Bizarre, Free Speech

Instagram Closes Artist’s Site After Posting Clinton Parody [UPDATED]

There is an interesting free speech controversy in Melbourne and on the Internet. Melbourne street artist, Lushsux, has not only been told by a city council to remove a parody mural of Hillary Clinton but his Instagram account has been shutdown. Once again, the concern is that there remains a overt liberal bias in the sanctioning of comments or images on the Internet.  Twitter for example has been repeatedly criticized for its barring or harassing conservative writers. UPDATE:  Lushsux has responded to the city demands by painting over the picture to place Clinton in a burka.  

Lushsux had more than 100,000 Instagram followers who enjoy his paintings and images — work that extends almost two decades. He noted that “It’s fine to go on and do a mural on Trump, but when I go and do one on Hillary Clinton, my account is gone.”

Notably, there are plenty of suggestive murals splashed across Melbourne’s street-scape, including murals featuring Republican nominee Donald Trump and a topless Melania Trump emblazoned with the Mrs Clinton’s campaign catchphrase, “I’m With Her.”  Lushsux has always courted controversy with his political and social satire in street art.

The city council demanded the removal of the mural, though it insisted that it was not due to the political content but the graphic display.

Council chief executive Stephen Wall insisted “We believe it is offensive because of the depiction of a near-naked woman, not on the basis of disrespect to Hillary Clinton, in accordance with the Graffiti Prevention Act 2007.” However, the image itself does not appear particularly graphic in comparison with common advertisements and store images.

Regardless of the basis for the city council action, the Instagram action is extremely problematic and raises, again, serious questions over content-based censorship.

What do you think?

78 thoughts on “Instagram Closes Artist’s Site After Posting Clinton Parody [UPDATED]”

  1. BFM, It’s great to have you back here. Good comment. I don’t know the answer but I always hate having govt. involved. You hit these liberal media sites in their wallet. Close accounts!! Blog about it. I’ve seen the complete mural. Our prudish host cut it off. It’s really not that bad and this parody has been online for a couple years now.

    Liberalism and fascism have merged.

  2. I think that someone ought to “borrow” a brick wall at George Washington Law School and put up a mural of Hillary and Trump each having sex with their respective girl friends. And see how the law school responds. Which one will they take down first? Hillary and Monica or Donald and Monica?

  5. So a mural gets international attention and a private enterprise makes decisions as to its content.

    If “the people” of the government don’t like the action, let them decide what is permissible. Witness initiatives, referendums and recall in our country. What Aussies decide is none of my concern.

    Until enterprises’, such as Instagram, decision making are brought under governmental regulation or similar governing edicts, the private enterprise essentially exists through supply and demand. Z makes decisions much like editors of newspapers.

    To regulate private enterprise in its expression or publication is a VERYslippery slope.

    Remember the equal time political broadcasting fiasco.

    There are homeowner association regulations which are obnoxious, but I chose to live in them. We can also change the rules. Or, we can move.

  6. lol…that’s not Hillary Clinton…I just saw a video of her at some kind of religious ceremony and she looks like she is 100 years old…

  8. MSM is so in the tank for Hillary it’s beyond the pale, and they are happy to show it naked without remorse of any kind, ever.

    BBC radio on NPR is a perfect example, even worse than NPR in general. The BBC hour is one “Trump is worse than Satan/Hitler” report after another. If you’re waiting for balance, such as Hillary’s CGI crime syndicate accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign nations while she was SOS, do not hold your breath. Ditto stories of Libya pre/post Hillary, and the result of the USA’s feeding guns and cash to so-called “MODERATE” Syrian rebels to enforce another God-forsaken “regime change” in Syria, forget it, not gonna happen.

    “It’s all for the chil’un, don’t you see?…..”

  10. Did I catch that correctly?

    The artist actually put up a disparaging mural of Donald Trump and his wife, and Instragram did not make any negative comment, but when he did it to Hillary, they banned his account??

    If that isn’t a smoking gun, I don’t know what is.

  12. It’s important to note that Instagram is controlled by one man: Mark Zuckerberg. He personally controls, through (recently-expanded) special stock ownership, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He can do whatever he wants with these companies, and it will typically advance Democrat-Globalist policies that will increase his power and wealth. That Facebook Terms of Service booklet? It’s a cookbook.

  13. It has apparently had a burka added to it:

    heatst dot com/politics/hillary-clinton-mural-swimsuit-gets-burqa-makeover-after-govt-claims-its-offensive/

    (When I post a URL, my posts get spam filtered, not sure why, but these microaggressions must come to an end. El pueble unido, jamas sera vencido.)

  16. ” the Instagram action is extremely problematic and raises, again, serious questions over content-based censorship.”

    Actually, I think it raises questions of how we recognize that services, privately owned, sometimes transition to have a public interest.

    How do we regulate due process and freedom of speech on a privately held service?

    We might build an argument that these private services make use of public communication channels and therefore incur an obligation to provide minimal rights and due process.

    But, so far as I know, no one has flessed out that argument, or any other argument, of how we get from private ownership of a service to do process for users of the service.

  17. “The city council demanded the removal of the mural, though it insisted that it was not due to the political content but the graphic display.”

    Wonder what they would do with a Victoria’s Secret add?

    Stroke? Heart attack? Where are the EMTs?

  19. well,given that the powers that be are all about the TPP they cannot condone any criticism of HRC. Funny thing is though just like here the common folk were all about Bernie. Over 30,000 phonebanking calls for Bernie were placed by Aussies. They GET it just like we do. WE are the PEOPLE.

  20. Insta-sham

    No warning, just kill the speaker’s account. Content based censorship certainly.

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