No, a British BLM leader did not tweet about enslaving white people

A faked August 2020 tweet about enslaving white people — purportedly sent by a prominent British Black Lives Matter activist — is again proliferating across social media platforms.

"The white man will not be our equal but our slave," the tweet reads in part.

The handle claims to be the account of a prominent Oxford, England-based activist and organizer Sasha Johnson, 27. Johnson helped mobilize protesters at demonstrations across the United Kingdom last summer following the murder of George Floyd; she also holds a leadership position within the Black-led Taking the Initiative Party.

An archived version of the Twitter account in question shows that it was created in May 2020 and has only three followers. The Twitter handle is not any of the usernames Johnson uses across other social media platforms, and Johnson’s organization told news organizations the account is fake.

Johnson remains in critical condition after she was shot May 23 at a house party in London, according to CNN. The tweet from the phony account was circulated widely across social media, including on Facebook, around the time it was originally published (Aug. 2, 2020) and has reemerged since the shooting.

Some of the posts that either quoted or shared screenshots of the false tweet were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

In an article published May 25, a representative for Taking the Initiative Party told Insider that the account behind the tweet in question was not Johnson’s, adding that the account was "created to persecute her."

The party also said that tweets from the impostor account "are not reflective of Sasha nor Taking the Initiative Party's beliefs." It did not immediately respond to an inquiry from PolitiFact.

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The original account that tweeted the message has since been suspended for violating Twitter’s terms of use. According to Insider, Twitter told the publication that the account was suspended because it violated the social media company’s platform-manipulation and spam policy. 

A Twitter post from an account purporting to be Johnson’s said "The white man will not be our equal but our slave."

Johnson’s political party, Taking the Initiative, has told media outlets that the now-suspended account is a fake. The anti-white tweets on the account, the group told Insider, were not sent by Johnson nor do they represent the views of her or the party.

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