Three Greens apologize over unsavoury social media posts
Three B.C. Green party candidates have apologized to their party over unsavoury or offensive posts found on their Twitter or Facebook accounts.
Over the past several weeks, James Marshall, Arthur Green and Ryan Marciniw have scrubbed their accounts of questionable content that had been missed by a contractor hired by the party to vet its candidates’ social media content, confirmed Stefan Jonsson, the party’s director of communications, in a Monday interview.
The handful of offending posts, which date back to 2008, include mostly poorly attempted jokes and crackpot conspiracy theories.
When asked whether the candidates still had the support of the party, Jonsson said: “Yes. Because they have all expressed sincere regret and apologized. It would be a very different story if they backpedalled and tried to make excuses.”
Marciniw, the Green party candidate for Richmond North Centre, had tweeted in support of fat shaming (claiming it had led him to slim down) and retweeted a controversial message about the Holocaust.
Jonsson said Marciniw understood what he was agreeing with or commenting on “was so insensitive and inappropriate.” He had removed the tweets about a month ago, Jonsson said.
Nearly a decade ago, Marshall, the Green party candidate for Vancouver-West End, posted content that made light of pedophilia and drug abuse. Those posts were deleted Sunday. Of the posts by Green, the party’s candidate for Fraser-Nicola, Jonsson had this to say: “The party does not condone any 9/11 ‘truther’ theories and he appears to be posing questions about them.” Green’s posts were taken down “a while ago,” Jonsson said.