From CrimethInc.
On November 25, at the urging of a far-right troll, Elon Musk banned the @crimethinc Twitter account. Musk’s goal in acquiring Twitter had nothing to do with “free speech”—it was a partisan move intended to silence opposition while opening up space for the far right. This underscores the hazards of depending on corporate social media platforms.
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On November 24, a white nationalist who speaks at conferences alongside Richard Spencer posted a tweet approving of a wave of bans on Twitter. Elon Musk responded favorably to him, and far-right troll Andy Ngo answered Musk, specifically requesting that the @crimethinc account be banned from Twitter. Within a couple hours, Musk had fulfilled Ngo’s request.1
The @crimethinc account on Twitter dates from May 2008. The account has never been suspended or received a warning throughout fourteen years of Twitter administrations. Ngo was not bringing any new material to Musk’s attention, but reposting years-old screenshots. Other Twitter users were banned under similar circumstances today, as well.
Musk’s rhetoric about making Twitter a venue for “free speech” was a lie. Musk bought Twitter in order to impose his agenda on what he saw as the most influential corporate social media platform remaining outside the control of people like himself. Like Donald Trump, Musk brazenly says the opposite of what he means, and his supporters see this as a show of strength.
At the same time that he welcomes Donald Trump, white nationalists, and fascists back to Twitter, Musk is purging those who stand in the way of their authoritarian aspirations. Make no mistake, the point of silencing our voices is to prepare the way for other kinds of violence.
A part of the ruling class has always aligned with the far right and fascists. In this regard, Elon Musk is treading a path already worn by Henry Ford, promoting reactionaries who explicitly aim to attack broad sections of the population and popular movements. The rest of the ruling class, including centrists and liberals, will benefit from the forcible removal of radical voices from public discourse without having to get their hands dirty.
This is possible, in part, because the majority of employees at Twitter have resigned or been fired. The remaining employees are disproportionately dependent on their employment at Twitter for visas to remain in the United States—a grim example of how borders serve to impose the agenda of the ruling class on workers, even relatively wealthy workers.
When Musk says he’s building Twitter 2.0, he is referencing the transition from the original iteration of the internet—message boards, indymedia, a more or less open and participatory model—to Web 2.0, in which all interactions are shaped by the algorithms of a few tech overlords. Their goal is to determine what it is possible to imagine as well as what it is possible to say or do. What has already happened on Facebook and Instagram and is now occurring on Twitter is the inevitable consequence of increasingly widespread dependence on corporate media platforms.
In response, we encourage you to diminish your dependence on Twitter and other corporate media platforms, to explore other sources of information and means of communication. We urge you to mobilize against the far right on every terrain they attempt to seize and to continue organizing against capitalism, state violence, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. We invite you to talk with your friends and neighbors about what it would take to create a world in which a single billionaire would not be able to determine how ordinary people can communicate.
Let’s meet in a space where no algorithms can determine what we are able to dream or create together.

I can confirm my account was suspended after Elon Musk was told about me by far-right extremists who have tried to get me murdered numerous times. I was also placed on the Nazi-made “antifa” list that is being used by bots to mass report accounts that oppose fascism. My last tweets highlighted the plot to remove my account by abusing the report system as well as certified evidence that Andy Ngo was knowingly friends with famous pedophile Amos Yee. I also highlighted the Nazi past of Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell. I will not stop my work of exposing fascists despite the organized campaigns to silence and assassinate me.
“When we say abolish Twitter, we don’t mean beg politicians to regulate them. We mean take grassroots action to prevent them from continuing to do harm—until flowers grow in the wreckage of their social media system.”
“Abolishing Twitter means developing ways to communicate and address audiences that do not depend on concentrating all coercive and communicative force into unaccountable institutions. It is a project that extends from our interpersonal and digital relationships to mass action against state and corporate violence.”
