Trolled Jewish MP Luciana Berger calls for Twitter to act swifter in cases of online abuse
A Jewish MP, who was barraged with anti-Semitic abuse on Twitter, has called for the social media network to amend its abuse safeguards to prevent such hate campaigns from being perpetrated in future.
Luciana Berger, the MP of Liverpool Wavertree
Police made ten arrests outside Luciana Berger, the MP of Liverpool Wavertree's office, on Saturday on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. The far-right activists were supporting a campaign of abuse against the MP. These individuals have been released on bail until February 2015, according to the Sunday Times.
Berger, who has over 32,000 followers on the site, received 1,000 “vile” messages, including a picture of her head imposed upon an Autswitz prisoner. Another, from Garron Helm, 21, whose arrest allegedly sparked the campaign, saw a yellow star placed upon the MP’s head supported with the hashtag ‘#Hitlerwasright’.
Following the slew of arrests, Berger called for Twitter to clamp down on trolls, she told the Sunday Times that it was “deeply regrettable that Twitter continues to host graphic, abusive, anti-Semitic messages long after they first appear".
“It is extremely worrying that they do not have the processes in place to deal with such abuse in the swift and effective manner that we expect from an online platform of such size and reach.”
The Twitter campaign crossed the Atlantic with Andrew Anglin's Ohio-based fascist website, the Daily Stormer, urging further abuse against the “Jewess Berger”.
He dubbed his call to action a "method of guerilla resistance after the Jewess had a young man named Garron Helm imprisoned for identifying her as a Jew.”
Berger's criticism of the site comes after a man was jailed for 18 months for repeated abuse towards Labour MP Stella Creasy in September.
Update – The Drum's View: The Drum removed the word ‘violence’ from this news story as we were not happy that the way it was originally used conveyed the duplicity of the Daily Stormer’s position. Despite the disclaimers on its site, we believe the word ‘violent’ is a reasonable adjective in describing the ethos, objectives and core beliefs of this repugnant group.
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