Why is David Duke, a white supremacist and former Klansmen, allowed to spout hateful anti-semitic, anti-trans, and anti-Black things on Twitter? According to the company, one reason Duke is not banned is that he’s not currently a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Seriously. Duke announced his endorsement of Donald Trump for re-election on Twitter yesterday, prompting us here at Gizmodo to wonder why the former Grand Wizard of the KKK is still allowed on the social media platform—especially since Twitter has been kicking off plenty of white supremacists this month. We just got our answer via email from a Twitter spokesperson who sent us information “on background,” meaning that it’s not supposed to be quoted directly. The only problem? “On background” agreements must be entered into by both parties, the spokesperson and the journalist. Saying “on background” or “off the record” is not a magic wand that means anything that you say afterward must be kept quiet. Gizmodo did not agree to an “on background” discussion with Twitter and we feel that it’s important for Gizmodo’s readers to know the content of the email we received to better understand how the company decides to allow hateful people on its platform. David Duke regularly tweets with the thinnest of plausible deniability, calling Black people “savages,” Jewish people “degenerate filth,” and using three parentheses around the names of Jewish people—an anti-semitic code sometimes referred to as an “echo.” Duke also uses anti-trans slurs like “tranny” and complains about the “Jewish-led homo agenda.” A notorious Holocaust denier, Duke often puts the word “Holocaust” in quotes seemingly to belittle the atrocity. Duke is a professional racist, so obviously, the list goes on and on.
via gizmodo: Twitter Defends Giving David Duke a Platform: He’s ‘Not Currently a Member of the KKK’