Banning Alex Jones from Facebook is not the same as the Holocaust: a headline I never thought I'd have to write

The remaining alt-right pundits of Twitter would like you to know that being kicked off Facebook and Instagram is the same as the Holocaust. As a Jew, I am here to tell you that being kicked off Twitter is not the same as the Holocaust, not even a little.

Yesterday, Facebook — after years and years of being a hotbed of fake news and conspiracy theories — finally banned Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Louis Farrakhan, among others, which it categorized as “dangerous individuals”. Yesterday was also Holocaust Martyrs Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah. Members of the far-right were extremely excited to use this incredibly f**ked-up coincidence to achieve peak whataboutism.

The “polymaths” at Tucker Carlson’s right-leaning news site The Daily Caller immediately named it the “day of the long knives” because losing your Instagram page is basically the same as being murdered.

Members of the far right were so incredibly thrilled to finally have an “oppressive” thing to be oppressed about that they practically fell over themselves to proclaim it. The narrative of the “oppressed conservative” is a trope that dates back to the good old days of Richard Milhous Nixon, perhaps even before. This group of privileged white people have had an extremely difficult time keeping up with actual oppressed minorities and so they can often be found scouring the globe, looking for things to be offended by. Luckily for them, Facebook delivered just what the doctor ordered in the form of kicking off the really, really bad actors. Shortly after the ban, Twitter was on fire with deeply self-pitying hot takes by everyone from Ben Shapiro to Glenn Beck crying out against what they considered to be prejudice and censorship.

I would like to take a second right here to point out that Alex Jones is not just some right-wing pundit who is wrong about family leave or healthcare or voter rights. No, Alex Jones is famous for the following insane, outrageous, dangerous conspiratorial lies: the government is weaponizing the weather; chemicals are making frogs gay; Sandy Hook was staged and the murdered children were actually “crisis actors”; and, of course, everyone’s favorite: Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizza shop on Connecticut Avenue. And let’s not forget how Alex Jones and Jerome Corsi tortured the family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich for months and months.

Alex Jones is not a normal pundit, not even a little. But back to poor, sad, oppressed right-wing pundits who were so oppressed they forgot how antisemitic it is to compare online de-platforming to genocide.

The right is so addicted to outrage that they also became furious with a tweet from the Washington Post which referred to Louis Farrakhan a far right figure. The newspaper later issued a correction, which I guess is how you know that the Washington Post isn’t a “conservative news outlet”. After all, a conservative news outlet would have just doubled down.

No one called any of their comparisons between the Holocaust and the Facebook bans antisemitism — so I will. Being de-platformed on social media is not the same as being hunted in your home, thrown into the back of a truck, put in a train car and sent to a death camp.

No one is sending Laura Loomer to a death camp. No one is ripping Milo’s children from his breast and murdering them. No one is sending Alex Jones to the ovens. No one is murdering anyone; Facebook is just finally telling people it’s not OK to grift the olds with fake news.

It’s sad and my heart breaks for poor Laura Loomer in particular, who will no longer be able to livestream her experience stalking representative Ilhan Omar round Minnesota. But I've been told by one Donald J Trump that employment is at its highest numbers ever — and so perhaps some of these alt-right grifters will be able to get jobs.