I enjoyed Jehu’s blogged fragment from yesterday on Trump’s impending second impeachment. As far as Jehu is concerned, impeach him we must…
Not because he incited an insurrection, but because he is, beyond all doubt, the most popular political figure in the United States today.
Unless they impeach him, there will likely never be anyone who can beat him as nominee for President for the Republican Party. It is also likely that there will never be an uncontested presidential election again in the United States.
He must be impeached not for a crime, but because there is literally no other way to drive him out of politics.
It is as simple as that.
It is Trump as the end of history. His ultimate victory, staving off all competition, will doom us to an apparent eternity of incompetence. The argument for getting rid of Trump, then, is the same argument for getting rid of capitalism.
It makes the irony of his Capitol-storming supporters being referred to as accelerationists a tiny little bit satisfying. They were accelerationists — to the extent they were dogs chasing the speeding car of civil unrest and, to their surprise, through the constant intensification of their own rhetoric, and a free pass from a white supremacist state, they caught up with the thing they were chasing and quite literally had it within their grasp…
And then, they did nothing, only revealing their own impotence and the hollow nature of their reactionary bombast, instead taking selfies with cops and making out it was all for the lulz.
In the end, we will find that they become accelerationists in the original sense, accelerating little more than their own demise.
After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.
In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.
Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.
However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.
Originally tweeted by Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) on January 8, 2021.
Just when no one thought Twitter wouldn’t follow through either, last night they suspended Trump permanently from the platform.
The news broke whilst many of us were tuned into the Plaguepod and the resonance of Pete Wolfendale’s comments on sovereignty and the exo-self feels very prescient.
Maybe Trump losing his exo-self is actually more damaging than him losing the Presidency.
(Tune in from the one-hour mark, later interrupted by yours truly sloshing around in what was actually a very nice bath, thank you very much… Sorry, Pete…)