I’m a fan of just about everything Michael C. Moynihan writes. Which isn’t to say I agree with everything he writes, just that even the stuff I disagree with is brilliantly written. If you haven’t read his entry on Georgia’s Stalin museum you’re truly missing out. Today he again fails to disappoint.

I hadn’t been following the story, but apparently some psychotic British guy named Raoul Moat killed and wounded multiple individuals after his release from prison in early July. A group of armed police officers surrounded him in Rothbury and tried to negotiate with him to give himself up. In the end, however, he committed suicide.

Normally that would be the end of the story. But in this case the story has only begun.

You see, Moat seems to have gained a bit of a posthumous fan base that includes a Facebook page established by a waste of oxygen known as Siobhan O’Dowd. The page has 35,000 fans, while shrines have been established for the murderer outside of his home and at the location of his eventual suicide.

Anyhoo, Prime Minister David Cameron was so appalled by this show of support for Moat that he called on Facebook to remove the page. The company refused:

When pressured by members of Cameron’s government to remove the group, Facebook did the right thing, arguing that while some might find the group and many of the comments left on the page offensive, the website “is a place where people can express their views and discuss things in an open way as they can and do in many other places, and as such we sometimes find people discussing topics others may find distasteful, however that is not a reason in itself to stop a debate from happening.”

Normally the response would earn applause from pro-freedom types, particularly libertarians. But Facebook’s executives aren’t dedicated warriors for free speech; they’re hypocrites.

As Moynihan points out, the same social networking site pretty quickly bowed to pressure from the Pakistani government to remove a profile considered offensive to Muslims. From back in May:

LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, a top information technology official said.

The move came almost two weeks after Pakistan imposed the ban amid anger over a page that encouraged users to post images of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.
“In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL,” said Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan’s information technology ministry, referring to the technical term for a Web page.

Facebook assured the Pakistani government that “nothing of this sort will happen in the future,” Malik said.

In short, the same Facebook that refuses to take down the disgusting Moat tribute not only folded to the threats of Islamists but promised an Islamist government that it would never again tolerate pages considered offensive to Muslims.

It’s not that Facebook is a defender of free speech, it’s that the company fears Islamist threats while ignoring the peaceful requests of non-Muslim leaders. The hypocrisy is staggering and yet not surprising.