HBO’s Game of Thrones has a large Twitter following, but last night, viewers were tweeting something different. In response to the show’s creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, announcing a modern-day slavery series, Confederate, many took to the social media platform with the hashtag #NoConfederate as a form of protest.
#NoConfederate b/c racists, already emboldened by Trump, don’t deserve to have their views seen & legitimized anymore.
— Caci ? (@CaciGibson) July 31, 2017
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him.” – Abraham Lincoln #NoConfederate
— Joe Negan (@mynameisNegan) July 31, 2017
April Reign is known for starting the #OscarsSoWhite campaign back in 2015. She is one of the organizers of the protest. She asked Twitter users to tweet #NoConfederate during the broadcast of Game of Thrones to urge HBO to scrape the idea for the new TV show.
Whether you live tweet #GoT or not, please use #NoConfederate in ALL of your tweets from 9-10p ET this Sunday. Let’s get it trending!
— April (@ReignOfApril) July 28, 2017
Confederate chronicles events leading to the Third American Civil War, according to Deadline. In the show, the Southern states successfully seceded from the Union, and so slavery is a legal and modern institution in the nation. The show was written by Benioff and Weiss, as well as Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, who are black, reports Deadline.
HBO’s president of programming Casey Bloys recently addressed the controversy, saying that a press release was a bad idea for this show. Instead, Bloys said the creators should have had one-on-one interviews, where they could “fully flesh out their vision the way they had done in pitch meetings with HBO executives, something that cannot be conveyed in a one-line logline.”
HBO released a statement on Sunday in regards to the #NoConfederate protest, “We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate. We have faith that Nichelle, Dan, David and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.”
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