On Thursday, Erin Cruz, the Republican running to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the U.S. Senate, said that all of her Facebook accounts — including her Senate campaign account — was banned and removed by the social media giant recently dubbed “Iron FistBook” by political cartoonist A.F. Branco.
Cruz said in an online video the excuse they used was a years-old post critical of Islamists.
Here’s the video she posted:
Erin CRUZ for US Senate banned from Facebook. Fight back https://t.co/mNmnXtnBIB https://t.co/Mw2Wqfshbv
— CRUZ FOR THE PEOPLE (CA-36) (@RealErinCruz) April 26, 2018
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
She later said that the social media company would ban her for just one more day:
They (FB) says I will be blocked 1 more day…. and when on a whim they want to do this again… is that ok? NO! Can they… if they think they can—they will— WE MUST FIGHT#FacebookFail #ElectionDay is coming just 5 weeks out! https://t.co/0anra1jb1U pic.twitter.com/BAFjIVsQ49
— CRUZ FOR THE PEOPLE (CA-36) (@RealErinCruz) April 27, 2018
News of her ban didn’t sit too well with many:
We need to flood FB with complaints as to how @RealErinCruz violated FB's policies. We are not going to be doormats for Democrats just because they don't have a credible platform to run on ? https://t.co/YMunCSz25C
— LadyJustice (@FreedomNTheUSA) April 27, 2018
https://twitter.com/andrewmatt/status/989685065289383937
Facebook is truly against First Amendment Rights!! I just left a post on my page about their blocking Erin. Wonder how long before I get a notice that I'm in violation? ?
— Deb Root-White?? (@Nimuedreamer) April 27, 2018
Candidates for public office need an uncensored venue for expressing their platform. People deserve to hear what the candidates have to say!#FreeSpeech#Censored
— Rochelle Swanson (@SwansonFineArts) April 27, 2018
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this happening. One of our contributors has been banned multiple times over comments made, in some cases, over three years ago. What seemed to have triggered the ban was the use of the slang term, “muzzie.”
One person suggested:
Hopefully, after you win, you will take on social media, Twitter and Facebook, for their censoring of conservative voices.
— AO Kay ❌ (@Arleekas) April 27, 2018
That would make two Senators named Cruz not particularly thrilled with the social media site.
In an interview with Breitbart’s Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak, the Texas Republican suggested using antitrust laws against Facebook.
“By any measure, Facebook is larger and more powerful than Standard Oil was the antitrust laws broke it up. It’s larger and more power than AT&T was when antitrust laws broke it up and given that, I think we need to have serious consideration about the massive power we’re seeing of these tech companies to subvert our democratic process,” he said.
He also said that tech companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter “have power William Randolph Hearst could never have imagined. The ability, if there’s a view they dislike, simply to silence it so that if you put a post out there, if you put a tweet out there, it simply goes into the void, into oblivion, and no one sees it. Likewise, they have the ability, if there are views they want to promote, to just have everything on your feed be the views they want to promote. That is invidious. It is invisible, and it is profoundly dangerous.”
Oddly enough, the same day that Erin Cruz posted her video, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who, by the way, has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Google and Facebook, informed the world that social media censorship of conservatives is a hoax and a conspiracy theory.
It seems Zuckerberg and Company never got that memo…
We reached out to the Cruz campaign for comment but did not receive a reply at the time of this writing.
As a final note, incidents like this are what inspired yours truly to write “Banned: How Facebook Enables Militant Islamic Jihad” with American-Israeli Adina Kutnicki.
Related:
- Dem Rep. Nadler falsely claims social media censorship a ‘hoax,’ but took thousands from Google, Facebook
- Google to Christian publishing house: Remove references to Jesus, Bible in ads
- Facebook removes picture of U.S. flag, declares it ‘spam’
- Video of the Day: Watch Ted Cruz corner Mark Zuckerberg on censorship of conservatives, Diamond and Silk
- Allen West: Facebook, Google, Twitter at war with conservatives; Time to fight back
If you haven’t checked out and liked our Facebook page, please go here and do so. And be sure to check out our new MeWe page here.
If you appreciate independent conservative reports like this, please go here and support us on Patreon.
