Twitter suspends Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ account for hateful behavior. According to Twitter, a recent tweet by the PVV-leader, addressed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is not acceptable

8 comments

1. Translation through DeepL:

   **Twitter suspends account Geert Wilders for hateful behavior**

   According to Twitter, a recent tweet by PVV leader Geert Wilders, addressed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is not acceptable. In it, Wilders talked about ‘the violence of the intolerant ideology called Islam’.

   Twitter argues that Wilders violated the rules around hate speech. In a tweet to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, he called the prophet Mohammed a “false prophet” and spoke of “the violence of the intolerant ideology Islam.

   According to the politician, he can get his account back within twelve hours if he deletes certain tweets. But Wilders has little appetite for that, according to the fact that he has appealed the suspension to Twitter. It is unknown when that ruling will come. Wilders hoped it would be within two days, but says it has now been longer. His last tweet was dated Wednesday, April 20.

   **The controversial tweet:**

   > *‘You know what hurts Prime Minister @CMShehbaz, is the violence of the intolerant ideology called Islam, the fatwa’s and death threats by people from #Pakistan, who are inspired by the fake prophet #Mohammad. We always choose freedom ver Mohammedanism. And you’ll never win.’*

   Remarkably, after an initial complaint about the tweet, Twitter had still stated that it did not need to be removed. A few hours later the company changed its mind. Wilders finds this strange, he says to the NOS. Even stranger is that pictures with a knife through my head are allowed by threatening people, but not words from me.

   Twitter already blocked Wilders’ account for twelve hours in 2019 for sowing hatred. Then the trigger was a tweet about D66 and anti-Semitism. He wrote: ‘Let’s always stand up to the suckers of @D66 who leave the borders open and import more and more Islam and then cry crocodile tears about the consequences such as anti-Semitism, honor killings, female genital mutilation, terrorism and hatred,’ sounded that challenged message.

   Wilders stated at the time that Twitter had threatened to make the blockade permanent if he crossed the line again. Press agency ANP asked the social network for a reaction, but it has yet to receive one.

2. If stuff like this leads to bans now, Twitter will be empty pretty quickly.

3. Is the standard the same for criticism of Christianity?

4. Good job proving Elon Musk’s point about free speech for him, Twitter!

5. That is ban worthy? I expected this to happen someday but not due to a tweet like this

6. How is that tweet even remotely ‘hateful’? It’s rather blunt, sure, but the criticism is not unfair.

7. I detest Wilders, but this is not hate speech

   Hate speech is preaching hatred against a specific group of people on the basis of protected characteristics

   Saying that you do not believe in a particular religion’s prophets, or that you disagree with a given religion is not hate speech

8. A very innocent tweet tbh, as we can see Twitter and Facebook cannot be trusted to be the curators of our public debate. They need to be either blocked in Europe or forced to conform to some standards.