have always been able to find like minded souls to mix with. I know this for a fact as the neo-Nazis that I marched against in the pre-internet era got their literature from various neo-Nazi book clubs and other sources.

It needs to be said that in any environment where free speech is permitted there will be people who say highly offensive and hurtful things. It’s virtually a given that this will happen. Without a doubt Gab had a minority of neo-Nazis operating there, something that was exploited by the Left in order to smear Gab but Gab also contained many much more of what could be termed reasonable people. What we are not being told by the mainstream media who are covering the fact that a Gab user has gone on a murder spree, is that there were on Gab a great number of individuals who were prepared to use their right to free speech against the speech of the neo-Nazis.

Prior to the time when Gab was taken down by its host and starved of cash by its payment processor those who get their news from mainstream sources would have been completely unaware that neo-Nazis although allowed to speak on Gab did not make up the majority of users. Although various shades of far right lunatic were allowed to speak on that platform, they did not do it without any significant challenge. That challenge came from Jews of various shades of political opinion along with conservatives and free marketeers, centrists, nationalists, Christians and others. The idea that Gab was some sort of analogue of ‘Stormfront’ the neo-Nazi webpage is utterly ludicrous. In genuine neo-Nazi environments whether on or offline, you do not find the exponents of this ideology being muted by normal people and neither do you see ordinary decent users taking on the neo-Nazi’s arguments and beating them hands down with both logic and factual data.

Gab has done all the right things as I can see it according to US law and the Constitution. They have not allowed direct and credible threats of violence nor have they allowed doxing and their work to prevent child porn such as ‘lolicon’ being posted on Gab has been in my view highly commendable. The deranged killer to who took so many lives in Pittsburgh would have done so whether or not Gab had existed or not and Gab is not to blame for this murderer any more than Twitter or Facebook are to blame any actions incurred by giving a platform to various dodgy Islamists or Antifa or any other Leftist group that wants to violently LARP about revolution. Words are not in general crimes, actions on the other hand are.

The revelation by Sargon that powerful Leftists have been targeting Gab for a while calls into question the narrative that the shutdown of Gab and the Pittsburgh atrocity are integrally linked. It appears that well connected Leftist groups have been leaning on Gab’s payment processors, hosts and other infrastructure providers for quite a while now and it seems that the fact that the Pittsburgh murderer was a Gab user was merely an excuse to shut Gab down. From what has recently started to be revealed, the removal of Gab was a long time in the planning. The number of genuine neo-Nazis who used Gab were without a doubt very much in the minority although I will concur that Gab has a conservative bias but that is mainly due to the unhealthy attitude of censorship found on other social media platforms.

There are a lot of groups out there who would love to see alternative media and especially alternative social media disappear and I believe that the main motivation for that is the bottom line. Companies like Twitter for example have decided to take a highly selective censorious view of peoples opinions on their platform with Leftists and Islamists given almost complete free rein to spout all sorts of nonsense, including incendiary nonsense, whilst banning and censoring conservative voices. It was only in June of this year for example that Hezbollah, the Islamofascist group was removed from Twitter following political pressures to do so, but there are still an awful lot of Islamofascists spouting off on Twitter with no apparent sanction. This censorship by Twitter, both overt and covert, has caused an exodus of users to alternative platforms such as Gab of the right and centre right along with others who ask awkward questions about various leftist nostrums, such as multiculturalism and transgenderism for example. Twitter is heading towards becoming a left wing echo chamber that will drive away normal people and this exodus of the silenced will ultimately end up hurting Twitter’s finances. Gab is a known competitor to Twitter and to other legacy social media and it would not surprise me one bit to later find out that the silencing of Gab may have had much more to do with Big Tech wanting to retain cash and control of the debate space than any issues of conscience.

To criticise and de-platform Gab is as pointless and as stupid as shutting down the DIY retailer B and Q just because some arsehole bought a hammer from them that the individual used to beat someone’s head in with. The murderer who brought destruction and devastation to Pittsburgh would have been a deranged murderer in any event, whether or not Gab had existed and this is why I say that Gab, in the context of the Pittsburgh tragedy, really did do nothing wrong and are indeed under attack from groups and companies that wish to control the narrative and keep their own coffers filled.