Technocrat billionaire Elon Musk finally owned up Wednesday to restricting his critics’ X accounts. But the self-described “free speech absolutist” doesn’t see anything wrong with it.
Last week, Musk began stripping the verifications from far-right accounts run by people who challenged his support for H-1B visas, after he and his co–DOGE czar Vivek Ramaswamy went to war arguing that Asian workers were far better than American ones. Obviously, the pro-white American far right didn’t take too kindly to that messaging.
Among those who received disciplinary actions were Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and self-described “proud Islamophobe” whom Donald Trump ferried around during his presidential campaign, and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, whom Musk had invited back onto the platform just over six months ago.
By taking away their verifications and knocking them out of X Pro, it seems that Musk has rendered several large accounts unable to receive ad revenue from X. Verification makes an account more visible too, so he has curbed their potential audiences.
Musk also suspended some smaller accounts, according to Mediaite. He defended his decision Wednesday via his favorite medium: replies on X.
“People getting demonetized for their inexcusable behavior then complaining about free speech is hilarious to me,” wrote Nicole Behnam, a journalist. “You can say whatever you want. You just can’t get paid for it. Hope this helps.”
“Exactly,” replied Musk. “The first amendment is protection for ‘free speech’, not ‘paid speech’ ffs.”
In response to a post from Fuentes claiming, “Twitter censorship is back,” Musk replied, “Claiming censorship while simultaneously getting millions of views is the clearest possible evidence that Fuentes has 💩 for brains.”
This kind of logic must be new to Musk, who, if memory serves, spent several months last year fundraising and pamphleteering on behalf of Trump and JD Vance—both of whom ceaselessly whine about censorship while also having the biggest platforms in the country.
Of course, it’s not the users’ racism or hate speech that Musk is opposing—the technocrat billionaire recently backed Germany’s ethnonationalist party and has been known to elevate hate speech at the cost of shareholder value—but, rather, it’s punishing dissent within the party he intends to take over.
