Elon Musk suspends Kanye West's Twitter account after swastika post (and not for fat-shaming Musk)
Kanye West's eventful Thursday ended with him being suspended from Twitter again, two weeks after the social media company reinstated his account following Elon Musk's ownership. "I tried my best," Musk tweeted late Thursday. "Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended." The final straw for West, who now goes by Ye, was apparently posting a Jewish Star of David with a swastika in the middle.
Twitter removed that post, and Ye started posting screenshots purporting to be text exchanges he had with Musk over on rival social media site Truth Social. "Sorry, but you have gone too far," Musk apparently wrote about the swastika image. "This is not love." Ye wrote back: "Who made you the judge." Musk, according to the screenshots, then quoted the first part of the Lord's Prayer, to which Ye replied, "I'm Jesus name," and then posted a screenshot of a noticed his account has been suspended for 12 hours.
Before being booted from the site, Ye posted an unflattering photo of Musk being hosed down, topless, by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. "Let's always remember this as my final tweet," he tweeted. "That is fine," Musk replied.
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"This is not," he replied under the image of the swastika (presumably, since that post was removed). "Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari," Musk clarified in another tweet. "Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!"
Ye's account was initially banned in October after started his downward spiral of antisemitic screeds. That spiral hit a new low earlier Thursday when he went on Alex Jones' Infowar show with his new pal white supremacist Nick Fuentes and repeatedly expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
Still, Musk has called himself a "free speech absolutist" and vowed to make Twitter a haven for "free speech." He has recently started citing the Bible to explain his general amnesty for previously banned Twitter accounts, but as Talking Points Memo chief Josh Marshall noted early Friday, it's not clear just what will get you kicked off Twitter anymore.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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