Elon Musk falls silent after Kanye West threatens to undermine Alex Jones’ Twitter ban

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

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

Though Musk has allowed a stream of far-right figures back onto the site since his messy takeover of the company, he vowed last month that Jones’ account would not be reactivated and said he had “no mercy” for anyone who “uses it.” “would be the death of children for money, politics or fame.”

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

“I have a Twitter account and today Nick and Alex will be tweeting from my account,” Ye said, according to The Independent.

“I find it a bit hypocritical that Elon Musk said he was buying Twitter to create an environment for free speech,” 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 immediately kicked off the page again.

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

Ye’s performance on Thursday sparked a firestorm after he defended Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and made other anti-Semitic comments. Earlier this year, he was temporarily suspended from Twitter for anti-Semitic posts. Musk has been friendly with the rapper since his return to the platform, liking a controversial tweet from his account that read “Shalom” last month.

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

Musk ignored 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 and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating his deep wisdom.”

Twitter’s new policies on content moderation and unblocking have so far appeared to be at Musk’s whim. A few days after completing his Twitter purchase, Musk pledged to convene a “Content Moderation Council” before reinstating suspended accounts. Instead, Musk began recovering accounts after posting polls on his personal account.