On Tuesday, Twitter reinstated the account of Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has given high praise to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as recently as last week — only to suspend Fuentes’s profile within 24 hours of its reinstatement.
The site has not specified why it suspended Fuentes’s account for a second time, but one of the few tweets Fuentes shared while back on the platform referenced antisemitic remarks from rapper Kanye West in which he vowed to go “death con 3” on Jewish people.
It is unclear whether the latest ban on Fuentes will be permanent, or whether he will be allowed to return to Twitter at some point in the future.
Since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the social media site has been more tolerant of users who espouse hateful and violent views, reinstating the accounts of several white supremacists and white nationalists who were banned prior to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Fuentes was originally ousted from the social media site in July 2021 for repeatedly violating the site’s guidelines.
Fuentes has made myriad comments attacking nonwhite people and celebrating acts of violence. In 2021, for example, he lamented that the United States was losing “its white demographic core.” He has also defended the U.S.’s segregationist policies in the Jim Crow era, and has denied significant elements of the Nazi-led Holocaust during World War II.
Fuentes has described the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as being “awesome,” and called for the killing of state legislators who refused to participate in a scheme to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election to President Joe Biden.
Fuentes became more well known after he, rapper Kanye West and former President Donald Trump had dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in November. After Trump was criticized for agreeing to meet with him and West, who also espouses far right, antisemitic viewpoints, he tried to distance himself from Fuentes, saying he didn’t know who the white supremacist was before the dinner took place. (Notably, Trump has not condemned Fuentes after the fact, as he is reportedly worried that doing so would alienate his base of supporters.)
Fuentes, now a campaign adviser for West (who is planning a long-shot presidential run for 2024), has not tampered down his rhetoric in the year and a half since his Twitter ban. Just last week, Fuentes praised Hitler, describing the genocidal dictator as being “really fucking cool.”
Before Fuentes’s account was suspended for the second time, Twitter users blasted the site’s decision to reinstate Fuentes and other white supremacists.
“Musk alone has built back extremist infrastructure and access to the mainstream. No other large social media site has done this,” tweeted Elad Nehorai, a writer on extremism and antisemitism.
“Elon Musk reinstated the Twitter account of Nick Fuentes, who is a white Supremacist notorious for denying the Holocaust and peddling Antisemitism. The venom he spews belongs nowhere on Twitter,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York).
“Musk’s reinstatement of Fuentes legitimizes all the vicious garbage the Nazi has spewed, and essentially returns to him a massive avenue to spread it further,” wrote Prem Thakker, associate writer at The New Republic, adding that “the danger of Fuentes’s return cannot be overstated.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy