When we are talking about violating community standards, one must ask whether Israel’s largest private arms company Elbit Systems, who produce deadly weapons and very little else, don’t seem to fall under that ‘violation’ category.
After Palestine Action and Extinction Rebellion joined forces to protest the immoral profiteering from war and the misery of ‘being bombed out of existence’, this automatically violates Facebook’s rules as being “unacceptable”. From this, we can only presume that the social media giant supports the killing, murder and mayhem that Elbit inflicts, but doesn’t support the humanitarian resistance from people of conscience who are trying to end human suffering by closing the industry down.
In short, Elbit Systems and all its subsidiaries are literally being given multiple, untethered platforms to market destruction. If this doesn’t violate so-called community standards, then in truth, one wonders what exactly does. If killing is acceptable, and proactively opposing it isn’t, then an even bigger question is: who exactly are Facebook?
What hidden and dubious values do they really possess? What is the only message that we should take from this? — killing is good; opposing it is bad? This isn’t just about boycotting Facebook, but it’s about utterly questioning its existence altogether. If it’s purpose is to promote war but censor anti-war organisations, then in fact, it ironically violates its own community standards and should delete itself. Tick-tock — we’re waiting.
The occupation of Elbit-Ferranti in Oldham that took place yesterday was one of the biggest stories to hit the day’s news. Even the usually-biased BBC covered the story, among many other mainstream & local outlets. What these courageous activists did was shut down one of the most toxic weapons factories in the UK and it must be added, sacrifice their own freedoms to do so. Now that’s a value that hundreds, in fact thousands of people supported on the day, including some very key political, artistic and academic figures who were quick to ‘tweet’ their approval.
Facebook, quite frankly, is shamefully on the wrong side of history, and should take a good hard look at itself. There’s something instinctively wrong with this social media company. There’s also something indisputably wrong with Elbit’s intentions. And yet, there’s a lot most definitely right about opposing war and having a free speech platform to do so. Who’s awake on this?
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