Russian dissident Alexei Navalny offered a lengthy denunciation of Twitter’s decision to permanently ban President Trump saying that it appeared to be “based on emotions and personal political preferences.”
Navalny, a ferocious Kremlin critic, only narrowly survived after he was poisoned in August with the nerve agent Novichok by agents of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He spent more than a month in recovery at a Germany hospital in Berlin.
“I think that the ban of Donald Trump on Twitter is an unacceptable act of censorship,” Navalny said in an 11 part Twitter thread. “Don’t tell me he was banned for violating Twitter rules. I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone (not that I ask for it).”
“Of course, Twitter is a private company,” Navalny continued “But we have seen many examples in Russian and China of such private companies becoming the state’s best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.”
The freedom fighter warned that authoritarian nations would look at the decision by Twitter and use it to justify similar crackdowns of dissenting voices in their own countries.
Trump was banned for good late Friday evening after inciting a riot on Capitol Hill, which left at least five dead. He vowed to fight back in a statement that same night, suggesting he might join a new social media platform or start his own.
“I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!” he said.