On Friday, Rolling Stone reported that under Elon Musk's new Twitter policies, one of the world's most notorious neo-Nazi activists has had his account restored to the platform: Andrew Anglin, the founder of the infamous website Stormfront.
"Anglin has publicly indicated that the goal of his operation and adherence to white nationalist ideology is to 'ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated,'" reported Nikki McCann Ramirez. "Anglin is a staunch supporter of Nazi ideology and regularly espouses Holocaust denial. In 2018, Anglin wrote that he '[hates] women. I think they deserve to be beaten, raped and locked in cages.'" IN addition, Anglin, who claims to reside somewhere outside the U.S., "was named as a defendant in a lawsuit against several extremists accused of planning the deadly 2017 Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville," although he entered a default judgment.
"The return of an avowed neo-Nazi to Twitter under Musk’s guarantee to reinstate banned accounts reinforces the concerns brought forth by civil society groups and advertisers over his handling of content standards on the platform. Under Musk, prominent white nationalists including Patrick Casey and Richard Spencer have reportedly been reinstated or been able to verify their accounts through Twitter’s recently launched pay-for-verification scheme," said the report.
This comes in spite of Musk's promise to advertisers that, despite his frequent concurrence with far-right activists that Twitter's content moderation practices were too censorious, the site would not become a "free-for-all hellscape."
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According to the report, "Almost immediately upon having his account reinstated, Anglin tweeted a response to rapper Ye praising Hitler and denying the Holocaust on Alex Jones’ show. 'Saying you love Hitler is not even a big deal,' Anglin wrote, 'no one cares about that. The man died 80 years ago.' Anglin also endorsed Ye in his presidential run."
Ironically, Ye himself was just banned from Twitter, with Musk's full approval, after he posted an image of a swastika combined with a Star of David.
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