David Kurten, the leader of the Heritage Party and candidate for Mayor of London, has been banned by Facebook for 1 week for criticising the experimental coronavirus vaccine and lockdowns. Kurten was banned only one day after the Big Tech platform’s ban on President Trump was upheld.
Kurten revealed on Twitter that on Thursday, the day of the elections for the London Mayor and Assembly, he had been suspended for 7 days from Facebook. The Heritage Party leader posted on Twitter a screenshot noting that 5 of his previous Facebook posts, including some dating back all the way to October last year, allegedly fell foul of the Big Tech platform’s community standards.
I have been given a 7 day ban from posting on Facebook on the day of the London Mayor and Assembly Elections. This is an outrage and an attack on free speech and democracy. pic.twitter.com/Kr6g7Wi931
— David Kurten (@davidkurten) May 6, 2021
Speaking exclusively to National File, Kurten noted that while Facebook did not inform him of which posts had been removed, he was able to see that one recent video upload had been taken down, where he railed against the coronavirus lockdown, and criticized the vaccines being handed out to every citizen for being created with experimental mRNA technology. “We’ve all been kept atomized, away from people in our homes,” Kurten said in the video. “The government has been an abuser.”
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“It is an outrage that I have been banned from posting on Facebook for 7 days on the day of the London Mayor and Assembly election in which I am a candidate and a sitting member of the London Assembly who is defending my seat,” said Kurten. The Heritage Party leader described the action taken by Facebook against him as a “brazen attack on free speech and democracy by Big Tech”:
I often set out my political opinions on social media and have not said anything today that untrue or that I haven’t said many times before. I am opposed to lockdowns which are disproportionate and destructive to small businesses and civil liberties, and I do not agree with implementing ‘vaccine passports’ to coerce people to take injections of experimental mRNA or chimp virus whose manufacturers have no liability if there are deaths or adverse health effects. These are legitimate political opinions which should not be censored in what is supposed to be a free and democratic society.
Kurten’s suspension from Facebook makes him the most prominent British politician to have been censored on the Big Tech platform, and comes only one day after the Oversight Board for the company upheld their indefinite suspension of President Trump. While the suspension overall was upheld, the board decided that Facebook had applied the rules “without clear standards,” and gave the site 6 months to come up with a decision that was “consistent with rules applied to other users.”
Last week, Florida passed legislation that would result in fines for social media companies that banned or restricted the posts of politicians running in the state. While yet to be signed by Governor DeSantis, the decision by Facebook to suspend Kurten would have resulted in a fine of as much as $250,000 per day if he was a candidate in Florida when this bill is active. National File reported that America First activists had criticized the bills for being too weak, encouraging further amendments to strengthen the legislation.