-
Just this morning, at 9:21 am, we received an email from notify@twitter.com establishing that our account was not in violation of Twitter policy, reading “Twitter is required by German law to provide notice to users who are reported by people from Germany via the Network Enforcement Act reporting flow. We have received a complaint regarding your account, @crimethinc […] We have investigated the reported content and have found that it is not subject to removal under the Twitter Rules (https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311) or German law.” This suggests that the decision to ban our account was dictated by Musk himself immediately thereafter. ↩
Comments
There's a really strong
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 07:29
There's a really strong assertion that Musk himself was responsible for this. Is there anything else to go on to show that's the case?
What "assertion"? "Is there
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 09:58
In reply to There's a really strong by anon (not verified)
What "assertion"? "Is there anything else to go on"? There are fucking actual tweets that show the progression of events. Are you just dumb or is this your lame attempt at 'fake news' tactics?
Likely some Far Right regular
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 10:36
In reply to What "assertion"? "Is there by anon (not verified)
Likely some Far Right regular who thinks Musk's New Twitter is so "based"...
I don't see what's surprising in the removal of CrimethInc, as Musk is into bed with many ultra-conservatives and racists. Probably the most dangerous man in the US these days, as he literally unraveled a red carpet to Kanye, Trump and other Far Right figures back into Twitter, while flushing any accounts of people critical of him. Dude has billions, runs his own industry, is above governments, beyond reach of most people... and fucking named himself king. What can go wrong?
Initial poster here. Sorry if
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 10:54
In reply to What "assertion"? "Is there by anon (not verified)
Initial poster here. Sorry if I missed it, but where does Elon Musk himself say something to the effect of "I banned Crimethinc"? Hell, where does a second party even say "I talked to Elon and he is banning Crimethinc."
It sucks, yes, but it's also a little ingenious to claim the man at the top himself is directly responsible for the band. If 150 years of analyzing capitalism has taught us anything, it's that there are lower down functionaries who carry out most of the stuff we detest, at the behest of the man up top.
Your trolling is weak af.
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 11:11
In reply to Initial poster here. Sorry if by anon (not verified)
Your trolling is weak af. There are pictures on twitter which might be better since you don't reads so good.
El*n fanboys are so weird and
anon (not verified) Sun, 11/27/2022 - 14:55
In reply to Initial poster here. Sorry if by anon (not verified)
El*n fanboys are so weird and obsessive, I *knew* they were going to pull up here, lol.
Look, this is bad. We’re talking about a major platform that (like all of them) has always been too easy on the right, now run by someone whose whole point in buying it is to actively help bigots and deplatform their opponents. The best thing that might be said is that it could soon wind up a boomery ghost town like F*ceb**k or any of the hate speech Twitter clones already out there that have never attracted anyone outside the weirdo far right.
Two-steps behavior of bigots:
anon (not verified) Sun, 11/27/2022 - 18:54
In reply to El*n fanboys are so weird and by anon (not verified)
1- be dismissive 'til you stop listening.
2- "He's a Neonazi? So what!?"
pretty sad that a mild
anonymous (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 10:47
pretty sad that a mild request for evidence or back up to a claim gets immediate aggressive reactions.
sign of the times, obviously.
sure, concern trolling is a thing. so is kneejerk jacketing.
signed, not the initial poster
How taste photographic
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 11:10
In reply to pretty sad that a mild by anonymous (not verified)
How taste photographic evidence peepee, concerntroll? https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1596143151357599744
Pretty sad that people don't
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 11:48
In reply to pretty sad that a mild by anonymous (not verified)
Pretty sad that people don't read the things they copy and paste and bitch about.
Intriguing turn of events.
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 12:08
Intriguing turn of events. Here is a quick timeline:
#1.) CrimethInc. writes Evasion book
#2.) CrimethInc. publishes text by Moxie "anarchist superhacker" about MIM attk / proteck
#3.) Moxie gets mucho buckwheats from working at Twitter
#4.) Elon reads Evasion and declares themselves an anarchist
#4.) Elon buys Twitter and asks Moxie to come back
#5.) Elon bans CrimethInc. from Twitter (even though they are budz with Moxie and Moxie basically is CrimethInc. on main
What will happen now? Will Moxie private message dear Elon about letting their homies who wrote Evasion back on the bird app? Check out my tootz to find out moar!
