The Patriot Post® · Facebook and Instagram Censor a Gold Star Mom

Last year, in the run-up to the presidential election, we at The Patriot Post saw the bottom fall out of our social media readership statistics. It happened virtually overnight, from one day to the next, as if Facebook had thrown a switch. And that’s essentially what they did, thereby reducing our reach, and the reach of other conservative publications on social media.

Suppressing the speech of one’s political opponents is both vile and cowardly, but at least it’s understandable. Censorship, in fact, is now leftists’ weapon of choice whenever they’re afraid of losing the argument. Or, if you’re a sitting president, it’s impeachment and censorship.

But censoring a grieving Gold Star mom? A Marine Corps mother whose young son was just ripped away from her in a Kabul bomb blast? All because she had some harsh things to say about the conduct of our nation’s commander-in-chief?

Censorship like that is a special kind of despicable.

We’re looking at you, Facebook.

The victim here was Shana Chappell, whose son, Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui, was killed by a suicide bomber outside Hamid Karzai International Airport one week ago today. As the Washington Free Beacon reports:

In a post deleted by Facebook, Chappell claims that Biden interrupted her as she tried to speak to him about her son at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the dignified transfer of the service members’ remains took place on Sunday. “You then rolled your f**king eyes in your head like you were annoyed with me,” Chappell wrote, “and you threw your hand up behind you as you walked away from me like you were saying ‘ok whatever.’” That post was restored by Facebook, but another remains restricted.

Chappell also criticized Biden for being distracted during the ceremony, saying she watched the president “disrespect us all five different times” by checking his watch.

Chappell says that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, began deleting her old posts and warned that they’d delete her account if she continued posting. Caught red-handed, Facebook now claims that Chappell’s posts didn’t violate the site’s policies, and that her account was “incorrectly deleted.”

Yeah, right.

Shana Chappell violated an unwritten Facebook policy: She tried to hold a Democrat president accountable for his actions, and her comment began to trend.

“It seems Instagram took it upon themselves to delete my account” she wrote on Facebook next to a screenshot of her deleted Instagram post, “because I gained so many followers over my son’s death due to Biden’s negligence, ignorance and him being a traitor! I’m gonna assume that Facebook is gonna delete me next! Funny how these leftist one sided pieces of crap don’t want the truth to come out!”

Shana Chappell is indeed a Marine Corps mom, and she’s gotten the attention of at least one other such mom, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York, whose son Trey is a 2013 U.S. Naval Academy graduate and now serves as a captain in the Corps. As the Free Beacon reports, “Tenney is calling on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri to explain why the social media sites removed posts by Shana Chappell that criticized Biden for the debacle in Afghanistan and his allegedly callous behavior at the transfer of her son’s remains.”

We’ll see if anything comes of this. And, in the meantime, we’d ask that Tenney and her Republican colleagues continue to press for the reading of the names of the 13 fallen warriors in Congress, a measure that has, to this point, been disgracefully censored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

As Congressman Brian Mast, a combat veteran who was himself seriously wounded in Afghanistan, said: “We gaveled in, had a prayer, said the Pledge of Allegiance, took a moment of silence with pretty much all Republican veterans, then asked to be recognized to read names and bring up Afghanistan legislation. They did not acknowledge us, and just closed the House down.”

Whether it’s soon-to-be-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the Democrat lickspittles who run Big Tech social media platforms, the Left is trying to do everything possible to keep the American people from focusing on and thinking about the disaster of Afghanistan. We have a hunch, though, that the American people aren’t inclined to forget this particular outrage.