When a plethora of anti-identity-politics satire accounts are taken down within days of each other, can it really be chalked up to a mistake? Throughout the past few days, Twitter has taken down several accounts that tend to mock the oppressiveness of woke culture by pretending to espouse extreme versions of leftist ideology.
Among the purge was the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site that often mocks leftist politicians and the woke mob. Their account was reinstated within hours. Twitter claimed the Bee was inadvertently caught in a spam filter, and that their temporary takedown had nothing to do with politics. However, the timing of the Bee’s suspension is absurdly suspicious.
We are back. Twitter destroyed our headquarters with a drone strike, but we are being assured it was an honest mistake.
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 17, 2020
This is far from the first time the Babylon Bee has been targeted by online censors. Last year, they went up against the fact-checking site Snopes.com, who attempted to label the site as misinformation and accused them of spreading lies, missing the point of satire completely. While a fact-checking site would normally not cause too much worry, Snopes was partnered with Facebook, so their label of “fake news” can prevent content from being seen and could lead to deplatforming from a huge avenue for reaching audiences.
Among the crowd of anti-woke satirists whose accounts were restricted is Titania McGrath, whose removal last week kicked off the purge. The account poses as a mildly exaggerated version of a woke white woman. Her faux outrage over seemingly innocuous topics has an unsettling yet humorous tendency to predict where the mob will travel next. She has regularly been restricted by Twitter for comments that are suspiciously similar to fully serious posts by the more aggressive members of the online leftist mob.
Her creator, Andrew Doyle, has kept fans updated throughout the restriction, while also calling attention to the plethora of other accounts that were not only restricted but suspended, which means not only can the person not tweet, but no one can see any of the person’s old content until the ban is lifted.
Titania McGrath was reinstated yesterday evening, but many other satire accounts are still removed, with no news when or if they’ll be allowed back on Twitter. Titania was banned for a thread criticizing medicine and science as oppressive, a clear parody of both the idea that science is sexist and racist and the recent trend of opinion pieces claiming some popular thing is horribly offensive due to tenuous logic and loosely related ideas.
It’s disappointing to see accounts mocking the insanity of current times be banned when accounts parroting the same ideas earnestly are given free rein. The double standard applied when you go up against the woke mob is frightening and apparent.
