Illiberalism · Gilead · Twitter

Fig. 1. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,^[1] fair use.

Fig. 2. Results from Elon Musk’s snowball sample^[2] suggest he should step down. Screenshot taken by author on December 19, 2022, of Twitter poll posted by Elon Musk, December 18, 2022.

There are actually two reasons I am now categorizing Twitter under Gilead. First, the saga appears to me to have begun with the January 6 coup attempt and Twitter’s subsequent decision to suspend Donald Trump’s account;^[3] hence the emphasis Elon Musk has placed on restoring that account.^[4] Second, the entire so-called “free speech” tone of Musk’s takeover has seemed increasingly about favoring disinformation and conspiracy theories even when it may have electoral consequences^[5] and even at the risk of providing one rationale (out of a few) for reversing the deal on national security grounds.^[6] Now,

Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations.

As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern California, has also been suspended. . . .

Among the other prominent accounts suspended were the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, an antifascist group that provides armed security for LGBTQ+ events in North Texas, and CrimethInc, an anarchist collective that has published and distributed anarchist and anti-authoritarian zines, books, posters, and podcasts since the mid-1990s.

All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-riddled reporting on left-wing protests and social movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army called “antifa.” In a public exchange on Twitter on Friday, Musk invited Ngo to report “Antifa accounts” that should be suspended directly to him.^[7]

Irregular Bullshit

Illiberalism · Gilead · Twitter

Illiberalism

Gilead

Twitter

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