Elon Musk allows domestic extremists back on Twitter, fueling national security concerns

This week alone, Musk has reinstated the accounts of an anti-semitic accelerationist extremist and a 'Unite the Right' Nazi.

Under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter this week welcomed back two infamous white supremacists with ties to violent extremist movements, continuing a disturbing trend that has resulted in increasing levels of hate speech on the platform and amplification of some of the nation’s most virulent extremists and hate figures.

Early Thursday morning, Twitter reinstated the account of white supremacist James Allsup, a Unite the Right participant and member of the now-disbanded white supremacist group Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement. Allsup was banned from Twitter in December 2017 for violating its Terms of Service (TOS). His Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts were also later terminated, and he was banned from Uber for reportedly making racist remarks to a driver.

After being deplatformed, Allsup became a co-host for an explicitly fascist podcast called “Fash the Nation,” but then largely faded into obscurity without a presence on any major social media platforms. Until now, that is.

The newly-reinstated Twitter account of white supremacist James Allsup, who was banned from the platform more than 5 years ago due to his racist rhetoric. (Image Credir: Screenshot/Caroline Orr Bueno)

Allsup rose to prominence during the 2016 Trump campaign and was an active participant and influencer in the so-called “alt-right” movement, a loosely connected grouping of white nationalist and white supremacist ideologies that sought to rebrand and mainstream far-right extremism. In the summer of 2017, he spoke at an anti-semitic rally in Washington, DC, alongside Richard Spencer and other white supremacists including the organizer of Unite the Right, Jason Kessler. Later that summer, Allsup marched at the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA, after which he falsely labeled the murder of racial justice protester Heather Heyer as an “accident.”

Among other things, Allsup is known for leading a movement to encourage likeminded white supremacists and extremists to infiltrate mainstream Republican politics. In 2018, Allsup himself was elected to local public office as part of the Whitman County, Washington, Republican Party. Speaking on an Identity Evropa podcast shortly after taking office, Allsup said he planned to use his new position in the Republican Party to push “our” political agenda — referring not to the GOP’s agenda, but to that of SPLC-designated hate group Identity Evropa.

The push to get far-right extremists elected resulted in a record number of white nationalists running for office in 2018. Among those candidates was Paul Nehlen, a virulent anti-semite and outspoken proponent of accelerationism, an extremist movement that calls for the use of violence to hasten the collapse of society in order to rebuild America as an all-white country. Nehlen has frequently appeared on livestreams and podcasts alongside extremists like the “Bowl Patrol” — who take their name from the hairstyle of white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof — and often uses social media to advocate for racist and violent ideas. For a while, he added the hashtag “#itsokaytobewhite” to every tweet he posted, and he frequently used Twitter to peddle racist propaganda about black-on-white crime and conspiracy theories about “white genocide”. He habitually harasses people he thinks are Jewish, and in January 2018, he published a list on Twitter of “Jews” who he accused of attacking him. Perhaps most disturbingly, Nehlen has repeatedly promoted the accelerationist manifesto SIEGE to his social media followers, encouraging them to use the terrorist tactics described in the book and promoting the idea of a race war. Nehlen was also seen wearing a t-shirt with the face of the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooter across the front, along with the last words he said before carrying out the deadliest anti-semitic attack in US history. On a 2019 podcast episode, he celebrated white supremacist mass murderers Brenton Tarrant, Robert Bowers, Dylann Roof, and Anders Breivik, saying they “stepped up to do something” and that “we ought to celebrate them.”

Just days ago, Musk reinstated Nehlen’s Twitter account.

The newly-reinstated account of virulent anti-semite and white supremacist accelerationist Paul Nehlen, who was welcomed back to Twitter two days ago. (Image Credit: Screenshot/Caroline Orr Bueno).

Musk’s decision to allow Allsup and Nehlen back on the platform follows a string of controversial reinstatements and policy decisions that have overwhelmingly benefited extremists at the expense of everyone else. Several months ago, Musk reinstated the account of Andrew Anglin, one of America’s most notorious neo-nazis, as well as accounts belonging to white supremacist Patrick Casey — the former leader of Identity Evropa — and misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, among others. Numerous Proud Boys chapters have also established new Twitter accounts, and QAnon accounts have returned after being banned several years ago.

All of this, of course, is being done under the guise of “promoting free speech,” but the only type of speech that is actually being promoted is hate speech. In the seven months since Musk took over as CEO of Twitter, multiple studies have documented a rise in hate speech and concurrent failure to enforce policies prohibiting certain types of hateful content.

According to an analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), after Musk took over the platform, the average daily quantity of hate speech doubled among accounts that post the most hateful content. This confirms an earlier report by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which found an “unprecedented” rise in hate speech in the first few weeks of Musk’s ownership of Twitter.

Graph showing the mean increase in hate speech among “hateful accounts” after Musk’s purchase of Twitter. (Image Credit: USC).

The spike in racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ content is not just the result of letting extremists back on the platform and failing to enforce rules around hate speech; it’s also the product of algorithmic amplification, according to another recent report, which found that Twitter is actually promoting hate speech and extremism in its “For You” timeline. This directly contradicts Musk’s claims about Twitter being a neutral “free speech” platform, as well as his promise in Nov. 2022 that “negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted.” Twitter’s algorithms aren’t just deciding on their own to promote hate speech — that is a company decision, and it’s certainly not a neutral one.

The replatforming of dangerous extremists — combined with the sudden resignation of Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, on Thursday afternoon, along with other cuts to Twitter’s staff and the intentional dismantling of policies prohibiting hate speech, threats, disinformation, and other harmful content — has created a serious national security threat that is not being adequately addressed by either social media companies or law enforcement/national security agencies. In November, the Senate Homeland Security Committee affirmed in an extensive report that tech companies and federal agencies have failed to properly allocate resources to combat the metastasizing threat, and have not been systematically tracking or reporting data on domestic extremist threats.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen extremists make increasing use of social media platforms, including Twitter, to spread propaganda, recruit and radicalize others, engage in targeted threats and harassment, promote violence, plan rallies that turned deadly, and — perhaps most importantly — push extremist messaging into the mainstream and desensitize people to the presence of hate speech and violence. According to a report by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, “social media is playing an increasingly important role in the radicalization process of U.S. extremists,” with 73% of extremists using social media to access or disseminate propaganda, or to communicate with other extremists. The report also found that social media contributed to the radicalization process in an estimated 90% of cases of U.S. extremists. Twitter was the third most popular platform among extremists — and that was before the platform started welcoming them back individually and then amplifying their content.

It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of Musk’s leadership at Twitter will be, but if recent history is any indication, it may only be a matter of time before we see another act of extremist violence linked to activity on the platform. If, or rather when, that happens, Musk will surely have plenty to say to defend his decisions as CEO — but the one thing he can’t say is that he wasn’t warned.