Facebook this week permanently ended the ability of grime artist Wiley to spew his antisemitic and racist filth on that platform and on Instagram (which Facebook owns) after he once again started into another one of his inflammatory, antisemitic rants. He had previously been punished with a seven-day suspension and block from Facebook and Instagram for his posts.
It wasn’t the first time or place musician Richard Cowie has found himself in trouble for his racism.
His antisemitic comments are under investigation by British Police, and he was already suspended once from Twitter — now he’s banned there too, as of today, just a few hours before Tisha B’Av, arguably one of the grimmest days in the Hebrew calendar.
Just prior to the ban, Wiley made sure to slip into his Facebook page to post a vituperative stream of hate aimed at the Jewish People. Unmoved, Facebook simply removed the hateful post, and his account.
“There is no place for hate speech on Facebook and Instagram, and we don’t want it on our platforms,” said a spokesperson from Facebook. “After initially placing Wiley’s accounts in a seven-day block, we have now removed both his Facebook and Instagram accounts for repeated violations of our policies.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a charity enjoying support from the full cross section of Jewish denominations in Britain that exists to research, educate about and combat antisemitism, has spent a great deal of time advocating for the removal of Wiley’s social media accounts online.
“It is a lamentable state of affairs that it takes a 48-hour global boycott of social media to convince Twitter and Facebook to take the most elementary action against someone using their platforms to call for Jews to be shot,” said Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism. “Twitter’s performance over the past few days has been beyond abysmal. Nobody makes a better case for regulation of social media than the technology companies themselves.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism and others walked out from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for 48 hours this week as part of a #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate campaign following the social media platforms’ failure to take appropriate action against racism on their websites.
