Babylon Bee editor: We refuse to bow to Twitter’s censorship of a joke – New York Post

Yesterday, Twitter suspended the account of satirical site The Babylon Bee for a post that jokingly named Rachel Levine, the transgender Assistant Secretary for Health, Man of the Year. Here, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann, co-author of The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness, explains why he isnt going to back down to the social media giants demands.

Well, it finally happened (were kind of surprised it didnt happen sooner): The Babylon Bee has been locked out of our Twitter account.

The satirical article that offended the Twitter overlords? The Babylon Bees Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine. For the simple offense of labeling a biological man a man, through a satirical headline, we have lost access to all 1.3 million of our followers on Twitter.

A world where you can state a simple biological fact and face censorship, the loss of revenue and your livelihood, and excommunication from the public square for stating truth, no matter how satirical tongue-in-cheek your tone is, is a scary one indeed. As the famous Ron Paul saying goes, Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

Boy, are we feeling that today. (Can I still say boy or will that get me banned too?)

Of course, theres some nuance here: were satire. Were comedy. The primary goal of our satire is to bring levity and laughter to our audience. The fact that a purely comedic account can get banned for a joke admittedly one thats particularly spicy in our current cultural climate should worry everyone about the health of our society. When cultural revolutions happen, the comics and entertainers are the first to be targeted by the revolutionaries. Those looking to upend our society know the power of entertainment and satire, for they use it to great effect as they spread their ideas to the next generation.

Control the comedians, control the messaging, and you control the minds of the people.

And indeed, its control over our minds that Twitter wants. They cant just delete the offending tweet and let us back in. They want us to go into our account and click the delete button ourselves. We have to bend the knee, kiss the ring, bow to the towering statue of LGBTQ politics when the trumpets play, or we stay on timeout indefinitely. We have to promise to do better, implicitly agree that calling a man a man is hate speech, and then well be allowed the right to speak on Twitters platform.

Well, were not going to do that. Were fighting back. Well do whatever we have to do to retain our integrity here. As Orwell wrote, Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

If we give that up, if we agree to succumb to their ideological madness simply to access a wider audience, were giving up our minds, the last holdout against tyranny. Well wait Twitter out, well appeal Twitters decision, well spread the message far and wide that weve been kicked out for hate speech simply for telling a joke Big Tech did not like.

Its time to take a stand, and that time is now. If we wait any longer, we may no longer have that chance. Weve been incredibly blessed at The Babylon Bee in that we have a healthy number of paying subscribers who help us keep the lights on, and were going to use that to stand firm here and do whats right. Well continue to spread our comedy and tell our jokes that communicate truth to a culture that hates truth on whatever platforms will allow us to, and were grateful for those who stand alongside us in this fight.

Read this article:
Babylon Bee editor: We refuse to bow to Twitter's censorship of a joke - New York Post