Twitter allows pro-Marxist burn priests alive hashtag to trend in Spain
Threats to burn down churches also not removed by social media platform
A hashtag calling for Catholic priests to be burned alive, which several pro-Marxist accounts started, has not been removed by Twitter despite numerous complaints.
Twitter, which has censored posts containing Christian praise and worship videos for purportedly violating its rules, has not taken any action to remove the hashtag in Spanish that says, #FuegoAlClero, which means set fire to the clergy, despite its policy that says users cannot “threaten violence against an individual or a group of people.”
The hashtag was started by pro-Marxist groups in support of a bill to reform Spain’s education system by giving control of religious instruction in public schools to the state, threatening the survival of Catholic schools, according to Crux.
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Thousands of users have complained that the hashtag will incite hatred and violates the company’s rules against “violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior,” but to no avail.
Accompanying the hashtag were calls to burn down churches, Crux added, noting that a post signed by “the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” threatened: “the only church that illuminates is the one that is in flames.”
The education bill, which is expected to become law despite a lack of support from hundreds of thousands of people, including parents and educators, is called the “Celaa Law," named after the socialist government’s minister of education, Isabel Celaa.
“In addition to its effect on religious education, the proposed law also calls for the closure of specialist schools that serve children with physical or mental disabilities in order to 'mainstream' them at the schools that serve the general population, despite strong opposition from experts and the parents of special needs children,” Crux reports.
In June, Christian worship leader and songwriter Sean Feucht called out Twitter and Instagram for censoring posts containing praise and worship videos, and for shutting down an account of Bethel Church’s Senior Pastor Beni Johnson for sharing Bible verses.
Johnson’s profile “@prayfor5” had more than 32,000 followers. In his tweet in June, Feucht included a screenshot of tweets from Johnson containing Bible verses that had been blocked with the note, “This Tweet may include sensitive content.”
Johnson’s post on Twitter carried the Bible verse Psalm 34:14, which reads, “Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, former attorney general for Missouri, retweeted Feucht’s posts blasting Big Tech over the censorship at the time. “Cancel culture meets #BigTech. Now @instagram is censoring a Christian worship leader who wants to post videos of praise and worship from places where there has recently been unrest. And that doesn’t meet ‘community standards’? Can’t wait to hear the explanation for this,” Hawley wrote.
In Spain last Sunday, tens of thousands of people in several parts of the country protested against the Celaa Law, which would also allow schools to teach sexual education and the "diversity" of sex to children as young as 6 years old, according to World Today News.
It also cuts the financing of public-private schools, run mostly by the Catholic Church.
“I want to have the freedom to choose,” said Rosa, a teacher and mother of two children in Madrid, to Euro Weekly News. “I can’t think of a better plan for this Sunday than to be here demonstrating for something as important as the freedom of our children.”
At a recent meeting of bishops, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella of Barcelona quoted Pope Francis as saying, “It’s necessary for all of us to build our nation, where the delete and start over is not permitted.”
