Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First, gestures during a march held following the recent Westminster attack, in central London, Britain April 1, 2017.
Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First, gestures during a march held following the recent Westminster attack, in central London, Britain April 1, 2017. Reuters/Peter Nicholl

Facebook has permanently banned the page of the far-right political group Britain First for posting anti-Muslim videos and hate speech. The pages of its two leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, were also removed on Wednesday.

The social media giant said that while they encourage free thinking and diverse opinions, the Britain First’s case was different. It said it was careful not to remove posts or pages just because the contents were unpopular, but the group’s posts reportedly crossed the line between legitimate political speech and hate speech designed to stir up hatred against groups.

The social network had sent the British fascist group multiple warnings after the Britain First Facebook page, as well as the pages of Golding and Fransen, repeatedly broke the website’s Community Standards. It recently gave the administrators of the pages a final written warning, but they still continued to post content violating its rules.

“As a result, in accordance with our policies, we have now removed the official Britain First Facebook Page and the Pages of the two leaders with immediate effect,” Facebook said in a statement. “We do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the Pages from our services.”

It isn’t clear what posts that had the pages banned permanently, but according to BBC, it is understood the posts included a photo of the group’s leaders with the caption, “Islamaphobic and Proud,” a caption comparing Muslim immigrants with animals, as well as multiple videos that deliberately incited hateful comments against Muslims.

Golding and Fransen’s Twitter accounts were also suspended in December. Before that, though, US President Donald Trump was able to share anti-Muslim videos from them in November.

Last week, Golding was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, while Fransen was sentenced to 36 weeks after they were found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment. They were arrested in May last year as part of an investigation into the distribution of materials and online videos that promoted the hatred of Muslims.

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