An image claiming that Facebook had “the nerve” to remove a photo of a little boy named Timmy saluting the American flag because non-Americans find it “hateful” is spreading across the social networking website.
The image (or meme), which can be seen below, implores users to both like and share the image.
Facebook had the NERVE to remove the beloved photo “Little Timmy Salutes the Flag,” (below) because non-Americans find it “hateful”. Let’s all LIKE and SHARE to show there’s nothing hateful about AMERICA!
The image is essentially far-right propaganda and like-farming at his most brazen and worst. The meme essentially capitalises on two common techniques we encounter quite a lot social networking websites.
One, the claim that Facebook are removing an image and thus imploring users to share the image to presumably “stick it” to Facebook or show your support. This is a common like-farming technique used to make posts go viral and we discuss it here.
Two, the assertion that foreigners or religious/ethnic minorities find some traditional value of a country offensive, which is essentially far-right rhetoric and propaganda often used by far-right organisations in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Germany. Again, we discuss this in more detail here.
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This particular meme of “Timmy saluting the flag” actually gained notoriety when it was posted by a professional troll Facebook page called “Southern Baptists for Todd Kincannon” – a page that seems to specialise in posting controversial content in order to lure people into interacting with their posts. While it is unlikely that most of what they post it taken seriously by the people who post it, their posts often spark intense and heated debates, and many of their pages have actually been removed by Facebook, only for new ones to pop up (i.e. “Southern Baptists for Todd Kincannon 7“)
The meme is just a silly, time-wasting piece of nonsense. No, Facebook are not removing the photo, and no, it hasn’t garnered any complaints from “non-Americans” for being hateful.
Stop letting trolls troll you.