#6.) 12:08 is so out of touch
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 13:13
In reply to Intriguing turn of events. by anon (not verified)
#6.) 12:08 is so out of touch from anarchist milieus it's embarrassing
#7.) Grimes laughs at Elon's tiny pee pee publicly
#8.) Elon launches war on anti-fascists
#9.) Wayne Price like war and supports whomever NATO is providing weapons to.
#10.) thecollective copys and pastes articles and snarks in the comments anonymously
#11.) Biden nukes Turtle Island while having an argument on the toilet with Cornpop
#12.) LBC makes a pamphlet of what unfolded but nobody reads it.
#13.) Anarchy!
You forgot
anon (not verified) Sat, 11/26/2022 - 13:36
In reply to #6.) 12:08 is so out of touch by anon (not verified)
You forgot
#14.) Elon invites Wayne Price to his luxury island to plan the invasion and conquest of Ukraine and to crown Wayne as the new King of Ukraine.
;)
maybe anarchists will tweet
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2022 - 13:55
maybe anarchists will tweet to each other using one-time pads from now on, same with memes, each meme would require a separate pad and image list
Javasnitches tho.
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2022 - 18:12
In reply to maybe anarchists will tweet by anon (not verified)
I don't recall any pad that doesn't use them.
It must have slipped your
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2022 - 21:01
In reply to Javasnitches tho. by anon (not verified)
It must have slipped your mind that OTPs are not the same thing as the [Ether]Pads you're thinking of. Clearly you are a 1337 h4x0r so don't worry, your estreet cred is safe with us.
Hopefully this is sufficient length and depth of comment for the sad moderator that deleted my previous comment pointing out the oversight.
Excelsior!
goddammit, it was a joke.
anon (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2022 - 21:02
In reply to Javasnitches tho. by anon (not verified)
goddammit, it was a joke. pads used to be made of paper and people used to drop them off in irl places
“ The "pad" part of the name comes from early implementations where the key material was distributed as a pad of paper, allowing the current top sheet to be torn off and destroyed after use. For concealment the pad was sometimes so small that a powerful magnifying glass was required to use it. The KGB used pads of such size that they could fit in the palm of a hand,[8] or in a walnut shell.[9] To increase security, one-time pads were sometimes printed onto sheets of highly flammable nitrocellulose, so that they could easily be burned after use.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
Twitter gets the last word
I am Makhno (not verified) Tue, 11/29/2022 - 05:52
What goes around comes around. Radical leftists who have long cheered the fight against freedom of expression in social media for those whose opinions they don't like are now seeing that same tactic levelled against them. If anarchists are looking for alternatives to these high-tech - and highly-vulnerable - forms of networking, they will have to think small. Word of mouth, phone trees, a focus on printed literature and posters, etc. If low-tech isn't their thing, however, perhaps they should consider embracing freedom of expression as a fundamental principle, especially for those whose views they criticize the most.
CRIIIIIIINGE!
anon (not verified) Tue, 11/29/2022 - 08:33
In reply to Twitter gets the last word by I am Makhno (not verified)
I am Makhno comes out as a freeze peach supporter? A Musk overlord worshiper? A person who thinks printing on dead trees is "low-tech?"
I'm not surprised.
Are "[r]adical leftists who have long cheered the fight against freedom of expression" really a thing or maybe just in I am Makhno land?
CRiiiiiNGE!
Twitter is becoming BirdChan
Luke from DC (not verified) Thu, 12/01/2022 - 02:55
Some on Mastodon have created a new name.for Elom Musk's Twitter: BirdChan. In the past Twitter was often called "Birdsite" on Mastodon but now that is changing to BirdChan. Twitter is also being widely compared to Gab.
This is for several reasons:
1: the wholesale return of formerly banned far-right accounts, Qanon and Trump included
2:An ongoing mass purge of progressive and leftist Twitter accounts
3:The fact that Elon Musk is reported by the Intercept to be soliciting advice from Any Ngo on which accounts to ban.
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