By Ken Willette, Jr.
Recently, I had the humble experience of being banned by Twitter for 12 hours because of an idea I offered regarding the Ukraine invasion. I was shocked and immediately appealed, where I thought the appeal process would reverse the unjustified ban. I was mistaken and the 12-hour time-out proceeded forward.
I said: “Kill more Russians and leave knitted baby socks as a reminder that their barbarism will be repaid tenfold. I am hoping the US volunteers are mobilizing the Ukraine resistance as well.” Mind you, the Russian troops are engaging in war crimes, killing pregnant women in maternity hospitals, targeting nursing homes and bombing identifiable areas where children are sheltered. A pregnant woman was carted away on a stretcher from a bombed-out hospital and was photographed. Worldwide condemnation followed and the woman and her unborn child subsequently died. Hence, the baby sock message to armed invaders.
My message didn’t apply to all Russians, only armed combatants, and I didn’t advocate for genocide against Mother Russia. The Russians are absolutely the evil aggressors and Twitter condoned their actions by penalizing my free speech. Twitter is not innocent and impartial in overseeing controversial tweets and actions, as reflected in the following examples.
In fact, the President of Russia, called out as a war criminal by Biden, still has an official Twitter site. Yet Trump is still banned from Twitter, where he never directed a campaign of violence against unarmed civilians and represents a popular voice in the greatest republic.
Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House in a speech before thousands. (No Twitter Ban). Kathy Griffin lifted a bloodied head of a look-a-like Trump. (Free to follow on Twitter). The Foreign Ministry of Iran, which advocates terrorism, wants to build a nuclear weapon, seeks the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust, welcomes your attention.
The Anti-Defamation League has called out Minister Louis Farrakhan for decades of anti-Jewish declarations, such as saying the Jewish faith is a ‘deceptive lie’ designed to control the economy of the United States. The Minister has said that the Jews controlled the slave trade too. Plus, he hates Whites and GLBTQ community members. He awaits your replies to his tweets. Notice a massive illogical trend here, as a sea of violence, revisionist history and venom is given a global electronic platform.
This can’t be by mere coincidence or accident. And it goes to my main point about the madness of banning or censoring one group versus another in the marketplace of ideas. The Constitution is not selective in protecting freedom of speech, no matter how despised the messenger is. It is very protective, except when someone cries fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire. Child porn is not speech, but a heinous crime that should be severely punished. A person falsely staging and then reporting a hate crime to the world should be arrested, convicted and imprisoned. But even convicted felon Jussie Smollett still has an official Twitter account verified by the blue checkmark!
But why are high-tech giants arbitrarily judging what should be mostly unfettered speech in our country? This is so contradictory to what our nation has become—an evolving multicultural experiment in constitutional republican liberties and laws. Let me, as a free and informed citizen, determine my identity, my knowledge and my ideological beliefs.
Why is the Left so hell-bent about banning conservatives, but they leave the backdoor wide open to anti-women advocates, war criminals and promoters of hateful lies? There is an agenda here, and all sides of the political spectrum should be very afraid. Because censorship is often replaced by sanitized state news, propaganda, half-truths and one-sided fairy tales. America is better than this!