This past weekend, the world’s richest promoter of antisemitism, billionaire Elon Musk reinstated fascist InfoWars publisher and Trump coup accomplice Alex Jones to Twitter/X. Jones was previously suspended from the platform in 2018.
Bringing Jones back on the platform is the latest gesture from Musk to the Trump 2024 presidential campaign and fascist elements around the world.
Jones is not only a right-wing Trump supporter, but like Musk, he propagates and promotes the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT), which claims that left-wing “globalists,” that is, Jews and defenders of immigrants’ rights, are seeking to “replace” “white” Americans and Europeans with immigrants from South America, Asia and Africa. GRT has served as the ideological scaffolding of several neo-Nazi massacres, including one at the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque mass murder and the Tree of Life Pittsburgh synagogue killings.
Last month Musk promoted GRT on X/Twitter, causing global outrage. Seeking to placate fleeing advertisers, as well as Jewish critics, Musk traveled to Israel to schmooze with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu. While in Israel, Musk backed the Zionist lies about October 7 and joined in the Democratic and Republican parties’ bipartisan censorship campaign against anti-genocide protesters. He pledged to suspend accounts that tweeted “From the river to the sea,” falsely claiming it that it “necessarily impl[ied] genocide.”
Jones is hardly the first right-wing figure to be reinstated by Musk. Since purchasing Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk has welcomed back several fascists, including Trump himself, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, while banning several left-wing, Palestinian, and even liberal journalist accounts.
Jones was reinstated this weekend by Musk following a coordinated campaign by Republican politicians and operatives. Former Fox News right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene were among the most high-profile right-wing celebrities who lobbied Musk publicly and privately to end the suspension of Jones’ account.
Despite his formal suspension from Twitter/X, videos of Jones’ fascistic rants on his InfoWars program are regularly uploaded by right-wing accounts to the social media site. Videos of Jones’ interview with Hitler-lovers Ye (Kanye West) and Nick Fuentes continue to be shared on the platform despite both of them ostensibly being “banned.”
Prior to the unbanning of Jones this weekend, Carlson had hosted him on his Twitter/X program, allowing the right-wing conspiracy theorist to make his case directly to Musk. After Jones’ appearance on Carlson’s program, Musk, in an attempt to create distance between himself and the unbanning of Jones, conducted a poll on his Twitter/X account asking users if Jones should be reinstated. Despite having 166 million followers, less than 2 million votes were registered in Musk’s “poll,” with an alleged 70 percent voting in favor of reinstating Jones.
In addition to being a prolific right-wing conspiracy theorist, Jones is an ardent supporter of ex-President Donald Trump and played a significant role in Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign and failed coup.
In the lead-up to the coup, Jones spread Trump’s election lies on his programs and participated in several “Stop the Steal” rallies, including in Georgia with neo-Nazi Fuentes, and in Washington D.C. with retired Gen. Mike Flynn.
In December 2020, Jones featured Oath Keepers militia leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes on his show. In the course of that program, Rhodes encouraged fascists to come to Washington on January 6. Rhodes, along with several other leading Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, has been convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the failed coup.
Jones was not only a propagandist for Trump’s “Big lie,” he also facilitated a major donation from billionaire Publix heiress Julie Fancelli to the Trump campaign and Women For America First (WFAF), in furtherance of the coup. WFAF organized the rally on the Ellipse outside the White House on January 6 during which Trump and his allies encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol to “fight like hell” or else they wouldn’t have “a country anymore.”
Jones has previously admitted that officials from the Trump campaign asked him to lead enraged Trump supporters to the Capitol following Trump’s speech.
Promoting Jones to his followers after his reinstatement, Musk hosted a Twitter/X space with Jones for over an hour that featured several far-right politicians and personalities.
Participants in the Musk/Jones December 10 Twitter Space included Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, and unsuccessful “ultra-MAGA” congressional candidate Laura Loomer. Neo-Nazis Jack Posobiec and Jackson Hinkle also participated along with retired General Flynn.
Jones, the Republican politicians and the neo-fascist operatives spent the entire event praising Musk for reinstating Jones, falsely claiming that it was an example of Musk fighting for “free speech.”
Gaetz, who asked for a pardon from Trump in the final days of his presidency, said he thought it was “great” having Jones back on Twitter/X because he “provoked a lot of critical thinking from policy makers.”
Jones declared “Elon Musk has valiantly restored myself back to Twitter,” and that “what Elon Musk is doing is 1776 2.0.”
Railing against “globalists,” a code word for Jews and leftists, Jones said Musk was “directly taking on the world government” and developing an “alternate plan for history through free market competition.”
“You see the energy of Donald Trump, of Elon Musk,” Jones said. “That’s dangerous.”
After Jones said that Musk’s “courage” in bringing him back on the platform had “broken the back of the globalists,” Musk replied, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m not afraid to die.”
Musk went on to articulate his fear of social revolution, saying, “If you study history, see the arc of history ... we should be concerned we may have crested. Many times I get late-stage-civilization vibes, and I worry we are cresting as a civilization and heading towards a fall.”
Later on Musk attacked the “globalists,” who he said were “short-sighted,” after which he claimed to have done “more for sustainable energy than any other human.”
Flynn, whose brother Gen. Charles Flynn was named by former Capitol Police Chief Steve Sund and former D.C. Guard Commander William Walker as one of the two generals who blocked the deployment of National Guard troops to the Capitol while it was under siege during Trump’s coup, thanked Musk for hosting the discussion and reinstating Jones.
Flynn characterized the discussion as a fight in the “information domain” between the “globalists” and “humanists.”