CorpComms Magazine

One of football's best-known personalities on Twitter has announced that he will not censor his controversial tweets. QPR captain Joey Barton, who has more than 610,000 followers on Twitter, claimed at a conference held by the Professional Players Federation on Monday that the Football Association (FA) had requested he moderate his language online.

The 29-year-old, who held a recent meeting with the English game's governing body, told delegates at the conference that he would not be coerced into changing his ways. 'I feel that the FA came to hush me down or make me not have an opinion. If they came to do that, they picked the wrong person, because there's no way I can be like that,' he said.

'It sounds really bad when you say it because it just makes you think of Nazi Germany but it is a propaganda machine. Social media is a propaganda machine'. He then added: 'If I didn't have an opinion, I'd cease to exist.'

Barton's quirky and opinionated style has attracted attention. He is known for his colourful langauge and for quoting George Orwell, Aristotle and Nietzsche in his tweets. has been likened by some as the greatest footballing philosopher since Eric Cantona. He has also raised eyebrows amongst the footballing fraternity for encouraging his followers to read books written by feminist author Naomi Wolf. 'Check out Naomi Wolf's, 'The End Of America' on Youtube or buy the book,' he tweeted.

When his contract at Newcastle United was not renewed the player tweeted: 'Somewhere in those high echelons of NUFC, they have decided, I am persona non grata.'

Some of Barton's (@Joey7Barton) top tweets:

'In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.' (George Orwell)

'The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.' (Freidrich Nietzsche)

'Friendship is essentially a partnership.' (Aristotle)

'To control negative physical and verbal actions, it is necessary to get at their root, the mind, and tame it.' (DalaiLama)

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