When far-right activist Laura Loomer regained control of her Twitter account in late 2022, she knew who to congratulate on her reinstatement.
“Thank you, Elon!” ” She wrote to Elon Musk, who had recently bought the social network. In another jobMs Loomer, who was kicked off the platform in 2018 for writing an anti-Muslim post, complimented Mr Musk’s commitment to “free speech”.
Ms. Loomer now shares a different message about Mr. Musk. She and a prominent group of right-wing figures – many of whom have benefited from greater visibility on the platform, renamed X – are increasingly sounding the alarm about Mr Musk’s influence over President-elect Donald J . Trump and what they describe as a desire to silence critics on his social network.
Besides Ms. Loomer, prominent conservatives, including Charlie Kirk and Stephen K. Bannon, have begun speaking out against Mr. Musk or his policy positions. Batya Ungar-Sargon, a conservative opinion editor at Newsweek, recently called Mr. Musk a “shill” who censors his opponents. Mike Davis, a lawyer close to Mr. Trump, said to Mr. Musk on social media to “stay in your lane.”
Their criticism followed moves by X to suspend or otherwise restrict dozens of accounts that raised concerns about Mr. Musk and blocked links to articles about him, citing violations of its terms of service. use. Over the weekend, Mr. Musk further angered conservatives for using his X account to attack Nigel Farage, an ally of Mr. Trump and leader of Britain’s far-right Reform UK party.
Mr. Musk, 53, quickly vaporized some of the goodwill he had built with Mr. Trump’s supporters after campaigning heavily for the Republican presidential candidate last year. Some right-wing figures who defended Mr. Musk’s foray into Republican politics now say they feel cheated and fear their agenda will be sidelined in favor of his.
“As a loyal supporter of President Trump, I support him enough to sound the alarm about what is becoming a liability,” Ms. Loomer said in an interview. Ms. Loomer, whose The question that arises is this: will Donald Trump intervene? before it creates a crisis for his administration?
Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Musk had “said negative things” about European politicians — the president-elect did not name Mr. Farage — but that he was “doing a good job.”
Mr. Musk’s feuds with some members of the far right are notable as he increasingly embraces more extremist parties and figures globally, including in Germany, where he has supported a political party linked to neo-Nazis and plans to host a live stream with one of them. of its leaders on Thursday. Some Trump fans, like Alex Jones, founder of the conspiracy theory site Infowars, remain supportive of Mr. Musk and have said any dissent is aimed at undermining the new administration.
Still, the split raises questions about whether the billionaire and Trump’s right-wing supporters are allies of convenience. In some ways, Mr. Musk became a target for the principles he stood for on X by allowing Ms. Loomer and others excluded from the platform to return.
“Elon Musk’s suppression of speech on Stanford which studies the regulation of online speech. “It’s particularly poetic that these accusations come from someone like Loomer, whose account reinstatement was meant to be emblematic of the dawn of a new era on Twitter.”
Ms. Loomer, a two-time Republican congressional candidate who has described Islam as a “cancer,” broke up with Mr. Musk days before Christmas after posting on X about her dissatisfaction with Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American venture capitalist whom Mr. Trump chose to give advice on artificial intelligence. She said Mr. Krishnan favored expanding the use of H-1B visas to attract skilled foreign workers to U.S. businesses, something she decried.
Mr. Musk, who has used the visas to hire workers at his companies including Tesla, has defended the program as a way to attract top talent from around the world. “I will wage war on this issue that you cannot understand,” he said. said the on December 27.
As the row intensified, Ms. Loomer and Mr. Bannon framed Mr. Musk’s views on foreign workers as an insult to Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base. They said Mr. Musk was beholden to his business interests, including Tesla’s ties to China, and questioned whether it was appropriate for someone to exert such financial influence over their party. Mr. Musk spent more than $250 million to help Mr. Trump win the election.
Mr. Musk “became addicted to the adoration he received from rallies in the run-up to Election Day,” Mr. Bannon said in a message to the New York Times. “But it quickly turned into derision when MAGA saw that he considered them lazy and mediocre.”
On December 26, X suspended Ms. Loomer’s account for 12 hours. In messages to Ms. Loomer, X said she violated her terms of service by posting an image of the Federal Election Commission’s website containing the home addresses of political donors. X prohibits the sharing of certain personal information without an individual’s permission, even if it can be obtained publicly.
Without further explanation,
The same day, Preston Parra, president of the Conservative PAC, a political action committee formed to support Mr. Trump’s policies, discovered that his X account had also lost its checkmark.
He and Ms. Loomer were among more than 50 members of a group on X linked to the conservative PAC, many of whom had criticized H-1Bs or Mr. Musk. Each member’s account lost its checkmark, suggesting it was a “coordinated” move, Mr. Parra said.
“I voted for Trump, I didn’t vote for Elon,” he said in an interview, adding that many checkmarks were reinstated last weekend. Ms. Loomer said hers was restored Monday.
Anastasia Maria Loupis, a Danish doctor with more than 1.3 million followers on Mr. Musk.
On Monday, she wrote that she would take legal action against ‘money and power’. »
In a message to The Times, Dr Loupis said there was “no valid reason for what they did to me”, adding that “it’s horrible what has happened here over the last few weeks “.
Over the weekend, Mr. Musk faced further criticism for censorship when X blocked links to an investigative article from The Spectator, a conservative British publication, about an X account that some believed Mr. Musk was secretly in control. The article suggested that the @AdrianDittmann account was run by a man in Fiji.
On Sunday, X suspended the accounts of the article’s author and two researchers who contributed to the article. X had identified the article as “potentially harmful” and messages sent to the journalist and researchers showed that
*
“This is what the old Twitter did to the New York Post” wrote Stephen L. Miller, right-wing commentator.
Matt McDonald, US editor-in-chief of The Spectator newspaper, said there was an irony in Mr Musk’s actions, especially as he was “turning the world upside down in the name of free speech”.
“Perhaps X is not the free speech paradise that its most ardent fans believe it to be,” Mr. McDonald said in a statement.
Mr Musk turned on Mr Farage after the politician objected to Mr Musk’s support for Tommy Robinson, an anti-immigration agitator with multiple criminal convictions and currently in prison for contempt of court.
“The Reform Party needs a new leader,” Mr. Musk wrote on Sunday. “Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”
Over the weekend, Mr Farage told media he had a good relationship with Mr Musk, but hinted at some disagreements. A spokeswoman for Mr Farage had no immediate comment.
Mr. Musk’s comments about Mr. Farage angered Mr. Bannon and others who see the Briton as perhaps the best way to introduce populist policies to this country.
“Nigel Farage is the greatest living Englishman, having fought for 20 years to reclaim the sober sovereignty of his country,” Mr. Bannon said in a message.
Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Mr Farage and editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, a right-wing US media outlet, responded more succinctly to Mr Musk.
“You’re a fool,” he said wrote on X, using an expletive.
