Gab Gets Alex Jones Treatment After CNN Blames It For Synagogue Shooting
It has become a new American tradition. A tragedy happens and the race to find someone to blame begins. And since the election of President Donald Trump it has gotten worse.
This past week has been a particularly busy week for those on the left who, as they fight to save the blue trickle that started as a blue wave, want to pin every abhorrent act on the president, his rhetoric and his supporters.
In the past week the United States has experienced three serious attacks that were perpetrated by people with demented political and racial ideologies.
On Wednesday in Kentucky a white supremacist named Gregory Alan Bush walked into a Kroger’s and shot a black man dead. He then walked into the parking lot and shot and killed a black woman. At one point during the attack he said “whites don’t kill whites,” NBC affiliate WAVE 3 reported.
On Sunday an anti-Semite, 46-year-old Robert Bowers, walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 Jewish worshipers during a baby naming ceremony. Prior to the attack he wrote on his Gab.com account “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.”
He reportedly told police “All these Jews need to die,” The Washington Examiner wrote.
And for the majority of the week the nation was gripped as another man, a supporter of the president named Cesar Sayoc, terrorized the nation as he mailed bombs to prominent liberals like George Soros, Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Cory Booker, John Brennan and others. When he was caught his van was covered in pro-President Trump stickers.
It could have been a perfect storm for Democrats who want to blame the president for these attacks, but the fact that Sunday’s synagogue shooter despised President Trump destroyed that narrative.
The media scrambled to find someone to blame and it did not take long for them to settle on a Boogeyman. The culprit they settled on was a small social media company named Gab.com.
Gab is a site where free speech, which is an endangered species on the Internet, is protected no matter how vile it is. And here is the uncomfortable part. That is the way it is supposed to be.
When the Founding Fathers of the United States decided that free speech needed to be protected it was not popular speech that they were concerned about. No one wants to ban popular speech.
It is the unpopular speech, the words of a man like Alex Jones who some find scary, that need to be protected. Jones was painted as a man calling for people to be attacked. A dangerous man. But anyone who ever heard Jones or read what he wrote was aware that that was a blatant lie. He just said unpopular things.
He questioned the government, he questioned what has been called the deep state and, yes, he questioned the Sandy Hook massacre. I disagreed with him on that, and on other things, but I did not want him silenced.
I don’t want anyone silenced. That is not what America is about. We talk, we debate, we argue, we shout, and we should thank God every day that we are in a nation that allows it rather than a nation like Saudi Arabia where a dissenting journalist could be found on foreign soil and murdered.
Still CNN was not alone in blaming Gab.
The Daily Beast parroted CNN and called Gab “the Alt-Right’s Favorite Social Network.” The author Will Sommer wrote that the company “marketed itself as a home for extremists kicked off of other social-media platforms.”
That is provably incorrect. Gab markets itself as a place where free speech lives. It follows the free speech guidelines of the Constitution. That is not radical. It is what America is based on.
Hours after the shooting Gab was informed that it had been banned from PayPal. As a site that is funded by users this is an attempt to cripple the company. The same formula that was used to de-person Jones.
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056283312522637312
And the attacks continued from all corners all day.
Of *course* he was on @getongab, who is constantly telling me that the platform doesn’t encourage hate speech, and that hate crimes don’t exist.
Blood. Hands. https://t.co/qS1EIYF6aw
— Will Carless (@willcarless) October 27, 2018
Gab, which someone in 2016 called “Twitter for Racists”, has been a cesspool of shit for some time. I had to close the account I was using to track these assholes last year because it was getting to be too much.
— Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) October 27, 2018
Let’s talk about antisemitism online, shall we?
I am a Jew, not secret about it, and I write about the right. I have for awhile. Here’s some posts about me on the Daily Stormer and Gab and the right-wing net. pic.twitter.com/ENP5jT0sQt— Talia Lavin (@chick_in_kiev) October 27, 2018
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1056356977041948672
CNN’s Jake Tapper was particularly concerned with something the shooter wrote on Gab that read “Jews are the children of Satan.”
4/ The NYDN reports that under his Gab profile picture he had written: “Jews are the children of Satan."https://t.co/l7D2tHipdl
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 27, 2018
But is Tapper or anyone else calling for Twitter to be closed when they have allowed Louis Farrakhan and this tweet to stay on its platform?
Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.
Full Video: https://t.co/N5KXtakhpl pic.twitter.com/zRgSKcAsZj
— MINISTER FARRAKHAN (@LouisFarrakhan) June 7, 2018
Gab released a statement in the aftermath of the shooting that read “Gab.com’s policy on terrorism and violence have always been very clear: we a have zero tolerance for it. Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence. This has always been our policy. We are saddened and disgusted by the news of violence in Pittsburgh and are keeping the families and friends of all victims in our thoughts and prayers.”
It addressed the media attacks by saying “We refuse to be defined by the media’s narratives about Gab and our community. Gab’s mission is very simple: to defend free expression and individual liberty online for all people. Social media often brings out the best and the worst of humanity. From live streamed murders on Facebook, to threats of violence by bombing suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. that went unaddressed by Twitter, and more. Criminals and criminal behavior exist on every social media platform.”
Gab said it has been working extensively with law enforcement in the aftermath of the shooting.
