Libertarians have clashed online over a tweet appearing to glorify the assassination of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The official account for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire wrote in a now deleted post on X, formerly Twitter: “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American Hero.”
The tweet was replying to a post about toning down threatening rhetoric and came hours after the apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested and charged with gun offenses after fleeing the scene.
Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee posted a condemnation of the post, writing on X: “I 100% condemn the statement from LPNH regarding Kamala Harris. It is abhorrent and should never have been posted.”
But the local branch snapped back at the party leader, writing “F*** off and read any book on libertarianism, you infiltrating leftist f****t.”
The party had deleted the post, writing in a later post “we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to.”
Screenshot of the now deleted post.
X.com
“It’s a shame that even on a ‘free speech’ website that libertarians cannot speak freely. Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.”
Newsweek has contacted Harris’s campaign, and X via email and Oliver via online form.
X’s terms of service define violent conduct as “content that threatens, incites, glorifies, or expresses desire for violence or harm.”
It states that “explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, or expressing desire for violence is not allowed.“
Kamala Harris at a North Carolina event, and inset, a Don’t Tread On Me or Gadsden flag often used by Libertarians. The official account for the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire called for the assassination of the vice president, in a now deleted post on X.
Nell Redmond and Hunter Martin/ASSOCIATED PRESS
One of the page owners, Jeremy Kauffman, was visited by two FBI agents who wanted to question him about the post but the agents left his home after he refused.
Kauffman filmed the agents in the street in a confrontational manner after they asked politely not to be broadcast or be publicly identified and stated they just wanted to talk to him.
Asking Kauffman for comment and whether it was right or in the public interest for him to continue to film the encounter with the FBI, he said, “any news publication that would ask whether it’s in the ‘public interest’ to record law enforcement officers who refuse to state their names is too far gone to respond to at length. Think about what you’ve become, and be better.”
Newsweek has contacted the FBI via telephone for comment.
The New Hampshire Libertarian Party account later posted a statement outlining its reasoning for the post, and denying that the post was advocating the assassination of Harris, but merely describing how the account moderators would respond if she were assassinated.
A claim by the New Hampshire Libertarian Party that X is oppressing its free speech is one of many recent claims by right-leaning figures that social media companies have “censored” conservative voices.
Under the ownership of Elon Musk, X has marketed itself as a pro-free speech social media platform, but as a private company, it can set its own terms of service, and can demote, promote, or remove any post it chooses to.
The recent Supreme Court Ruling NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton clarified that the right of social media companies to moderate content on their own properties is protected by the First Amendment.
