Thursday, Facebook announced several right-wing provocateurs had been kicked off their platform. Louis Farrakhan, raging anti-semite and hate monger was lumped in with the rest of the crowd in several headlines.



Like this one from The Independent:

Hold up, are they pretending Farrakhan is right-wing? pic.twitter.com/irOH81udDn — Kemberlee Kaye (@KemberleeKaye) May 2, 2019

And this one from the WaPo:

What in the actual hell? Louis Farrakhan has never once been considered on “the right” – far or otherwise. @washingtonpost what are you doing?? You don’t even have to dig much to get a list of all the appearances he’s made w/lefties over the years. pic.twitter.com/mIPHHAewMp — Kira (@RealKiraDavis) May 2, 2019

Because it needs mentioning, apparently, Farrakhan is not a far-right figure. Not by any stretch.

So Louis Farrakhan is now part of the, um, far right? This @washingtonpost headline reveals a deep intellectual blindspot: 1) An inability to recognize left-wing authoritarianism. 2) Once its authoritarian element becomes impossible to ignore: the denial that it is left-wing. pic.twitter.com/y5S2TaVliM — Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) May 2, 2019

After pressure from social media, the WaPo changed their headline, substituting “far-right” for “extremist”:

After much criticism, the WaPo changed "far-right" to "extremist", but the initial designation of "far-right" to include Louis Farrakhan is interesting — particularly given his fan-base @womensmarch… https://t.co/ZaBMZzF09u — Dr. Petra Marquardt-Bigman (@WarpedMirrorPMB) May 2, 2019

Truly pathetic.



