Twitter suspended Donald Trump’s Twitter account last week citing “the risk of further incitement of violence…in the context of horrific events this week.” What were those horrific events? According to commentators such as Joe Biden, it was unacceptable for the ‘rioters’ “to smash windows, to occupy offices, the floor of the United States Senate, rummaging through desks, on the Capitol, on the House of Representatives”. Yes, rummaging.

Five people did die during the chaos at the Capitol. Trump’s influence on these events is at most indirect. In contrast, we know that his predecessor Barack Obama held ‘Terror Tuesday’ meetings where he decided who would die next via drone strike, along with unknown innocent people. And his Libya policy led to tens of thousands of deaths and a ‘failed state’ split into three regions with reports of a slave trade.

Of course, Libya was just one of the seven countries Obama bombed. Another was Yemen where, with 21 million people already in need of humanitarian assistance, he sold $1.29 billion in smart bombs to Saudi Arabia to help it ‘replenish’ its supplies, further fueling the conflict.

These are the actions of a crazed, violent person. Yet @BarackObama is still tweeting today. Does Twitter not find humanitarian crises horrific, and selling weapons to the main actors ‘further incitement of violence’? By not banning Obama, and by not banning Trump for similar offenses, Jack Dorsey is saying he’s ok with the destruction caused by US foreign and domestic policy. Somehow, though, Trump still crossed a line.

So what is Trump’s true offense? In my opinion, he is being punished for humiliating the political establishment by winning in 2016. I also believe that he represents a somewhat independent entity with power, as seen in his ending the TPP and not starting any new wars, both of which are good for the ordinary American, or at least did not further enrich the country’s elite.

For the shadowy figures accustomed to having total political control, this was unacceptable. Foreign countries which elect independent leaders often suffer CIA-backed coups. These are usually followed by continued oppression against ordinary citizens who supported the deposed leader. It doesn’t matter if these citizens belong to the political left or right; it’s their willingness to fight for a better deal for themselves at the expense of the plutocrats which is the problem.

We are now seeing the same pattern play out in the United States. Guilty of the crime of having and acting on political opinions, Trump and his supporters are being banned from social media, potentially added to no-fly lists and kicked off of insurance policies.

In these actions, the establishment is sowing the seeds of its own demise. Trump supporters and other dissidents (the political left is not unaffected by this crackdown) are moving to encrypted messaging apps which will make their communications invisible to the privacy-hating data harvesters running most big tech companies.

But the bigger development might be increased urgency around launching decentralized internet applications. Technologists have been attempting for several years to apply Bitcoin’s decentralized architechture to other internet applications, most notably with the Ethereum project. However it has struggled to deliver on its promise of a decentralized web due to performance issues. Even before Twitter’s purge, new projects with similar goals as Ethereum but promising better performance were coming closer to production. Now with a tangible use case for these blockchains and increased activity in the sector due to Bitcoin’s exploding price, we may be about to witness a sea change in how we communicate with each other on the internet - and who is involved in the process (not Jack Dorsey, hopefully).

I believe in a future where, if the president is free to wantonly destroy large swaths of the planet, I and my fellow citizens should be free to express our opinions online in a visible place. I will be tweeting @BarackObama about this.