But none of that matters. Gab’s hosting provider informed them on Saturday that they are removing their website likely causing the website to be out of commission for weeks.
“Breaking: @joyent, Gab’s new hosting provider, has just pulled our hosting service. They have given us until 9am on Monday to find a solution. Gab will likely be down for weeks because of this. Working on solutions. We will never give up on defending free speech for all people,” the company wrote on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1056362626077220865
If that does not scare you it should. This is not a war to save Gab or Alex Jones. It is a war to protect free speech. The concept of “hate speech” is subjective and could be used to ban speech that people disagree with. Anyone calling for the banning of speech simple does not get it.
It started with Jones and has now extended to Gab. Big tech is testing the waters to see how much banning you, the people, will allow. The answer you give them will determine the future of free speech.
Big Tech censiors**t must be fought by all mean necessary, including by force of arms.
When trump attack the democrats party on a personal way like lock Hillary up or kill her. When trump supporter attack reporter from CCN or other liberal medial outlet. trump is unfit to be president he broke the climate treaty and the missle control treaty and starting trade wars left and right. he is than Islamoprobic and Mexicanoprobic white power person.
You can cry “censorship” and “free speech” all you want; once again, though, this is not the government intervening to regulate content, but the decision of a business. Either way, hate speech should not have a platform, and Gab has done an awfully poor job of trying to root that out. Twitter’s not above reproach either, of course, but I don’t think these negative characterizations of Gab are unfair.
Agreed that the 1st Amendment doesn’t extend to private business legally. However, the issue is the let’s notion of “hate speech”, something that is far too Ambiguous a term, and their refusal to enforce it consistently. A stated opinion on blackface from a conservative is not on. Actual blackface from a liberal is OK (Kimmel, Fallon, Silverman, etc). Calling Jews Satanic on a perceived conservative platform is not ok, but a liberal doing so on a liberal run platform (Twitter is on). Blaming the perceived conservative platform for somone threatening others is fine, but it isn’t OK to blame a liberal platform where the same threats are made.
Why are liberals so hypocritical and dishonest?
Why do liberals not value free speech both legally and in spirit?
Why do liberals insist on controlling words/expressed thought like every modern and historical oppressive regime throughout the world?
Oh please! The “bad apples” get handed a weird power ?, by ruining something like Gab for everyone else, on there,who participates on an even, social, level? Gab discusses,analyses, information,issues, ideas, a vast myriad,a lot of people like Donald Trump, hardly illegal. Hardly different to many other websites. Does it matter that a perception of Gab, which,to some, may see Gab as having “bad” differing views, may be also be a skimmed, unbalanced summary? It seems this website Gab is receiving getting more judgement than necessary.
SO whatever happened to : This is the internet, freedom of speech,discussion in and about the society we live in, written words on the internet ?! Yes indeed.
How does a payment system get to,lead the, ‘news headline’, get to make ‘social judgements’ via news outlets? They must have known what Gab was-it’s always been very clear, and more importantly, Gab is not responsible for the recent acts of other adults atrociousness.
Remember, “bad apples”, male adults, have created news /chaos – 1/ the man, a shooter , a killer, and 2/ another man, creating mailed threats, AND they have been apprehended. AND Gab have willingly helped in the process of helping Police.
Lets look at Gab fairly .
Joseph Mangago what a joke. You really don’t understand the world or people for that matter. Free Speech is fundamental to a long lasting, open, free, and stable Society. If you can’t grasp that, then I know you have got it all wrong.
Some deep thinking, independent of what you have latched on to in this new current and shocking trend, would take you to the conclusion that free Speech is one of the most important pillars of a functioning free society. All roads on thought lead there.
If you are not getting it, then I promise you, you have got everything wrong.
Without free speech, our Society Falls. And there are people out there so diluted they believe that’s something they want. Ultimately the knowledge and intellect our founding is completely being wiped out by people who simply have no clue.
You can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater.
You can’t make threats against the President.
You shouldn’t be allowed to use words to make new Nazis.
Aside from that, you can say whatever you want, but I don’t have to let you stand on my soapbox while you say it.
Hate speech is just speech NPCs dislike
@maatopdogg You speak the truth. I am from gab. I am here to fight the true oppression.
That on trump
I have to agree with Joe. This is the free market at work. Gab has made a business decision based on what they think is best for third bottom line. Free speech has nothing to do with it. Yes, this is America and you can say and do anything with one limitation. That is as long as what you do or say does not infringe on anothers right to do the same. So when you say vile things on another platform you may infringe on their write to grow their business. So off you go.
GAB is a platform for hatred. What other purpose does it serve?
Um I believe the OP said it best! Can you not read? It is for FREE SPEECH and free speech is not just for YOUR FEELINGS! Holy Shit guys! If you don’t like what they say just don’t read it or listen to it! Don’t be an Athoritarian! That is NOT what the Constitution is for! SMFH!
TYesterday, 11 dead at Pittsburg Synagogue by AR 15. Three days ago, Robert Bowers, the shooter, who also goes by the name Rob Bowers, wrote on the GAB account: “”Daily Reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person.””… His profile picture on GAB, where he’s had an account since January 2018, reads,:”“jews are the children of satan. (john 8:44) — —- the lord jesus christ is come in the flesh.””… +++HE MEANS TRUMP+++