Twitter moves to take down a controversial post every time it ruffles the feathers of any prominent liberal under the pretenses of hate speech. Hell, not that long ago, they were combing through every conservative account with more than 100 followers and banning many of them under the suspect reasoning that they were clearing the site clean of Russian bots.
But what about when a man is arrested for threatening a Republican member of Congress on Twitter? Surely the site’s administrators would move quickly to scrub that idiot’s posts, would they not? Hmm, well, as of Sunday – with at least two days to work on it – they had yet to move forward with what seems like some very basic housekeeping.
Christopher McGowan of Roanoke, Virginia was arrested on Friday and charged with making interstate threats against Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).
In one of his tweets, McGowan justified his potential use of violence against the congressman, saying: “I will do this in full belief I am defending the constitution of the United States. I am not making a joke. I will kill him. Should you believe my doing so would be illegal please arrest me so we can have this discussion in court BEFORE I actually do it. Thank you.”
That tweet, written in December, earned him a visit from local police, but somehow he avoided arrest at the time. Apparently the police didn’t do a very good job putting the fear of God into McGowan, because by April, he was back on Twitter to lash out at Goodlatte for “f**king with our constitution and challenging Mueller.” He told the congressman “the last you see will be my patriot ass behind a gun you should have long ago prevented me owning pulling a trigger to your head.”
“Want me arrested?” he asked. “GO head.”
Well, federal authorities did “go head” on Friday, relieving Goodlatte and McGowan’s neighbors of someone who is clearly suffering from something a little more serious than your run-of-the-mill Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“Due to the serious potential for offline harm, we have a zero tolerance policy towards violent threats,” reads Twitter’s terms of service. “Accounts found to be posting violent threats will be permanently suspended.”
As of press time, though, McGowan’s account has not been suspended and his tweets remain visible for all to see. Perhaps that will change in the coming day or two as the publicity surrounding this bizarre exception to the rules grows, but it still won’t explain why Twitter left them up all weekend.
Perhaps the explanation lies in the ideology of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who linked to an article calling for the complete elimination of the American political right wing this week, noting to his followers that it was a “great read.”
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