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imperio59

This. Double standards all the way.

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Is there a tweet from his account that violates twitters ToS?

In this tweet he says "death to American politicians":

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1093791374204420097

He can say march on the Capitol all he wants. If a mob shows up then you can bet your ass he’ll be off the platform.

It's not so much about the words as the material consequences of those words.

That's a bad line to draw. "We're helpless to do anything until someone dies" isn't likely to draw a lot of sympathy.

Isn’t that the way laws work? You can’t prosecute someone until they’ve committed a crime. The issue here is whether the “crime” is tweeting stuff that starts an insurrection, or tweeting stuff that could be interpreted as potentially starting an insurrection.

Me telling someone to go fuck themselves probably isn’t a problem, but me telling someone with learning difficulties to go fuck themselves and them feeling compelled to do it and hurting themselves probably is a problem.

> You can’t prosecute someone until they’ve committed a crime.

technically yes, but attempting a crime is often considered a crime itself.

That seems like a great place to draw the line to me.

Oh well, there's hundreds of tweets by US politicians threatening violence against other nations (Iran or N.Korea or Syria). That's what nations do, right?

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562

"The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance."

https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263181288338587649

"We will support and assist any nation or any group anywhere who opposes and fights the Zionist regime."

Now compare that to the Trump tweets that prompted his suspension, according to the Twitter statement:

"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"

"To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."

To claim that the second set of Tweets incites violence more than the first is absurd. Yes, context matters, but it also matters for the Ayatollah tweets. When the leader of Iran advocates "armed resistance" to the state of Israel, we know exactly what that means.

Those aren’t the tweets that got Trump suspended.

He tweeted praise for the rioters and justified the riot while the riot to stop the constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power was in progress.

How are Khamenei's tweets any different from those of US politicians against Iran or other "enemy" nations? Should we apply the same standard to US politicians who have tweeted threats to Iran or supported actions aimed to the collapse of Iranian regime?

Come on, Twitter has been banning plenty of users for posting blatantly anti-Semitic dog-whistles like "the Zionist regime". It's quite clear that Khamenei is getting preferential treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

So in this case he might be technically correct in identifying the exact people he opposes... Possibly.

Iran is a bit weird, they actually have a seat of parliament reserved for a Jewish representative. See here for details of the current holder of this seat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Motamed

> Come on, Twitter has been banning plenty of users for posting blatantly anti-Semitic dog-whistles like "the Zionist regime". It's quite clear that Khamenei is getting preferential treatment.

Twitter overtly adopted rules granting high government officials this preferential treatment to justify not acting on the many complaints of Trump's flagrant violation of what were previously nominally universally applicable rules on the platform at the outset of his term.

So, yes, Khamenei gets preferential treatment compared to the average user (as did Trump); that's the overt policy.

"Zionist regime" is not an anti-semitic "dogwhistle" (trendy term used to assign words whatever meaning you like, disregarding the literal one). It's a derogatory appellative for a country. Zionism is a political ideology and Israel is a country engaged in blatant apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Isn't it just bluster on the part of the Ayatollah? Do you think it at all likely to inspire action?

Trump on the other hand has clearly demonstrated his ability to incite action.

Care to elaborate? Are they violating sanctions?

I’m not sure of any other time Twitter did the banning of it’s own volition.

But one might reasonably argue that people who don’t follow certain ideologies get reported and suspended more often.

Recall last year when the rioting was going on and Kaepernick was calling for more violence on Twitter? @Jack gave him $3m.

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