The antipathy of Twitter and Facebook to conservatives is well-established. The social media giants’ hatred presumably therefore also applies to opponents of jihad terror, who are universally classified as “right-wing,” however absurd the label.
But do Twitter and Facebook draw the line at death threats against them?
The question arises because of one Obaid Karki, @stsheetrock on Twitter, who describes himself thusly:
I Ain’t Anglosexual Liberal Hippie, Neither Wolf nor Dog, I am a coyote. A Paulite Picassoic Provocateur Constitutionalist Libertarian.
Any doubt that he is quite spectacularly insane will be removed by a perusal of one or both of his incoherent and gleefully obscene websites. Karki is engaging in some bizarre parody of a deranged imam, or perhaps he is trying to make some other kind of inscrutable humor. One of his websites is titled “Obaid Karki St. Sheetrock’s Painfulpolitics Offensive Comedy Hepcat.” The offensive comedy is there, in spades. His other site is called “Suicide Bombers Magazine,” and bears this heading: “Dislaimer: we swear on Elvis’s pickled penis that ‘non-sapient beings’ I mean animals harmed during IED kahbooom.”
Hmm.
But just because Karki is insane or possibly joking doesn’t mean that he can’t be dangerous — especially if he is also making specific calls for people to be murdered.
Last Saturday, he posted this:
Robert Spencer mustn’t [be] featured but lynched from his scrotum along with Zionists scumbags, Pamela Geller, Pat Condell, Daniel Pipes, Debbie Schlussel and JIHADWATCH Jackass duo Baron Bodissey & Geert Wilders for inspiring Anders Behring Breivik to [kill] innocent students in 2011.
Actually, neither Bodissey nor Wilders runs Jihad Watch — I do — and I didn’t inspire Breivik to do anything, but there is no arguing with a crazy person. But what is interesting about Karki’s post, aside from his loony language, is that he posted this call for me and others to be lynched on Twitter, which has a clearly stated policy against death threats.
Robert Spencer mustn’t featured but lynched from his scrotum along with Zionists scumbags,… https://t.co/spgB9mHNQg pic.twitter.com/4popjGwWdP
— Obaid Karki (@stsheetrock) May 28, 2016
Per “The Twitter Rules”:
Violent threats (direct or indirect): You may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.
I therefore duly reported Karki’s threat, but as of this writing, it has not been taken down (in fact, Karki has since posted it again, and has posted variants of it several times). Maybe Twitter is just slow to deal with the large number of complaints it receives? To buy that argument, you have to buy that they have a two-year backlog. On May 12, 2014, Karki also posted this:
Robert Spencer must be arrested and lynched along the Zionists Dumbasses Daniel Pipes, Geert Wilders and JIHADWATCH …http://t.co/QMy4epLbKl — Obaid Karki (@stsheetrock) May 12, 2014
You can see from this 2014 Twitter exchange linked above that several people claimed they reported Karki for this threat, as did I. Not only does Karki still have his Twitter account — while many conservatives have lost their accounts for far less — but the 2014 threat remains there. Hold on — I misspoke above. I meant to say you would have to buy that Twitter has a three-year backlog of death threats to police. Here, read a Karki tweet from September 18, 2013:
Robert Spencer must be shot head not only for comparing Alnoor 24:35 to Corinthians 11:14-15 satanically but for… http://t.co/jsZhF7QYJx
— Obaid Karki (@stsheetrock) September 18, 2013
So now you have an example of how Twitter responded to death threats against a political opponent.
How about Facebook?
Not only is Karki on Twitter, but he also has a Facebook page containing the same lurid and paranoid content — including the threats. He did claim he was temporarily barred this Sunday:
I am axed outta Facebook for 7 days …
… but, I just read that on his Facebook page. What exactly this axing entailed remains unclear.
At least the social media titans are consistent. The site Epoch Times reported last March:
[W]hile Twitter says it is making strong efforts to shut down terrorist accounts, activists say that not only is the microblogging company not taking down the accounts that matter, but it has even been shutting down accounts of users trying to report terrorists.
The age of Obama has featured a rapid decline in appreciation for the freedom of speech. College students and — in many, many cases — their professors routinely avow that “hate speech is not free speech.” They cannot grasp that if they get their wish they will allow whatever the government subjectively deems “hate speech” to be criminalized, and the foremost protection against tyranny will have been removed.
At that moment, free society literally ends.
While the First Amendment still doesn’t allow the increasingly authoritarian Left to silence its opponents, Facebook and Twitter have apparently taken the next most effective steps. They media titans kneecap voices they don’t like, and they allow death threats directed against those same voices to remain.
It’s a bad situation growing worse. Maybe if Hillary Clinton — who called for people like me to be publicly shamed — is elected president, she will have Obaid Karki perform at White House.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member