Twitter will not suspend Louis Farrakhan for his tweet comparing Jews to insects



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Twitter will not suspend Louis Farrakhan, leader of Nation of Islam, in a tweet comparing Jews to insects, the company said in a statement published at BuzzFeed News.

Farrakhan, who has been accused of anti-Semitism throughout his career, tweeted yesterday a video clip of a speech in which he denied being anti-Semitic, with the caption: "I am not anti-Semitic. I am anti-Termite. "

The tweet seems to violate Twitter's proposed new policies on the "dehumanization" of tweets, defined in a blog about society as "a language that treats others as less than human … Examples can include the comparison of groups with animals and viruses (animalistics) or reduction groups to a tool for another purpose (mechanistic). "

However, a Twitter spokesman told BuzzFeed News that since the rules have not yet come into force, Farrakhan's wording does not violate any existing policies. The spokesperson did not specify when the new rule would come into effect, or even if it would. He did not say whether Farrakhan's tweet would be in violation if the current policy was in effect.

In recent months, Twitter has provoked the fury of conservative users and politicians who said the platform's ban on conspiracy theory, Alex Jones, was politically motivated. The company has long struggled to balance its commitment to freedom of expression with the profusion of hateful and false information on its platform.

In the past, the company removed the special verified status of users to punish abusive language, as was the case in July when Farrakhan had not been verified, after the minister tweeted: "Unmask the Jew completely satanic and the synagogue of Satan. "

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