AP
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said he plans to reinstate the X account of a notorious white supremacist who has expressed his love for Adolf Hitler and called for the execution of non-Christians.
Nick Fuentes, the 25-year-old leader of the America First “Groyper” movement, was banned from Twitter in 2021 for “repeated violations” of the rules. Fuentes attended the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was also at the Jan 6. 2021, Capitol attack, encouraging his supporters to take over the building.
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On Thursday, Musk said he planned to reinstate Fuentes’ account on X, formerly Twitter, after a “Groyper” account with a blue check mark asked Musk to bring Fuentes back.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 2, 2024Very well, he will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes.
It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.
“Very well, he will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes,” Musk said. “It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Fuentes’ account still appeared to be suspended.
Along with his virulent antisemitism, Fuentes has also called rape “not a big deal,” and in a 2022 livestream defended being an “incel,” or involuntary celibate while also bringing up Adolf Hitler.
“All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory,” Fuentes said.
Fuentes has routinely praised Hitler, favorably comparing Russian President Validmir Putin to the dictator during a 2022 white nationalist conference.
“Now, [the media is] going and saying, ‘Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler,’ as if that isn’t a good thing,” Fuentes said during the conference, HuffPost reported at the time. “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”
And in January 2023, he praised Hitler as “really f*cking cool.”
“‘Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan,’” Fuentes mimicked critics of the dictator. “Well, he was also really f*cking cool, so you know, time to grow up.”
He added that “this guy’s awesome, this guy’s cool.”
Fuentes also joined the antisemitic presidential campaign of rapper Ye, and had dinner with Ye and former President Donald Trump in 2022.
Following Musk’s announcement, dozens of accounts with purchased blue checkmarks celebrated Fuentes’ expected return. A request for comment to X was met with an auto-reply: “Busy now, please check back later.”
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Fuentes was previously reinstated to the website last year, but was banned again one day later. Though Twitter didn’t clarify his return or suspension at the time, a reporter for the Southern Poverty Law Center said Fuentes praised Hitler and the Unabomber in a Twitter space, at one point saying that “Jews run the news” before he was banned again.
Musk, who has been bleeding advertisers since be bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, has faced criticisms for endorsing several antisemitic conspiracies. Musk was also recently deposed in a lawsuit after he falsely accused a 22-year-old Jewish man of being a federal agent involved with a neo-Nazi group.
“I’m guilty of many self-inflicted wounds,” Musk testified in March.
In a post on X, Musk defended his reasoning to bring back Fuentes.
“I cannot claim to be a defender of free speech, but then permanently ban someone who hasn’t violated the law, no matter how much I disagree with what they say,” Musk posted. “This will probably cause us to lose a lot of advertisers and makes me sad, but a principle is a principle.”
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