Priti Patel lashes out at Twitter and Instagram over ‘abhorrent’ anti-Semitic posts by grime star Wiley demanding to know why they took so long to take them down
- Wiley suspended by both platforms for seven days after his posts on Friday
- Ms Patel said: They should not have been able to remain (up) for so long’
- Said she had been in contact with Instagram and Twitter ‘for a full explanation’
Londoner Wiley – real name Richard Cowie – has been suspended from both platforms for seven days over posts that are currently being probed by police
Priti Patel blasted grime star Wiley today over ‘abhorrent’ anti-Semitic social media posts – and demanded to know why Twitter and Instagram took so long to remove them.
Londoner Wiley – real name Richard Cowie – has been suspended from both platforms for seven days over posts that are currently being probed by police.
Campaigners have also demanded Instagram shut down his account to prevent a ‘further outpouring of anti-Jewish venom’.
He posted a video on Friday telling Jewish people to ‘crawl out from under your little rocks’ as well as a conspiracy theory about Jews funding and creating the Klu-Klux Klan, prompting his management company to severe ties with him.
Writing on Twitter this afternoon Ms Patel said: The antisemitic posts from Wiley are abhorrent.
‘They should not have been able to remain on Twitter and Instagram for so long and I have asked them for a full explanation.
‘Social media companies must act much faster to remove such appalling hatred from their platforms.’
Writing on Twitter this afternoon Ms Patel said: The antisemitic posts from Wiley are abhorrent’
Police are investigating a series of comments made on the musician’s Instagram and Twitter accounts on Friday that led to him being banned from both for seven days.
Following Wiley’s posts, Twitter was accused of ‘ignoring anti-Semitism’ as his tweets were still visible 12 hours after they were first posted.
A number of tweets have now been removed.
On Sunday, a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said the platform had also issued the rapper with a seven-day block on his account.
Twitter previously said Wiley’s account had been temporarily locked ‘for violating our hateful conduct policy’, while Facebook said there was ‘no place for hate speech on Instagram’.
The musician’s manager John Woolf said yesterday that A-List Management had ‘cut all ties’ with the musician.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism has asked police to investigate the content and called for Wiley’s accounts to be shut down ‘to prevent further outpouring of anti-Jewish venom’.
Last night grime producer DJ Spoony joined Labour MP Jess Phillips to condemn the series of tweets, calling them ‘at best inflammatory and at worst criminal in some aspects’.