How is it that a man who has banned 83 million people from Twitter can freely use the platform to post his messages denigrating women and supporting the brutal attack on the writer Salman Rushdie? I'm referring to the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose government is killing young women who want to be able to show their hair in public.
For several years, the Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad has been calling for Ayatollah Khamenei to be banned from Twitter. Opposition to him does indeed require courage, as is evident from the attack on Rushdie last August, which can be traced to the 1989 fatwa issued by his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, condemning Rushdie to death for blasphemy.
Now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, the campaign to ban Ayatollah Khamenei is seeking to influence him. In a recent letter directed to Twitter's advertisers, Mr Musk wrote that he acquired Twitter because "it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence." Otherwise, Mr Musk warns, the opportunity for dialogue on social media will split into "far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society."
