SPLC Responds to Twitter Promoting Far Right Extremist Well-Known for White Supremacist Ties

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Susan Corke, Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project released the following statement on Twitter’s active promotion of far right extremist Jack Posobiec, who is well-known for collaborating with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites and littering Twitter with disinformation. Amid intense public interest in the proceedings, Twitter recommended Posobiec’s commentary about former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
 
“Actively promoting someone like Jack Posobiec, well-known for collaborating with neo-Nazis, spreads dangerous conspiracy disinformation and uses Twitter to promote white nationalists. This action by Twitter to intentionally promote Posobiec’s views is unconscionable, end of story. 
 
“SPLC’s Hatewatch investigative team has monitored how Twitter has knowingly helped fuel the rise of white nationalists. At this point, this is not negligence on Twitter’s part, they are actively complicit.  They are openly profiting off of hatred and lies at a fraught moment in our country’s history. Unless they change course, Twitter must accept their responsibility for poisoning the information space. 
 
“We urge them to follow their own Hateful Conduct Policy and prevent people like Posobiec from polluting its site with white nationalism.”
 
Hatewatch has published a series of stories about Jack Posobiec, highlighting the degree to which he has used the site to mislead people about his credentials as a media figure, spread disinformation, target people with harassment and promote a hard right, racist ideology. Some examples include:
Posobiec held a sign that read “Blacks Are Superpredators” outside of the opening of the African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C., in September 2016 and promoted a livestream of the event to Twitter.
 
Posobiec used Twitter to post Periscope videos mocking the Holocaust.
 
Posobiec used Twitter to single out Jewish reporters or media figures with antisemitic hate at least three times.
 
Posobiec posted tweets appearing to endorse white vigilantism in response to antiracist demonstrations in June 2020.
 
In April 2017, Posobiec amplified for his Twitter followers an event staged by the modern iteration of a Polish neo-fascist political movement that in the 1930s bombed Jewish homes.
 
Posobiec served as the central figure in spreading the Russian intelligence-led #MacronLeaks hack intended to disrupt the 2017 French elections and used Twitter to do it.
At that time, even after being presented with documentation of his past tweets that would violate its terms of service, Twitter told Senior SPLC Investigative Reporter Michael Edison Hayden that Posobiec was not “currently” in violation of its policies.