Texas Gov. Abbott Calls Gab ‘Anti-Semitic.’ Maybe He Should Tell His Own Party.

Gab isn’t having a very good time right now. 

The social media platform that brands itself as a bastion of “free speech” has been hacked twice in recent weeks. Private conversations from users have been posted online. Banks are refusing to do business with the company. And now, the governor of Texas has launched a direct attack on it.

“Anti-Semitic platforms like Gab have no place in Texas, and certainly do not represent Texas values,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a video posted on Twitter Wednesday evening showing him sitting between state representatives Phil King and Craig Goldman, and in front of an Israeli flag.

It is unclear why Abbott posted the video on Wednesday directly attacking Gab for antisemitism. In the short clip, he mentions that he supports legislation sponsored by King and Goldman, but doesn’t say what that legislation is.

On Wednesday Goldman introduced legislation related to the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Advisory Committee, but that would have no impact on Gab. Abbott, Goldman, and King did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment.

But, before the governor made such a sweeping statement, maybe someone should have told Abbott that his own party has a verified account on Gab, which has openly hosted white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and anti-Semites in recent years.

The Texas GOP launched their Gab account after the platform was implicated as a tool used to coordinate the events that led up to the Capitol insurrection on January 6.

In the weeks that followed, Gab saw an influx of users, many of them QAnon supporters, who had been banned from Twitter and Facebook for their part in the Capitol riots or for spreading QAnon conspiracies. 

The Texas GOP’s official Twitter account, which has 56,000 followers, tweeted a message on January 23 asking supporters to also follow the organization on Gab. To date, the Texas GOP Gab account has amassed over 17,700 followers and posted 79 messages.

The Texas GOP is no stranger to courting far-right movements. It adopted the QAnon-related phrase “We are the storm” as an official slogan after Allen West took over as chair of the group last August.

But whatever the impetus for Abbott’s video statement, it certainly got the attention of Gab; its CEO, Andrew Torba; and a host of right-wing personalities who frequent the hate-filled social network.

In a statement topped with a Gab version of Texas’ famous “Come and take it” unofficial flag, Torba blasted Abbott’s claims as “despicable and false.”

“There are many Jewish Gab users and customers, whose lawful speech we protect with just as much zeal as we would protect the lawful speech of any person of any faith, ethnicity, or creed,” Torba said.

He also pointed out that 800,000 Texans had visited Gab in the last 24 hours alone.

Torba flagged what he sees as Abbott’s hypocritical stance on censorship, pointing out that last week the Texas governor announced his support for a proposed new state law that would stop social networks—such as  Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—from banning users based on their “viewpoint,” specifically religious or political speech.

But what Torba fails to point out is that other platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, have specific rules against anti-Semitic content, whereas Gab allows such messages to be posted freely on its platform. Indeed, it was the anti-Semitic messages posted on Gab by the alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter that resulted in the platform being taken temporarily offline in 2018.

And little seems to have changed over the last three years. On Wednesday Mother Jones published a story based on Gab’s leaked private chats that shows Torba courted prominent anti-Semites to the site, including Daryush Valizadeh, a misogynist and anti-Semitic right-wing internet personality, and E. Michael Jones, a prominent anti-Semitic writer and publisher.

When confronted with these leaked chats by the outlet, Torba didn’t dispute them; he doubled down.

“I apologize for absolutely nothing because I did nothing wrong here,” Torba wrote in a public message on his Gab account. “I am indeed a big fan of both @rooshv and @EMichaelJones and have signed copies of their books.”