Elon Musk gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, on June 16, 2023. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)
X owner Elon Musk has agreed to reinstate the account of controversial commentator Nick Fuentes, with the tech mogul saying he believes it’s better to have contentious views aired openly on the platform where they can be subjected to scrutiny and debate rather than to “grow simmering in the darkness.”
Mr. Musk made the announcement in response to a post on X by a user who called on him to “bring Nick Fuentes back on Twitter,” referring to the platform by its former name.
“He has been banned since 2021, what happened to your promise big guy?” the GoyaBeanGroyper account posted.
Mr. Fuentes’s account was suspended in July 2021 and was briefly reinstated in January 2023 before being banned once again just a day later.
In response to the post calling for Mr. Fuentes’s reinstatement, Mr. Musk responded in the affirmative.
“Very 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,” Mr. Musk wrote.
‘Freedom Friday’
Mr. Musk famously sought to buy Twitter with the pledge of turning it into a bastion of free speech. After the transaction closed and he became the social media giant’s owner, he moved to reinstate a number of accounts that had been banned under the previous ownership.
For instance, on Nov. 18, 2022, a day he dubbed “Freedom Friday,” he reinstated a host of banned accounts, including that of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, satire site The Babylon Bee, musician Kanye West, and later reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account.
Mr. Musk’s Thursday decision to reinstate the account was met with mixed reactions. Author Ashley St. Clair posted that the move would get “enormous backlash” but that it’s the “right move” given that Mr. Musk bills X as a free speech platform.
“Fate loves irony, but hates hypocrisy,” Mr. Musk replied. “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.”
“This will probably cause us to lose a lot of advertisers and makes me sad, but a principle is a principle,” added the self-avowed “free speech absolutist.”
SpaceX, X (formerly known as Twitter), and Tesla CEO Elon Musk reacts during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in central England, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Leon Neal/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Mr. Musk’s decision was generally met with positive reactions from accounts that advocate for free speech, including from Babylon Bee founder and CEO Seth Dillon.
“You don’t have to like what someone says to support their right to say it. Anyone who isn’t breaking the law (e.g., calling for violence, making threats, etc.) should be permitted to speak in the public square. If you don’t like what they have to say, respond with more speech or tune them out,” he wrote in a post.
Ian Miles Cheong, a popular conservative commentator and social media influencer, took to X in praise of the decision.
“Nick Fuentes is being reinstated on X after he was banned for several years. Like everyone else, has a right to share them on a platform that supports free speech, and you aren’t compelled to agree with his views,” he wrote.
By contrast, some accounts expressed critical reactions to the reinstatement, including the Republicans Against Trump account on X, which called Mr. Fuentes a “Nazi” who “advocated for a white, Christian-only America” while pointing out that he accompanied rapper Kanye West—who has changed his name to Ye—to a dinner at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last year.
Mr. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment on the reinstatement.
Controversial political commentator Nick Fuentes is interviewed by Agence France-Presse in Boston, Mass., on May 9, 2016. (William Edwards/AFP/Getty Images)
However, in a recent podcast, he was asked what his message to Mr. Musk would be if he had the opportunity to say just one thing to him.
“Free Nick Fuentes,” he said. “Give me my [expletive] Twitter back.”
In an appearance on a podcast last year with Adam Sosnick, Mr. Fuentes was asked explicitly, “Are you a racist? Are you anti-Semitic? Are you [an] Islamophobe? Do you hate gays?” and, “Is there any single group you hate more than others?” To each question, he replied “no.”
Elsewhere in the podcast, Mr. Sosnick read out a bio of Mr. Fuentes that labeled him as a Holocaust denier, an anti-Semite, and a “white Christian nationalist.”
Mr. Fuentes denied all those labels and identified himself as a “Catholic American nationalist.”
Mar-a-Lago Dinner Controversy
In November 2022, Mr. Fuentes accompanied Mr. West unannounced to a dinner with President Trump at his home in Mar-a-Lago, triggering a chorus of negative media coverage.
President Trump later said he didn’t know who Mr. Fuentes was and expressed surprise at the three additional dinner guests as he expected Mr. West to come by himself.
“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago,“ President Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social at the time. ”Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”
Some Republicans were publicly critical of President Trump’s judgment for meeting with Mr. West and Mr. Fuentes.
Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested President Trump would be “unlikely” to secure the Republican nomination in 2024 because he met with Mr. Fuentes.
“There is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy, and anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgement, [is] highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States,” Mr. McConnell said at a press conference.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speaks to reporters in Washington on Oct. 4, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
The Republican senator later added that this “would apply to all of the leaders in the party who will be seeking offices.”
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told NBC that President Trump “needs better judgment in who he dines with,“ adding, “I would not take a meeting with that person,” referring to Mr. Fuentes. “I wouldn’t take a meeting with Kanye West, either.”
The influential Republican Jewish Coalition also criticized the former commander-in-chief over the meeting.
“We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them,” the organization told The Washington Post.
Mr. Fuentes has been described by the Department of Justice (pdf), some news outlets, and the Anti-Defamation League as a “white supremacist.”
Mr. Fuentes has denied the characterization, saying in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner, “I reject all labels other than Christian American.”
President Trump later told Fox News that he had “no idea” what Mr. Fuentes’s views were and that those views “weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted.”
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
