We all know by now how much Facebook and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) doesn’t like “hate” groups. They especially don’t like it when people exercise their free speech and discuss topics they deem dangerous or distasteful. After all, they care about us and we might be too stupid to actually parse ideas for ourselves.

So thank God The Guardian hounded Facebook to ban the latest two groups they say are white nationalists and white supremacist groups—Red Ice TV and Affirmative Right.

After the Guardian lobbied to censor them, Facebook ruled the groups violated its policies against organized hate. “We regularly view organizations against our policy and any that violate will be banned permanently.”

Problem is, Red Ice TV isn’t an organization and it isn’t affiliated with Affirmative Right. It’s a media company founded and operated by married team Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff. The couple produce and cohost Red Ice TV and videos as well as Radio3Fourteen, a talk radio program.

It isn’t clear exactly what organizational form Red Ice TV is accused of operating with Affirmative Right or any other group, but according to a Daily Mail article, the groups often linked to each other’s sites.

“The news source stated that it found longstanding Facebook pages for the Affirmative group, which helped launch the ‘alt-right’ movement and multiple pages linked to Red Ice TV.” Apparently linking to other sites now means you are affiliated with another group.

I don’t know anything about Affirmative Right, but Red Ice TV does promote white culture and nationalism, which is within their legal right to do so, and if you actually watch their program, it is mostly done as push-back against the left’s racist identity politics agenda. Never, ever have they promoted white supremacy, however.

Anyone right of center already knows it is okay for media and left-leaning groups to promote black and brown people, but it is somehow distasteful when white people want to push back against the annihilation of  white culture. For the record, I don’t promote any racial group, but that would be beside the point.

According to The Daily Mail, “Facebook has been a haven for white nationalism and white separatists to share their posts of organized hate. VDare, a white nationalist website focused on opposition to immigration and American Free Press, a newsletter founded by the white supremacist Willis Carto, were also found to have a presence on the platform. “

Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Intelligence Project said after reviewing the Guardian’s findings, “There’s no question that every single one of these groups is a white nationalist group. It’s not even up for debate. There’s really no excuse for not removing this material.”

I don’t believe in white supremacy and would certainly not defend its ideas, however, being a white nationalist isn’t a crime. Otherwise, the left would be rounding up President Trump and the millions of white people who voted for him into concentration camps.

And of course, opposition to immigration and a free press is not a crime, but someone should tell that to the editorial team over at The Guardian.

Linking to other websites isn’t yet in the criminal code of any U.S. towns law books either. I routinely link statistics, point to additional information, or cite sources in articles, as do thousands of other journalists.

What is so distasteful about the Guardian’s report is that it calls out white supremacists and white nationalists as dangerous ideologies but fails to call for censorship of actual violent terrorist groups like Antifa. I am not in favor of censorship at all, however, if you are going to do it under the banner of “hate speech,” you might want to ban all racial identity groups and, at the least, target organizations promoting violence.

Blinded by their own hate, the media has moved from reporting news to open activism and spreading propaganda. It is one thing to report on controversial and competing ideologies, but quite another to promote one over another or to call for the banning of individuals and groups that may believe in opposing ideas.

The bottom line isn’t whether I or anyone else favors racial identity, but rather when will the infringement on these groups right to free speech and the right to free association cease.

The Ministry of State Security, or Stasi, was one of the most repressive police organizations on the globe, infiltrating almost every aspect of everyday life in East Germany. Over four decades, it used torture, intimidation and informants to crush dissenters.

Sacha Barron Cohen, speaking at the Anti-Defamation League’s (AD) “Never is Now Conference” on November 21, 2019 said social media companies should be held responsible for the content spread on their sites. “Maybe it’s time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these companies, you already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and you go to jail,” said Cohen.

But to be clear, Cohen wasn’t calling out the left to be censored or jailed. “Thank you, ADL, for this recognition and your work in fighting racism, hate, and bigotry,” Cohen said. “And to be clear, when I say ‘racism, hate, and bigotry’ I’m not referring to the names of Stephen Miller’s Labradoodles.” Still not clear on who is being targeted here?

“Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter and others—they reach billions of people,” said Cohen. “The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged—stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history—the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, ‘Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.’”

Conservatives with bad ideas will die in the dark, but silencing the voice of millions of people who believe in the right to free speech is much, much worse than anything the Stasi ever did, and I’d like to thank Sasha Baron Cohen, the ADL and the SPLC for reminding us all that our fight against authoritarianism is as real today as it ever was. #Reignwell