The Republican Party of Texas will be deleting its account on the free-speech social media platform Gab, amid pressure from Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas GOP Vice Chair Cat Parks.
During their quarterly meeting in Laredo this past weekend, the State Republican Executive Committee voted 35-25 to delete the Texas GOP’s Gab account after much debate.
Consisting of one man and one woman from each of the state’s 31 Senate districts, the SREC is essentially the governing body of the Republican Party of Texas, meeting several times a year to do the party’s business, such as organizing the convention and passing resolutions.
Gab is an alternative social media platform that started as the result of mass censorship of conservatives and has grown in popularity after Twitter’s permanent deletion of President Donald Trump. The platform has continued to gain steam, despite Apple and Google deleting it from their app stores.
But earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott surprised Texas Republicans by lashing out against the platform, calling it “antisemitic” and saying it had “no place in Texas.”
And while at the time the party’s Vice Chair Cat Parks had called for the account to be closed, Chairman Allen West said the party would stand in support of free speech and had no plans to leave the platform.
Those in favor of the account’s deletion argued that Gab harbored those with anti-mainstream and antisemitic political views. Another argument used by those voting to delete the account was that Gab lacked a mechanism to delete comments, so if a hateful comment was written under a Texas GOP post, there would be no way to delete the comment.
Those voting against the account’s deletion, however, argued the move would be equated to bowing down to cancel culture and give the left a victory against a conservative social media platform that refuses to censor right-leaning voices.
It was also noted the Texas GOP maintains its presence on Facebook and Twitter, both platforms that regularly censor conservatives yet allow far-left, pornographic, or otherwise inappropriate content to remain and proliferate.
Here is how the members of the SREC voted on the resolution. A “yes” vote is in favor of closing the Gab account, while a “no” vote is in support of keeping the account.
