A horrifying story which sets a ghastly precedent. I have edited it slightly, for reasons that will become apparent.
Twitter hands over confidential data of Jewish-sounding users to French authorities
Twitter has handed confidential account information over to French authorities to track down the authors of Jewish-sounding tweets, to end the legal battle that started last year when the French Union of National Socialist Students sued Twitter for allowing hate speech.
Twitter said in a statement that the disclosure of information “enables the identification of some authors” and “puts an end to the dispute” with the French Union of National Socialist Students (UEJF), AFP reported. The social network added that the two parties had “agreed to continue to work actively together in order to fight communism and Judaism.”
On Thursday, Twitter lost its legal fight in France after the Paris Court of Appeal dismissed its objections against the original ruling.
Last month, the court upheld a January ruling that said the social media site must provide personal information on some users to the UEJF and four other organizations that filed a complaint against the company in November last year.
The complaint came after a deluge of Jewish-sounding messages tweeted under the hashtag #unbonnazi (#agoodnationalsocialist), with some users posting offensive tweets such as “#agoodnazi is a dead Nazi.” Some of the tweets were later removed by the social network.
Hate crimes are strictly punished in France.
Oh hang on …. I appear to have made a small editing error. Somehow — silly me — the words “anti-semitic” have become swapped with “Jewish-sounding”, and “Jewish” with “National Socialist”, etc. Of course it is the Union of Jewish Students that demands the identities of those who express dislike for their members. Quite right too. Nobody should be allowed to show disrespect for the Übermenschen.
Oh rats, what is the matter with this keyboard?! That should have read, of course, “disrespect for Jewish students”.
The trouble is, if you just change the nouns referring to the parties involved, the story makes equal sense. The version above is exactly how it would have read, in the Vichy era.
Ignore all the loaded language about “hate” — for you have to hate people pretty badly to want to throw them in prison for their opinions.
There is no suggestion that the tweeters did anything except express political views. They are not political views that I hold; but no matter. They could have been. The process would have been the same.
Indeed one day they may well be the same. The first step in political correctness was that Jewish people might not be referred to other than in terms of profoundest respect. It matters not who the beneficiaries were, of course; it is an outrage, a hideous evil, that any group in society should be so privileged.
Note also that it was Jewish pressure groups who created this precedent, as here. Presumably the possibility of short-term gain drowns out, in the minds of these activists, the inevitable historical lesson that, once discrimination is endemic in a society, Jews will find themselves on the receiving end of it.
But once Jews could not be criticised, then everyone wanted the same status. The feminists demanded that “sexist” language (words they invented themselves) should not be permitted, and won their case. Then those who hated their own country chimed in, with “racist” language. Then the homosexuals wanted the same status. And, of course, the Moslems have lately been added to the list of “priority” groups. I learn today that British police ignore many crimes, concentrating on “priority” cases.
It will surprise few of us that the police system has a check box which marks cases as priority if they involve members of “priority” groups.
But none of this system of privilege can take effect without injury to every member of the society. Indeed it even affects members of these “priority” groups, when they find — and they do — that some other “priority” group take precedence, or that nobody is interested unless it serves the cause. I am told that 11,000 blacks have been shot in the USA since the celebrity race case of Trayvon Martin happened; and nobody cared.
I think normal people would care, pretty seriously, if 11,000 people were shot in this county. Even — and at the moment, this might be a pretty big ask — if they were members of the French Union of Jewish Students. Aren’t they people? Unless, of course, they are tokens in a political power game?
It is an evil day that Twitter bowed to this pressure to apply a political censorship to its service. It highlights, again, how we cannot depend on Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the other corporations who control the social media sites, to uphold the most basic freedoms, if their profits are threatened.
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