Twitter suspends Stephen Bannon over violent attack against Anthony Fauci
Twitter has permanently suspended Bannon’s @WarRoomPandemic account over violent attack against Anthony S. Fauci.
The suspension on Thursday November 5, 2020, followed an inciteful statement made in a video clip posted on his Twitter account.
“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes,” Bannon said during a live taping of his online show, “War Room: Pandemic.”
“If President Trump wins reelection, he should quickly eliminate Anthony S. Fauci — the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray — by means of medieval execution,” former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said in the video.
The move makes Bannon one of the most high-profile political figures to be banned.
It was reported that Facebook, YouTube and Spotify have also removed video clips and audio from the episode.
Bannon made his violent threat toward Fauci and Wray on his podcast, which has chronicled the coronavirus pandemic through a pro-Trump lens.
Bannon started by calling the president “a kindhearted man and a good man” before suggesting that harsher action was warranted toward Fauci and Wray.
He added that the stakes bearing their decapitated heads should be placed “at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats: You either get with the program or you’re gone.”
In addition to the post on Twitter, where Bannon had more than 160,000 followers, clips of Bannon and co-host Jack Maxey recording the podcast were shared to the show’s Facebook and YouTube pages…
Facebook removed two videos “for violating our policy against violence and incitement”.
Spotify removed the podcast episode, and YouTube, which gives accounts three strikes before they get terminated, also removed the clip for breaching a similar policy against inciting violence and for making volatile threats against individuals.
Although the podcast’s YouTube page is still up, the strike disables the user’s ability to upload content for a week.
“We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period,” Alex Joseph, a YouTube spokesman, said in a statement.
Maxey, Bannon’s co-host, took to Twitter to express his grievances over the ban.
“How does Twitter determine for whom their rules apply?” he wrote.
He added, “Because, we are all striving for equality before the law.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said the social media platforms were correct in taking down the “dangerous rhetoric.”
“These are shocking calls for violence from ex-[White House] aide Steve Bannon,” he wrote on Twitter.
“There is no place for these types of threats anywhere,” he added.
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