The Babylon Bee, by far the funniest conservative satire website out there, posted a tweet a few days ago that the Twitter censors weren’t overly fond of. In fact, the tweet got the Bee’s Twitter account banned.
You see, the Bee, mocking USA Today’s claim that Rachel Levine, a man who “transitioned” to being a woman, is the “woman of the year,” joked in an article that “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year is Rachel Levine.”
Predictably, the censors at Twitter were none too happy about the Bee’s mocking of transgenderism, one of the New Left’s sacred cows, so the Babylon Bee’s Twitter account was locked for “hateful conduct.” Seth Dillon, head of the Bee, announced that via his Twitter account, saying:
I just received this notice that we’ve been locked out of our account for “hateful conduct.”
I just received this notice that we’ve been locked out of our account for “hateful conduct.” pic.twitter.com/udMriKcDr6
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 20, 2022
Clarifying that it was, in fact, a real story and not another joke, Adam Ford, creator of the Bee and current head of Not the Bee, wrote that:
Yes @TheBabylonBee has been suspended from Twitter for hate speech for calling Rachel (née Richard) Levine a man. Which is objectively true. The price of getting our account back is deleting the tweet. This is real life.
Yes @TheBabylonBee has been suspended from Twitter for hate speech for calling Rachel (née Richard) Levine a man. Which is objectively true. The price of getting our account back is deleting the tweet. This is real life.
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) March 21, 2022
Seth Dillon added more details in a later tweet, noting that the Bee had been locked out of its account for 12 hours, but that to start the countdown timer it had to delete the tweet. He refused to do so, saying:
We’re told our account will be restored in 12 hours, but the countdown won’t begin until we delete the tweet that violates the Twitter Rules.
We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.
We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 20, 2022
Dillon also struck a defiant tone when describing how people could help in a series of follow up tweets, saying:
I’ve received some messages from people asking how they can help. I can think of a few ways:
1. Never censor yourself. Insist that 2 and 2 make 4 even if Twitter tries to compel you to say otherwise. Make them ban tens of millions of us.
2. Get on our email list so we have direct contact with you. It’s not a perfect solution — email service providers have censored us, too — but at least we own our email list and can take it with us.
3. Become a premium subscriber. If enough of you do that, we won’t need traffic from big tech platforms to generate revenue.
What’s clear from those messages is that he’s not backing down. Rather than bend the knee and delete the tweet, Dillon and the Bee are standing firm and taking a high-profile stand against Twitter’s censorship regime.
He even called out Twitter’s obvious desire to see him bend the knee and his refusal to do so in a later series of tweets, saying:
Twitter’s statement to the media in response to our suspension: “The account you referenced has been temporarily locked for violating our hateful conduct policy. The account owner is required to delete the violative Tweet before regaining access to their account.”
They could, of course, delete the tweet themselves. But they won’t. It’s not enough for them to just wipe it out. They want us to bend the knee and admit that we engaged in hateful conduct.
They could, of course, delete the tweet themselves. But they won’t. It’s not enough for them to just wipe it out. They want us to bend the knee and admit that we engaged in hateful conduct.
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 21, 2022
The Bee’s account is now up, so someone or something at Twitter gave in, but Dillon’s brave stand shows just how conservatives must respond to censorship: fight back, don’t bend the knee.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Will, Author at Trending Politics
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