Portsmouth Nazi Watch

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Facebook has banned Britain First from its platform, saying the far-right party has “repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups”.

Both Britain First’s Facebook page - which had more than 2m likes - and the pages of the two party leaders, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, have been banned from the social network.

Golding and Fransen are currently both serving prison terms for religiously aggravated harassment after targeting innocent people they wrongly suspected of being defendants in a rape trial.

“We are an open platform for all ideas and political speech goes to the heart of free expression,” Facebook said in a statement.

“But political views can and should be expressed without hate. People can express robust and controversial opinions without needing to denigrate others on the basis of who they are.”

“We have community standards that clearly state this sort of speech is not acceptable on Facebook and, when we become aware of it, we remove it as quickly as we can,” the company added.

“Political parties, like individuals and all other organisations on Facebook, must abide by these standards and where a page or person repeatedly breaks our community standards we remove them.”