Glenn Reynolds, a USA Today columnist and University of Tennessee law professor who goes by the name Instapundit, said on Thursday morning that he will not apologize for a tweet urging drivers to run over protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Reynolds told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would “probably not” tweet the message if given another chance, but he was unapologetic.
“I have to say I don’t apologize for the sentiment,” he said. “I think that this tactic of blocking people on the interstate and surrounding cars is itself violent. It is threatening. It is not peaceful protest, and it should not be permitted.”
Reynolds on Wednesday night linked to a story about protesters stopping traffic on an interstate highway with the phrase “Run them down.”
He said Thursday that he expressed his concern about protesters blocking traffic “perhaps a little too pithily.”
Reynolds also defended the tweet in a post on his blog.
“I fully support people protesting police actions, and I’ve been writing in support of greater accountability for police for years,” he wrote. “But riots aren’t peaceful protest. And blocking interstates and trapping people in their cars is not peaceful protest — it’s threatening and dangerous, especially against the background of people rioting, cops being injured, civilian-on-civilian shootings, and so on. I wouldn’t actually aim for people blocking the road, but I wouldn’t stop because I’d fear for my safety, as I think any reasonable person would.”
Twitter suspended Reynolds’ account, and he accused the company of censoring him.
“They tell users and investors that they don’t censor, but they seem awfully quick to suspend people on one side of the debate and, as people over at Twitchy note, awfully tolerant of outright threats on the other,” he wrote on his blog.
