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Twitter accounts from the organizer Stop the Steal Ali Alexander and white nationalist Nick Fuentes were suspended from the platform on Wednesday. The pair advised Kanye West, now known as Ye, as the rapper weighs his 2024 presidential campaign amid a torrent of anti-Semitism. Alexander and Fuentes now join their political hero in rare company, as right-wingers who were reinstated on Elon Musk’s Twitter only to be promptly banned again.
Fuentes was suspended from the platform less than 24 hours after having a previous permanent ban on his account lifted. The far-right streamer celebrated his comeback on Tuesday by posting a graphic highlighting Jewish executives in leading companies. The painting, which played into anti-Semitic tropes claiming that Jews control the world through high positions in industry, was titled “Who Controls Your Mind? 2023.” In the few hours his account was active, Fuentes also hosted a live Twitter Spaces event where he repeated similar tropes and shouted “We love Hitler… bitch!”
The reason why Fuentes’ account was not banned has not yet been clarified, but his brief return follows a model of amnesty granted to the reactionary and extremist figures of Musk, who took over the social media company in October. On his Telegram account, Fuentes has launched an appeal his supporters to “nicely” ask Musk and Trust and Security Chief Ella Irwin to have him reinstated.
Alexander – who organized the Stop the Steal campaign to promote the big lie that Donald Trump was stripped of his re-election – was banned from Twitter after protests he helped organize on January 6, 2021 boiled up in a bloody insurrection. Alexander said he was reinstated on Twitter earlier this month after speaking directly to Musk.
“Am I suspended? They suspended me and Nick? Alexander wrote about his Telegram account Wednesday. He claimed that “this was a suspension initiated manually by an employee.” “They’re scared of Ye… They’re scared of me organizing, so rogue employees and mass journalists do the most. I rebuke them in the name of Jesus Christ. Give me my account, now!
Alexander had been on a media blitz since getting his Twitter account back, bragging about a series of podcasts about his and Fuentes’ relationship with Ye. He says a podcaster that he and Fuentes were in Florida with Ye when the rapper posted an image of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David – borrowed from a UFO cult known as the Raelians – which caught the rapper’s attention started again from Twitter.
“I’m sitting diagonally to him,” Alexander recalls. “He said, ‘What do you think?’ And I look at what looks like the Jewish Star of David and a swastika. And I said, ‘Yeah, please don’t do that.’ And what he will tell me is: ‘Ali, you are a trainer.’ Or, ‘You’re boring.’ Although he advised against the tweet, Alexander always defended Ye. “He never did anything hateful,” protested Alexander of Ye, who had recently told Jews it was time to “forgive Hitler.”
Fuentes appeared with Ye on InfoWars by Alex Jones aired in December, where the rapper praised Hitler, praised the Nazis and downplayed the seriousness of the Holocaust. (On a separate site podcastAlexander bragged that he was the one who got a Yoo-Hoo bottle as a prop for a joke Ye made on the Jones show disparaging Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.) Ye and Fuentes had recently dined with former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago alongside right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.
Far-right figures previously banned and reinstated under Musk’s new leadership have come forward to defend the pair. Far-right streamer Anthime Gionet, known online as “Baked Alaska”, has called for the reinstatement of Fuentes and Alexander. Gionet is currently awaiting the start of a two month prison sentence for his action on Capitol Hill on January 6.
While the future of Ye’s campaign remains uncertain, far-right figures like Fuentes and Alexander have clung to Ye’s imploding stardom in order to return to traditional conservative relevance. The willful gullibility of Twitter’s new executives only paves the way for them.