{"id":372673,"date":"2018-08-09T06:01:56","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T05:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-if-a-maga-guy-ate-twitters-face\/"},"modified":"2018-08-09T06:01:56","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T05:01:56","slug":"what-if-a-maga-guy-ate-twitters-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-if-a-maga-guy-ate-twitters-face\/","title":{"rendered":"What if a #MAGA Guy Ate Twitter\u2019s Face?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than a few people have cited the exchange below as justification for my forever trip down the Memory Hole, my ban from Twitter. I used to be there as @wemeantwell.<\/p>\n

My bad zombie joke about #MAGA, or anything else I wrote that was flippant, is not writing I\u2019m proud of. But ask yourself if indeed what I was doing, in the words of Twitter\u2019s auto-response to me, \u201charasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence someone else\u2019s voice,\u201d or if I was just being rude and childish. Ask yourself if whatever I did means you can never read anything I\u2019ve written on Twitter over the past seven years, if it means I should never be allowed to write there again.<\/p>\n

Does it justify censorship?<\/p>\n

Before you say yes, keep in mind that Twitter allows you to block me, mute me, never see me again. That\u2019s your decision, and good for you, and good riddance to me. But censorship takes that decision out of your hands, and allows Twitter to make it on behalf of literally the entire planet.<\/p>\n

Though the \u201che called me human garbage first\u201d excuse is pretty weak, it is useful to show the context of my allegedly game-changing Tweet. I think anyone who has dipped into the sticky waters of Twitter, or lived as an adult on earth, has heard much worse. I think also my line about a MAGA guy eating someone\u2019s face can be seen by reasonable people as a rhetorical slap, not a literal invitation to zombie attack.<\/p>\n

Think of it like people saying \u201cGo kiss my ass!,\u201d or \u201cF*ck yourself.\u201d I don\u2019t think in those instances anyone expects you to contort and smooch the buttocks or to perform a unilateral sex act. There\u2019s a difference between saying \u201cGo jump in a lake\u201d to end an argument and an invitation to go swimming.<\/p>\n

But corporate censorship needs only the finest of hooks. Twitter is happy to allow calls for white genocide by New York Times editorial board member @SarahJeong, \u201cunderstanding\u201d they are not literal, while being shocked \u2013 Shocked!<\/i> \u2013 to see me invoke a scene from Fear the Walking Dead.<\/p>\n

And anyone who thinks I was banned for simply being rude on Twitter does not understand much about the point of censorship.<\/p>\n

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, <\/i>We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People<\/a>. His latest book is <\/i>Hooper\u2019s War: A Novel of WWII Japan<\/a>. Reprinted from the his blog<\/a> with permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than a few people have cited the exchange below as justification for my forever trip down the Memory Hole, my ban from Twitter. I used to be there as @wemeantwell. My bad zombie joke about #MAGA, or anything else I wrote that was flippant, is not writing I\u2019m proud of. But ask yourself if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-372673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}