The tweet, Obama's first in weeks, came in the context of deadly white supremacist violence in the town of Charlottesville, Virginia.
Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a man drove a car into a crowd of anti-hate protesters on Saturday.
Police later arrested white supremacist James Fields Jr and charged him with second-degree murder, as well as other charges.
Obama has authored six of the top 10 most liked tweets in history.
His successor, US President Donald Trump, is a more prolific Twitter user but has yet to reach the Democrat's popularity on social media.
Trump's reaction to the violence in Charlottesville stood in stark contrast to Obama.
The 45th president of the US has repeatedly blamed both sides for the violence but also said there were "very fine" people on each side.
Barack Obama's August 13th tweet promoting racial and religious tolerance has become the most liked of all time, Twitter says. The message -- apparently in response to the death of a woman at Charlottesville neo-Nazi marches -- quotes Nelson Mandela and reads, "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion." So far, it has hit three million likes, easily surpassing Ariana Grande's 2.7 million-like-tweet following the bombing of her Manchester, UK concert that killed 23.
This Tweet from @BarackObama is now the most liked Tweet ever.
- 1,795 Replies
- 62,507 Retweets
- 184,553 likes
That prompted a furious backlash from groups on all sides of the political spectrum, who say the president should have only condemned the actions of KKK members, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Since the initial comments, Facebook, Reddit and other sites have shut down hate groups, GoFundMe has cut off the defense funds for alleged Charlottesville killer James Alex Fields, and gaming chat app Discord has closed racist accounts.
After surpassing Ellen Degeneres' 2014 Oscar selfie tweet, Obama's tweet soared past Grande's sometime yesterday. With 1.2 million re-tweets, it also sits in fifth place for that record, though still well behind the inane Wendy's "Nuggs" tweet at 3.65 million and 3.4 million retweets for DeGeneres.
Obama's tweet is actually part one of three; the first two have 1.2 and 1.1 million likes, respectively. They complete Mandela's quote, saying "People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." With Heather Heyer's tragic Charlottesville death and the worst US racial strife in a while, it's obviously a message that resonates
No comments:
Post a Comment