Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Facebook Will Purge Farrakhan, Alex Jones And Far-Right Pundits

Facebook will ban Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan, InfoWars’ Alex Jones and a number of far-right figureheads from their platform the social media site announced Thursday afternoon.

The figures being removed from the platform, CNN reports, were deemed “dangerous” by the website.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in a statement provided to CNN Business. “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

The other accounts being banned include far-right figures Jewish “citizen journalist” Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos and InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson. Paul Nehlen, an anti-Semitic white supremacist who ran an unsuccessful campaign for a Republican House seat in 2016 and 2018, was also scrubbed from the website.

The process at Facebook for determining if an individual or organization is “dangerous” involves a consideration of whether the individual or organization has called for violence against individuals based on race, ethnicity or national origin, a spokesperson told CNN. Facebook also considers whether the individual being looked into has used hate speech or slurs on their profiles or have been linked to a hateful ideology. The company also examines whether the person or organization has had pages or groups flagged and removed for violating Facebook’s hate speech policies.

When Facebook does decide to bar an individual or organization from their website, they sometimes restrict non-banned users from praising or voicing support for those kicked off the site, the spokesperson told CNN. This does not mean that such an action will go into effect for the banned individuals named Thursday.

Farrakhan, a controversial but much-respected leader for his role in the civil rights movement, is arguably the most high profile victim of the Facebook purge. While many have distanced themselves from him due to his history of virulently anti-Semitic, homophobic and transphobic remarks, the Nation of Islam leader often appears at significant public events and progressive leaders such as Tamika Mallory of The Women’s March have rejected calls to censure him.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.