Elon Musk Quiet After Kanye West Threatens To Subvert Alex Jones Twitter Ban

Ye, the rapper previously known as Kanye West, said Thursday he planned to give Infowars host Alex Jones access to his Twitter account, effectively subverting the platform’s ban on the notorious conspiracy theorist.

Jones was permanently banned from the site in 2018 for violations of its abusive behavior policy. He used the platform to spread lies that provoked the harassment of school shooting survivors and victims’ families.

Though Musk has allowed a stream of far-right figures back on to the site since his chaotic acquisition of the company, he pledged last month that Jones’ account would not be reactivated, saying he had “no mercy” for anyone who would “use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.” 

During a deeply disturbing appearance on Infowars on Thursday, Ye said he planned to give Jones and white nationalist organizer Nick Fuentes, who joined him on the show, the reins to his account.

“I got a Twitter account, and today I’m gonna have Nick and Alex tweet from my account,” Ye said, according to The Independent.

“I do find it a little bit hypocritical that Elon Musk said he was purchasing Twitter to create a free speech environment,” added Fuentes, who was banned from the site in 2021.

According to The Daily Beast, Fuentes recently created a new account, ostensibly hoping to return to Twitter under Musk’s leadership, but was promptly tossed off the site again.

Twitter did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Jones would be allowed to tweet from Ye’s account. 

Ye’s appearance Thursday sparked a firestorm after he defended Adolf Hitler and Nazis and made other antisemitic comments. He was temporarily suspended from Twitter earlier this year for antisemitic posts. Musk has been friendly to the rapper since his return to the platform, last month liking a controversial tweet from his account that read “shalom.”

Following Thursday’s interview, clips of which were widely shared on Twitter and covered extensively in the media, Musk responded to a tweet from Ye that said “I love the first amendment! Long live Ye! I pray to Jesus that Elon is for real.”

Musk did not acknowledge the rapper’s Hitler comments, instead writing the cryptic message: “Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.”

Twitter’s new policies on content moderation and reversing bans have so far appeared to be at Musk’s whim. A few days after finalizing his purchase of Twitter, Musk made a commitment to convene a “content moderation council” before reinstating banned accounts. Instead, Musk began restoring accounts after posting polls on his personal account.