Infowars Twerp Kicked Off Twitter For Being Death-Cult Coronavirus Douche

Not even for the videos of him coughing on people, that was over on Periscope.

Infowars "reporter" Owen Shroyer has spent the last week using his verified account on Twitter and Periscope to rally people to defy Texas's stay-at-home orders and come on down to the state capitol in Austin tomorrow, April 18. Like the many other dipshits protesting stay-at-home orders across America, Shroyer's "You Can't Close America Rally" is predicated on the belief that the virus isn't actually killing as many people as the government says it is killing and that all of this is some kind of pretense to take away their other freedoms in the name of public safety.

Alas, he's going to have a little more trouble rallying people now that he has been kicked off of those platforms following a report from Media Matters about his bullshit. Back in March, Twitter announced that it would not allow people to post information that could put others at risk of contracting COVID-19 — a rule Shroyer's content clearly violated.

Content that increases the chance that someone contracts or transmits the virus, including: - Denial of expert guid… https://t.co/tiUo2eQzsE

— Twitter Safety (@Twitter Safety) 1584573776.0 

However, prior to being kicked off Twitter, Shroyer promoted his rally by scootering through the city, coughing on people.

Via Media Matters:  

Shroyer also has a verified Periscope account and filmed an hour-long livestream on April 15 in which he drove around Austin on a scooter. During his trip, Shroyer drove to several medical facilities in order to promote the right-wing conspiracy theory that coronavirus-related hospital infrastructure issues are a hoax.

After some of the 5,700 viewers of his Periscope broadcast egged on Shroyer to start coughing, he did so, in one instance apparently in the vicinity of law enforcement officers. Shroyer said, "Oh, it's the Austin Community College police right here," and then coughed on purpose.

Nice! That's ... a real nice person right there. So sad he doesn't have a Twitter account on which to promote his bullshit anymore.

Now, I would be the last to say that Owen Shroyer and indeed the entire Infowars staff can't have a death wish. They can have all the death wishes they want! I believe in freedom . If they want to rent out a Trump Hotel and all hang out there together, standing as closely to one another as they wish, coughing all over each other, more power to them. So long as they stay there. If they had their own little Ayn Rand Island that they were staying on? Same thing! I literally do not care what they do to themselves so long as they don't put other people in danger. The problem with these rallies is that they do just that — and it's not a bug, it's a feature. They don't just have a death wish for themselves, they have a death wish for other people.

The fact is, there are a lot of correlations here to the issue of guns and gun control. Shroyer and others see the country putting people's safety and their lives ahead of their "freedom" to go where they want and infect people if they want, and they worry that people will soon go "Hey! Maybe it would be nice if so many people didn't have to die in mass shootings! Maybe gun control is a good idea! Maybe when there is an obvious problem, we should do something about it instead of throwing up our hands and going 'Oh well, guess some people have to die.'"

And it would sure be nice if they did.

RightWingWatch's Jared Holt reported that Shroyer was not the only Infowars-affiliated account to get kicked off Twitter yesterday — news director Rob Dew, who once bragged that he was glad that Alex Jones promoted all of those gross conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook on account of how they stopped gun control regulation, was also banned. The site also banned "Banned Video," the site where Infowars has been posting their videos.

Both Alex Jones and Infowars have been banned from Twitter for well over a year now, but many of the rightwing conspiracy site's employees have remained. Maybe this will be the thing that gets them.

[ Media Matters ]

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