Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz said Big Tech’s actions last week against right-wing voices will not “calm the waters” in the country after deadly Capitol riots.
“Those of us on the conservative side of the corridor who have lost tens of thousands of followers, this suppression at the same time is not a recipe for unity,” the former Utah congressman told America’s Newsroom. “This is not going to calm the waters and take the air out of this balloon for a peaceful transfer of power on the 20th.”
Since a pro-Trump crowd stormed the Capitol building on Wednesday, resulting in the deaths of at least five people, Twitter has permanently suspended President Trump’s Twitter account and social media site Parler went down on Monday after Amazon Web Services’ decision to suspend it from its cloud hosting service.
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Google also announced on Friday that it would suspend Parler’s listing on its Play Store due to a failure to moderate “shocking content” posted by users related to violence on Capitol Hill.
Critics criticized Twitter for cleaning up conservative accounts without doing anything to people like left-wing comedian Kathy Griffin, who repeatedly posted a photo of her holding Trump’s severed head. The same gesture in 2017 resulted in a significant reaction to his career.
“There is no way for these social media companies to look someone in the eye and say that they did it both ways,” he said. “It is this uneven application of justice in this country, the uneven application of how social media platforms have done this, that only infuriates people and makes the situation worse.”
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Chaffetz also criticized the media coverage of Capitol riots promoted by fervent Trump supporters, saying he had shown a clear double standard in excusing leftist violence last summer related to the Black Lives Matter protests.
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“Hypocrisy is just driving people crazy,” he said. “Throughout the spring and summer, until the fall, you saw riots, looting and people destroying federal property. There are those of us on the right, conservatives, who said this was wrong … Meanwhile [Vice President-elect] Kamala Harris bailing people out of prison to get them back on the streets as soon as possible, defending bail without money and the media not reporting it … It’s really infuriating. “
Joshua Q. Nelson from Fox News contributed to this report.