Twitter Kicks David Duke Off for Good

Ex-KKK leader kicked off social media platform for violating rules on 'hateful conduct'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 31, 2020 2:10 PM CDT
David Duke Won't Be Tweeting Anymore
In this July 22, 2016, file photo, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke talks to the media in Baton Rouge, La.   (AP Photo/Max Becherer, File)

David Duke has lost one of his big communications platforms: The 70-year-old white supremacist and ex-Ku Klux Klan leader has been banned from Twitter for good, the AP reports. Duke was "permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter rules on hateful conduct," the social media platform said in a statement. It didn't specify which tweet or tweets had earned Duke the boot, but the BBC notes his final tweet linked to an interview with Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf, while other recent tweets spread coronavirus misinformation, called systemic racism a "lie," and ranted about the "incitement of violence against white people" by Jewish-controlled media.

Duke had already been kicked off of YouTube in June. The Washington Post notes Twitter and other social-media platforms have long been under fire for being too lax on "hateful ideologies and propaganda," per a Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman. Twitter updated its user agreement in March to ban "hateful" content. Per Twitter's "hateful conduct" policy, users may not "promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease." It adds the site also "[doesn't] allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories." (More David Duke stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X