Nick Fuentes, the host of America First, has been permanently banned from Twitter, one day after a hit piece on him was published by the ADL.
Fuentes, the conservative populist commentator and host of the nightly show America First, was banned from Twitter on Friday, with Fuentes announcing his permanent ban on Gab and Telegram. It is unclear at the time of writing exactly why Fuentes was banned from the Big Tech platform. National File has reached out to Twitter for comment, and to ask whether the ADL’s recent hit piece may have impacted their decision, but did not receive a response by the time of writing.
Some following Fuentes’s ban were quick to highlight that the ADL, the well known anti-free speech “Jewish special interest group,” had written a hitpiece on him only the day before, and was posted to Twitter within the hour just before his ban, claiming that he is a “white supremacist leader and organizer” who “traffics in disinformation and division.” In a statement, Fuentes said that “the ADL published a report on me and then I was permanently suspended hours later. That’s what happened,” adding that he would discuss his ban more later on his Telegram channel.
.@NickJFuentes is a white nationalist who traffics in disinformation and division. He and his “groyper army” spout #antisemitic, racist rhetoric, and are working hard to mainstream their extremist views.
Read more about Fuentes here: https://t.co/2pjXAscdGz— ADL (@ADL) July 9, 2021
The Southern Poverty Law Center, another far-left organization, also attacked Twitter earlier this week over the fact that Fuentes was still on their platform, linking him to the Capitol Hill protests. In an email to the SPLC dated January 11th, Twitter admitted that they had not seen “enough violative content” from Fuentes to ban him at the time. “It’ll be interesting to see if the other people mentioned in the SPLC’s article about Twitter’s ’embrace’ of the far-right from two days ago end up getting banned too,” said Ashley Goldenberg, the conservative commentator who was banned from Twitter two years previously.
Perhaps above any other site, @Twitter enabled the Jan 6 insurrectionists to organize their attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The same violence will reoccur if the company doesn’t end its longstanding embrace of the far right.
More in our @Hatewatch analysis:https://t.co/0pAGkPZgjb
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) July 7, 2021
“These Twitter bans used to matter. Not anymore,” said Andrew Torba, the CEO of free speech social media platform Gab. “Nick has almost 70,000 followers on Gab, almost 40k on Telegram, and gets millions of views on Banned TV and Gab TV. He was smart and built his own live streaming platform that he can’t be banned from. He was smart and embraced alt tech early before this happened. Be like Nick, be smart.”
Fuentes was temporarily suspended in March this year, at the same time as fellow America First activist Jaden McNeil was permanently banned from the platform, along with a number of other America First-linked accounts, including the official updates account for Fuentes’s show. He received another temporary suspension later in the year, suggesting the permanent ban would not be far behind.
UPDATE: Twitter were not open in their response to National File. “The account you referenced (@NickJFuentes) was permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules,” a spokesman said, refusing to specify which rules Fuentes had allegedly broken, and confirmed that they would not discuss anything more regarding his ban at this time. (READ THE STORY HERE)
