Twitter says Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic tweet violates new anti-hate rules

Twitter said Tuesday that it would require Louis Farrakhan to delete a 2018 anti-Semitic tweet after applying its new hateful-conduct rules to the post from the controversial Nation of Islam leader, CNN reported.

The social media platform did not take action at the time against the tweet, which compared Jewish people to termites, but said Tuesday that it was introducing a new rule banning “language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion.”

{mosads}“Our primary focus is on addressing the risks of offline harm, and research shows that dehumanizing language increases that risk,” Twitter said in a blog post.

“As a result, after months of conversations and feedback from the public, external experts and our own teams, we’re expanding our rules against hateful conduct to include language that dehumanizes others on the basis of religion,” the company added.

In the initial tweet, Farrakhan captioned a clip from a speech he delivered, writing, “I’m not an anti-Semite, I’m anti-termite.”

Both the tweet and Twitter’s determination at the time drew widespread condemnation, with Chelsea Clinton writing, “For everyone who rightly condemned President Trump’s rhetoric when he spoke about immigrants ‘infesting our country,’ this rhetoric should be equally unacceptable to you.”

Before ruling that the tweet did not violate its rules, Twitter had previously stripped Farrakhan’s “verified” status for a tweet referencing “the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.”

Tweets violating the new rule that predate its announcement this week will not result in account suspensions, Twitter said Tuesday, but must be deleted for the user to continue using their accounts.

“It’s against our rules to dehumanize others based on religion,” a Twitter spokesperson told CNN Business of Farrakhan’s tweet last year. “That tweet is now unavailable.”

The Nation of Islam did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.