On Thursday morning, Twitter suspended the account of University of Tennessee law professor and USA Today columnist Glenn Reynolds, supposedly over this tweet:
Reynolds’ critics suggested that he wanted people to target protesters, although the linked story said that the “protesters” in question were “stopping traffic and surrounding vehicles,” menacing their occupants. Here’s the video:
VIDEO: People surrounding vehicles driving along 277 near College Street. #CharlotteProtest #KeithLamontScott #Charlotte pic.twitter.com/2tCHUJgFuc
— WBTV News (@WBTV_News) September 22, 2016
Reynolds responded to the suspension:
Can’t imagine why they’d do that, except that it seems to be happening to a lot of people for no obvious reason. It’s as if, despite assurances to the contrary, Twitter is out to silence voices it disagrees with or something.
UPDATE: Ah, it was about this tweet.
Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars and surrounding them is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Was just on Hugh Hewitt talking about this. Since Twitter won’t let me respond to — or even see — my critics, let me expand here.
I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and peaceful protest. I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years.
But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.
“Run them down” perhaps didn’t capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance.
Meanwhile, regarding Twitter: I don’t even know that this is why I was suspended, as I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all. They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other.
Twitter can do without me, as I can certainly do without Twitter.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has long been an advocate for Black Lives Matter, conducting events with race-baiting riot cheerleader Deray McKesson, who once taught a seminar at Yale with required reading including an essay titled “In Defense of Looting.” McKesson has also come out in support of convicted cop killers Assata Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal on Twitter. He’s talked up the value of the racist New Black Panther Party.
All of this is not just acceptable but praiseworthy according to Dorsey. But Reynolds crossed the invisible line.
This is the danger of a social media network run by the left: double standards work as leftist tools for censorship. Facebook and Twitter are private companies and have the full right to suspend the accounts of anyone with whom they interact. But conservatives are quickly learning that they live at the mercy of the leftists who control such networks. It won’t be long before conservatives create their own social media outlets out of a sense of self-preservation.