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September 22, 2016

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds Twitter account suspended (update: restored)

By Rick Moran

One of the biggest bloggers on the conservative web had his Twitter account suspended.  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit believes it's because of this tweet:

The tweet suggested that drivers who were trapped by Charlotte protesters who were blocking the interstate run over the thugs because people were literally trapped in their cars as the riot broke out.

Reynolds explains:

Sorry, blocking the interstate is dangerous, and trapping people in their cars and surrounding them is a threat. Driving on is self-preservation, especially when we’ve had mobs destroying property and injuring and killing people. But if Twitter doesn’t like me, I’m happy to stop providing them with free content.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Was just on Hugh Hewitt talking about this. Since Twitter won’t let me respond to — or even see — my critics, let me expand here.

I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and peaceful protest. I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years.

But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.

“Run them down” perhaps didn’t capture this fully, but it’s Twitter, where character limits stand in the way of nuance.

Meanwhile, regarding Twitter: I don’t even know that this is why I was suspended, as I’ve heard nothing from Twitter at all. They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other.

Twitter can do without me, as I can certainly do without Twitter.

One tweet sums up the idiocy of this action by Twitter:

The far left radicalism of social media in general will be the death of them.  For years, Twitter has overpromised everything from earnings to the number of members.  One shareholder is actually suing the company for lying.  Facebook has already been outed as anti-conservative.  Other social media sites are dominated by the left.

Sharing your grandmother's oatmeal cookie recipe is one thing.  But when it comes to politics, sharing ideas should be as open and uncensored as possible.  Advocating self-defense against protesters who might attack your car and kill you is hardly cause to be banned.  But it goes against the "protest" narrative that doesn't include violent thugs in racially motivated attacks.

Update:

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