Twitter suspends Steve Bannon’s account for saying Dr. Anthony Fauci should be beheaded

TWITTER HAS SUSPENDED an account belonging to former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.

Bannon falsely claimed that Donald Trump had won the election and said he should fire both Fauci and Wray. Then he went further and said he would have them beheaded as “a warning to the federal bureaucrats.”

The comments were made during a live broadcast of Bannon’s ‘War Room: Pandemic’ online show.

The video was posted on Facebook and had been viewed more than 200,000 times before Facebook removed it. The video was also posted on Facebook Live, where it was viewed 454,000 times.

CNN reports that YouTube also removed the video for violating its policy against “incitement to violence.”

Facebook has also banned a large group called Stop the Steal that Donald Trump supporters were using to organize protests against the presidential vote recount.

Some members had called for violence, while many falsely claimed that Democrats were “stealing” elections from Republicans.

Although the group amassed more than 350,000 members before Facebook removed it, it was just one of several smaller groups that appeared as the vote counting spread out over days in various battle states.

Within the groups, members and organizers tried to ensure that they evaded moderators and Facebook “trolls” who might report or make fun of them.

“Consistent with the exceptional measures we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have eliminated the ‘Stop the Steal’ Group, which was creating real world events,” Facebook said in a statement.

“The group organized around the delegitimization of the electoral process and we saw worrying calls for violence by some members of the group.”

Facebook said it would continue to monitor activity that violates its rules and would take action if necessary.

As of yesterday afternoon, a Stop the Steal copycat group was growing steadily, approaching 13,000 members, and others were easily searchable on Facebook.

Within the groups, members organized protests and published unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud.

Calls for violence were not immediately apparent, although the Center to Counter Digital Hate (CCDH) shared a screenshot of a post in the now-banned group that read: “Neither party is going to budge. It’s time to clean the guns, it’s time to go outside. “

In the new group, administrators, who create and moderate groups on Facebook, warned people to keep posts civil and vent their frustrations without making threats. They scrupulously warned members that they would remove any posts that called for violence and said they were making plans to move the group to other, less moderate platforms.

Imran Ahmed, executive director of CCDH, which lobbied Facebook to take down the group, said that while it was true that the process of stopping those groups seemed like a game of hitting a mole, the moles were slowly learning their lesson.

“By pulling out the biggest one, he sent a message to the others,” he said.

But Ahmed said it shouldn’t be that difficult to get Facebook to take action on such a large group calling for violence.