Facebook’s suspension of Donald Trump is not a free speech issue

The fact is that social media censorship overwhelmingly targets the left, not the right. Last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that the company censors the World Socialist Web Site, and the WSWS remains buried in search results for “socialism,” “socialist,” “Trotskyism,” and “class struggle,” despite being universally recognized as the most comprehensive authority on these issues.

For months, Facebook blocked the sharing of a WSWS article opposing the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was a Chinese-made bioweapon, and anyone who attempted to share the article was either warned or suspended. Leading members of the WorldSocialist Web Site editorial board—including US managing editor Niles Niemuth—have been suspended from Facebook entirely without cause.

Greenwald and his co-thinkers, while condemning Facebook’s supposed violation of Trump’s free speech, have made no mention of the ongoing censorship of the World Socialist Web Site. In fact, in November, Chris Hedges bluntly refused, in response to an appeal by WSWS international editorial board Chairman David North, to make a statement opposing the suspension of the Twitter account of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), claiming he was too busy.

Too busy for a Tweet?! Glenn’s a lost cause, as far as I’m concerned (So is Jimmy).