Federalist CEO Sean Davis was locked out of his Twitter account Tuesday night for factually reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance” following the deaths of three children and three staff members at a Christian school in Tennessee at the hands of a transgender shooter.
“The cold-blooded mass murder at a Christian school in Nashville by an apparent transgender person came just days before a planned ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network,” wrote Davis.
According to Twitter, Davis’ objectively true tweet violates the app’s rules “against violent speech.” Twitter has already deleted the tweet but informed Davis his account will remain locked until he manually deletes it as well. Davis, however, is refusing to participate in Twitter’s Orwellian re-education exercise.
“This is deliberate censorship and gaslighting designed to memory-hole the FACT that the Nashville shooter targeted and murdered Christian children and teachers just days ahead of a scheduled ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’” Davis wrote in a statement. “Twitter is lying about the facts and defaming those of us who reported on them.”
[READ: Nashville Tragedy Shows Why It Isn’t Compassionate To Fuel Mental Illness]
Davis is not the only one to be censored on Tuesday. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Daily Wire journalist Luke Rosiak were also punished for reporting on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance.”
According to Twitter’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, Twitter had to “automatically sweep our platform and remove >5000 tweets /retweets of [the ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’] poster.”
Davis didn’t share the poster with his statement, however. He linked to a Daily Wire news story about the topic that included the poster as part of its good journalism.
“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them,” Irwin continued. “‘Vengeance’ does not imply peaceful protest. Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”
How Davis’ objective reporting on a planned event was “incit[ing] violence” remains unclear. Twitter has taken a different tack against real violent threats on its website, however. On Monday, the press secretary for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs tweeted out a GIF of a woman gearing up to shoot pistols with the caption, “Us when we see transphobes,” a tweet Twitter initially allowed. Twitter later removed it from the platform, but the press secretary’s account appears still to be active.
Irwin also stated the reason the “Trans Day of Vengeance” poster wasn’t removed from Twitter earlier is that “The graphic was reported by a high number of users across our platform yesterday” thanks to “the tragic events in Nashville.”
One user asked if Irwin stopped to consider whether the “complaints” were “coming from the ‘Trans Day Of Vengeance’ supporters who didn’t want a living record of their calls for violence and vengeance after the Tennessee shooting.” Irwin did not respond.
Early Wednesday morning, Twitter rejected Davis’ appeal to reinstate his account, meaning he is permanently banned from accessing it unless he deletes the factually true tweet that Twitter already deleted.
This isn’t the only form of censorship Davis has experienced under Musk-run Twitter. Davis’ account has been heavily shadowbanned since January 2021, and CEO Elon Musk has done nothing to end the covert suppression of his account. Instead, Musk has actually embraced shadowbanning, writing that “freedom of speech” does not include “freedom of reach.”
Similarly, despite multiple appeals, The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson has been locked out of his Twitter for a full year for stating the biological fact that Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s transgender assistant secretary for health, is a man.
Tuesday’s censorship of factual reporting is yet another example of Twitter failing to live up to Musk’s bold “free speech” brand campaign and an indication that bad actors are still plaguing the app’s oppressive and partisan content-moderation team.
