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Racist
words should be banned from Twitter, says a UK Labour MP who was a victim of
anti-Semitic abuse online.
Luciana Berger, Shadow Minister for Public
Health, urged the microblogging site to do more to stop abuse and to ban racist
words, such as such as “kike,”
a derogatory and anti-Semitic term for Jews “which
can never be used in a positive way.”
Berger
was a victim of server trolling abuse.
“At
the height of the abuse, the police said I was the subject of 2,500 hate
messages in the space of three days using the hashtag ‘FilthyJewBitch’,”
she said in an interview with The Telegraph.
“Online
hate needs to be taken as seriously as offline hate – but it isn’t. Twitter’s
response isn’t good enough. It has a responsibility to do more to protect its
users.
“The
site is letting me and many others down who have been the subject of lots of
hate. It could start by automatically banning racist words which aren’t allowed
to be printed in newspapers or broadcast on TV that could never be used in a
positive way – such as kike.”
The
MP for Liverpool Wavertree revealed the abuse had forced her to increase
security at her home.
“I
now have a different alarm system, shatterproof film on my windows, CCTV
cameras and a bomb bag at the back of my post boxes … The whole episode has
shocked and surprised me. I now always travel with someone,”
she said.
In October, the internet
troll Garron Helm, 21, was jailed for sending Berger anti-Semitic tweets,
including a picture of Berger with a Nazi yellow Star of David on her forehead
featuring the hashtag “Hitler was right.”
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