Twitter suspends former KKK leader David Duke permanently

Twitter is giving former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke the boot.

The social media platform has permanently suspended Duke's account "for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules on hateful conduct," the company said on Friday, The Associated Press reports.

Duke, the Southern Poverty Law Center writes, is "a neo-Nazi, longtime Klan leader and now international spokesman for Holocaust denial," and Twitter's rules prohibit attacks against "people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The company didn't say on Friday which of Duke's posts led it to take this step, but Twitter had previously faced criticism for allowing the white supremacist's account to remain online. He was suspended in 2017, but only briefly. Duke last month was one of a number of white supremacists who was kicked off YouTube, Axios notes, with YouTube at the time saying these accounts repeatedly violated its policies against hate speech.