This crackdown against anarchists comes in the context of the largest uprising against police violence in the United States in a generation. United States President Donald Trump has blamed the African-American mass movement against police violence on “anarchists”, and has made repeated calls for anti-fascist activism to be designated a “terrorist organisation”. The US President, conservative politicians and right-wing media have been howling about the level of opposition to their politics expressed on popular social media platforms.
Facebook justifies their crackdown by comparing anarchists and anti-fascists to “US-based militia organizations and QAnon”, and states that anarchists on Facebook “while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts”.
Meanwhile Facebook has left posts by the US President that encouraged violence against Black Lives Matter protestors untouched, despite explicit policies against hate speech and calls for violence.
Pages, groups and personal Facebook accounts associated with US based news platform It’s Going Down, and anarchist publisher Crimethinc have already been deleted (along with musician MC Sole, Truthout writer Chris Steel, and a European news source, Enough is Enough, to name just a few). Facebook’s policy announcement states that they will delete anarchist pages “when they discuss potential violence”, and otherwise limit search results, censor recommendations, restrict newsfeed reach and censor hashtags associated with “these organizations and movements” on Facebook and Instagram.