Liberal Hate 101: The double standard in social media

His name is C.J. Pearson. At the age of 12, this Georgia student has racked up over a million views on the video sharing site YouTube. His video is popular because in it he criticizes His Holiness, Glorious Leader Barack Obama. Now, criticizing Barack Obama normally makes one a racist – immediately and incontrovertibly. C.J. Parsons, however, is black, so allegation of racism were perhaps not quite as swiftly hurled as they might otherwise be when the sacred cow that is Barry The One is gored.

Liberals, incidentally, love allegations of racism specifically or, more generally, hatred. They love to equate any and all criticism of them, their beliefs and the changes they wish to make within society – most of which are self-destructive and harmful – as "hatred." If they can marginalize all conservative thought as "hate," as "insensitive," as bad or wrong on its face, they can effectively silence all opinions that do not jibe with their own. That is precisely what is happening.

Well, C.J. Pearson has had his Facebook account locked for his criticism. He isn't the first. Rumors that Facebook routinely suspends conservative groups' and individuals' pages have persisted for some time now. Just recently, yet another account created by the pro-veteran website "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" was suspended by Facebook because the owner shared a meme critical of Muslims.

Across social media, conservatives are routinely shouted down, shut up, silenced, suspended and banned not because they have broken the rules, but because the opinions they hold are wrongfully deemed "hate." It's no secret that the folks who run the major social media sites – Facebook and Twitter among them – are left of center. You should not, therefore, be surprised when your own accounts are locked down. Meanwhile, left-wingers can make as many threats and post as much personal information about you as they like.

I will use myself as an example – twice. I am a conservative. As such, when it comes to online harassment, there is utterly no recourse for me when it comes to any subjective matter of content policing. While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is what it is regardless of your political affiliation (and thus when my content is stolen online I can sometimes seek legal redress), most of the time when I am threatened, harassed, or otherwise treated on social media in ways that violate those platforms' terms of service, there is nothing I can do.

TRENDING: Thongs in the U.S. Senate

Previously, I have written about an unctuous little liberal troll who, like so many of his ilk, spends all of his time on social media attacking conservatives. The fact that people like this fellow often have bizarre personal proclivities (which they happily share online) is not as irrelevant as it first might seem. Most far-left radicals, most of the lefties who spend their days obsessing over the fact that conservatives exist and refuse to shut up, are themselves freaks of one kind or another. Freaks hate to be judged. They hate it when you tell them you disapprove. To a hyper-political freak, the lack of affirmation is an act of deliberate hatred. It is no longer withholding your approval; it is, in the minds of social media operatives like this, an active affront to them.

As a result, it is nearly impossible for me to use social media without cretins like this chiming in. I am by no means alone. Conservatives, especially politically vocal conservatives, must contend with nasty comments all the time. Female conservatives also get plentiful rape threats. The army of liberal trolls runs the show – and they know management supports them, not us.

Whenever a conservative dares to speak to one of these creatures, he runs the risk of having his own account shut down. I have watched with a kind of fascinated horror as one liberal troll, whose Twitter timeline is exclusively devoted to hating a single person (me), has reported at least half a dozen accounts of people who dared to criticize him. Every one of those critics has been suspended for comments that in no way violate Twitter's user guidelines. Yet the troll, because he is a liberal, remains. Every time I report his harassment, I am told (even though Twitter claims to be taking a harder line toward harassing behavior) that they can find no violation of their community standards. They have stopped even acknowledging the reports.

Just last week on Twitter, I shared a blog post by an independent author of whom I'd never heard. That author became very offended that I did so – probably because I pointed out, in sharing his blog post about the mistakes independent authors make, that the paperback copy of his own book ironically does not hold a high ranking. He took to his blog and then to Facebook and Twitter to ask, with abundant profanity, who I thought I was, before proceeding to attack me in every conceivable way short of soliciting my murder. The reason? Well, the author is a liberal and a "social justice" whiner who hates conservatives. In his mind, that is enough to justify elaborately condemning me, anyone I care about, the guy who painted my house once and anyone who may have once walked past me on the street. Predictably, nothing about his post "violates Facebook's community standards." Imagine that.

Mind you, I am not complaining. You can't be a politically active libertarian or conservative if liberal hatred upsets you. I have lost no sleep over this. I have not had my own accounts suspended, nor have I had any of my posts censored. But I have watched for month after month, year after year, as political liberals are able to get away with behavior that would swiftly earn a suspension or ban for anyone who believes as I do. That includes you, if you are reading this.

This double standard is part of the social media landscape. If you are a conservative and you wish to express your political beliefs online, you must understand that you, too, face this uphill battle. You should still express what you believe. Just don't be surprised when the rules that apply to you don't necessarily apply to everyone.

Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].