Facebook has removed campaigns ad by US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that featured a symbol of an upside-down red triangle similar to one used by Nazis to designate political prisoners, communists and others in concentration camps, The Associated Press reported.
The Anti-Defamation League said the triangle "is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps."
Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy, confirmed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday that the ads had been removed, saying Facebook does not permit symbols of hateful ideology “unless they’re put up with context or condemnation.”
“In a situation where we don’t see either of those, we don’t allow it on the platform and we remove it. That’s what we saw in this case with this ad, and anywhere that that symbol is used, we would take the same action,” Gleicher said.
Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh explained in a statement on Thursday that the inverted red triangle was a symbol used by Antifa, “so it was included in an ad about Antifa.”
“But it is ironic that it took a Trump ad to force the media to implicitly concede that Antifa is a hate group,” he added.
Trump recently announced that the US will recognize the leftist Antifa activist movement as a terrorist organization.
“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Trump tweeted, citing the rioting and arsons in major urban areas across the US, following the death of 46-year-old Minneapolis man George Floyd.