Twitter: Farrakhan Tweet Comparing Jewish People to Termites Doesn’t Violate Policies

Twitter will not suspend Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan after he wrote a tweet comparing Jewish people to termites, BuzzFeed News reports. In a tweet Tuesday, Farrakhan wrote: “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite.” The remark was accompanied by a video of Farrakhan thanking Jewish people for putting his name “all over the planet because of [their] fear” of what the Nation of Islam represents. He also called Jewish people “stupid” in the posted clip. A Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed News the platform’s new rules on “dehumanizing” tweets—including “comparing groups to animals and viruses (animalistic)”—have not yet been implemented. Therefore, Farrakhan did not breach any of Twitter’s policies. The spokesperson also reportedly did not say when the company would begin enforcing the new rules. Twitter previously refused to remove Alex Jones’ accounts until a CNN report revealed that numerous tweets from the conspiracy theorist were in violation of existing Twitter policies.