Thursday, Facebook removed an ad it deemed as “offensive” from @TeamTrump, the official Donald Trump account. The ad and post featured an upside down red triangle, a symbol that was used in Nazi Germany to mark political prisoners in concentration camps.
In the ad, targeted at Antifa, the Trump team criticized the recent rioting and looting that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem,” the ad said. “They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting – it’s absolute madness.”
The ad, featuring the offending symbol, began running on Wednesday on Trump’s main Facebook page, the “Team Trump” campaign page, and Vice-President Mike Pence’s Facebook page.
The paid ad was seen almost one million times in Facebook users’ feeds on Trump’s page alone, according to data from Facebook.
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” a Facebook rep told TheWrap. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”
Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier shared a screenshot of the deleted ad on Twitter, which you can see below:
The Auschwitz Memorial Twitter account on Thursday followed up and tweeted the red triangle “was the most common category of prisoners registered at the Germany Nazi #Auschwitz camp.”
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In a statement to CNN, Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, insisted the red triangle is a “symbol used by Antifa.” Murtaugh added, “We would note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it’s curious that they would target only this ad.”
This move by Facebook will almost surely increase tensions between the social media giant and the White House. Zuckerberg was criticized last month for not taking action on a Trump post that said “looting” leads to “shooting,” amid racial unrest across the country
