Melissa Joskow / Media Matters
Update (4/11/19): Since the publication of this article, Laura Loomer set her Instagram account @loomered to private and posted a message on her story. She stated that “everything [she] said is 100% true.”
In the past 24 hours, anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have posted videos on their Instagram stories that violate Instagram’s hate speech and bullying content policies. Last week, Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) implemented a new policy supposedly banning “praise, support and representation of white nationalism and white separatism.” But according to Vice’s online magazine Motherboard, this ban applied only to explicit mentions of white nationalism and separatism, not to content that features “implicit and coded white nationalism and white separatism.” On Instagram, this policy has resulted in prominent white nationalist accounts continuing to use the platform to sanitize and promote their bigotry.
LAURA LOOMER: I just have to say that I truly hate Ilhan Omar. I think she’s a despicable human being because how evil and deranged do you have to be to describe 9/11 as “something that some people did”? Yeah bitch, it’s something that your people did. Are you guys enjoying your first Muslim congresswoman? It’s almost as if everything I told you about this lady was completely true. She hates the Jews. She hates the gays. And she thinks that 9/11, aka an act of Islamic terrorism, is something trivial that she should just make light of -- something that we don’t need to talk about because it’s just something that some people did. Well you know what you guys, no one is going to say this on TV, because unfortunately the Muslims have totally hijacked our media institutions. And even Fox News is now putting a muzzle on their hosts and their contributors who are not allowed to speak truth about Islam. But the truth is, is that Islam is a cancer on society. Islam is a cancer on humanity, and Muslims should not be allowed to seek positions of political office in this country. It should be illegal.
Alex Jones (@real_alexjones), who has been banned from every other major social media platform (including Facebook), has posted white nationalist, anti-LGBTQ, and conspiracy theory Infowars videos on Instagram. Yesterday, Jones posted a video on his Instagram story promoting the white nationalist campaign “It’s OK to be white” that originated on message board 4chan. In the video, a man identified as part of the “Infowars army” according to text on the video keeps asking a woman if it’s “OK to be white.” As she gets visibly upset, the person behind the camera tells her to “jump off the bridge.” This call for self-harm violated Instagram’s community guidelines, which prohibit content that encourages violence and self-injury. And when the woman reveals that her family came from Mexico, the person calls her “one of the least brown-looking Mexican people [he's] ever seen.” Another Instagram handle which seems to be affiliated with Infowars also shared this video.
Alex Jones posted a video on his @Instagram story promoting the white nationalist campaign “It's OK to be white,” The man behind the camera tells a woman upset with them to “jump off the bridge” and then calls her “one of the least brown looking Mexican people [he's] ever seen.” pic.twitter.com/080FsDLDYB
— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) April 11, 2019
UNKNOWN: So jump off the bridge. The bridge is right there, she might as well just jump off.
...
UNKNOWN: Her family came from Mexico? That’s one of the least brown-looking Mexican people I’ve ever seen.