Facebook Removes Trump Campaign Ads With Symbol Used By Nazis

Facebook announced that it has removed campaign posts and advertisements from the Trump campaign that feature an upside-down red triangle symbol once used by Nazis to identify political opponents. In the 1930s, a red inverted triangle was used to identify Communists and was also applied to Social Democrats, Liberals, Freemasons and other Nazi-incarcerated opposition party members. The badge forced on Jewish political prisoners had a yellow triangle overlaid with a red triangle to represent a Star of David.

In a statement, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said that the inverted red triangle was a symbol used by antifa so it was included in an ad about antifa. He said that the symbol is not in the Anti-Defamation League’s database of symbols of hate. The Trump campaign also argued that the symbol is an emoji. He further added that, "But it is ironic that it took a Trump ad to force the media to implicitly concede that Antifa is a hate group.”

“Either aware of history or meaning, targeting his critics is provocative and profoundly disturbing; The Trump campaign used symbol that is virtually similar to that used by the Nazi regime to identify political prisoners in the concentration camps,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. The action comes as Facebook and other technology complaints face persistent criticim, especially from Democrats, about whether they are doing enough to police the spread of Trump's perceived disinformation and tweets and posts as inflammatory.

Antifa is a term for radical activists bound more by ideology than by the structure of organisation. Trump has blamed antifa for the violence that occurred during some of the recent demonstrations but officials from federal law enforcement have provided no evidence for this.

The Trump campaign spent over $10,000 on the ads that started running on Wednesday and targeted men and women of all ages across the US, though mainly in Texas, California and Florida. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman said that, “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”