Controversial online personality Graham Linehan has been permanently suspended from Twitter, the platform confirmed earlier today.
A spokesperson for Twitter issued a statement confirming the reasons behind the decision: “The account has been permanently suspended after repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation.”
Linehan, who posts using the username @Glinner, is well known for co-creating comedies such as Father Ted and The IT Crowd, though in recent years he has dedicated much of his time to having arguments on the internet.
Many of his tweets were directed at transgender people, or discussing transgender rights, and shortly before his ban he had replied “Men aren’t women tho” to the Women’s Institute, which had published a tweet wishing a happy Pride month to its transgender members.
In late 2018, West Yorkshire Police issued Linehan a “verbal harassment warning” following complaints from a trans person on Twitter who had interacted with him.
115 complaints were received by the BBC after Linehan appeared on Newsnight earlier this year to discuss what he called “parallels” between medical treatment for transgender children and the Nazi eugenics programme.
Following his suspension from Twitter, Linehan took to online forum Mumsnet with a lengthy post discussing the reasons for his ban.
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