Almost Everyone Who Organized the Capitol Riot Has Been Allowed Back on Twitter
In his new role as CEO of Twitter Elon Musk has overseen the reinstatement of the accounts of virtually all the major organizers and promoters of the violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Last week, two years to the day since the attack, Twitter reinstated the account belonging to Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser who was among the biggest promoters of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and who pushed former President Donald Trump to use the military to overturn the results.
“I want to personally thank Elon Musk for all he is doing to help protect our basic human rights, especially our freedom of speech,” Flynn wrote in his first tweet since having his account restored.
Like thousands of others, Flynn’s account was suspended in the wake of the violent attack on the Capitol, but he’s spent the last two years building his profile on fringe platforms like Telegram, and traveling the country appearing at protests and conspiracy conferences.
On Tuesday, the account belonging to Ali Alexander, the founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement and arguably the main promoter of the “Save America” rally on Jan. 6, had his account restored. This change came just hours after Alexander praised a Jan. 6-like attack on Brazil’s government buildings by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who are contesting the results of that country’s recent presidential election.
Alexander’s reinstatement is all the more egregious given that, when asked by the Jan. 6th Committee how he encouraged people to travel to Washington, D.C. in the lead up to the attack on the Capitol, he responded, “primarily Twitter.”
Since he took control of Twitter in late October, Musk has fired thousands of employees, including the majority of the teams that handle content moderation and take action to suspend accounts. Instead, Musk appears to be making some decisions on account restoration himself, and many of the Jan. 6 promoters personally have thanked Musk once their accounts were restored.
Alexander claimed in an online stream in December that had spoken directly to Musk, and predicted, “I'm going to get back on Twitter soon.”
Since returning to Twitter, Alexander has been promoting the presidential candidacy of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has been banned from the platform for a series of wildly antisemitic remarks.
Alexander has also been sharing his thoughts on the events of Jan. 6. “If I desired violence on January 6th, which I didn’t, I would’ve planned for it and I’m a damn good planner,” Alexander tweeted on Tuesday. “There wouldn’t have been a Cap left.”
The reinstatement of Flynn’s and Alexander’s accounts is just the latest indication that Musk plans to allow virtually everyone back onto Twitter. As part of a so-called “general amnesty,” Musk said in November that he would restore over 60,000 banned accounts that each has over 10,000 followers.
Since then, as well as welcoming back far-right trolls, white supremacists, racists, Islamophobes, alleged rapists, and conspiracy theorists, Musk has reinstated the accounts of virtually all of those who promoted and organized events on Jan. 6.
Chief among these of course is Trump himself, whose account was restored in November, though he has yet to use the platform again. Trump was the primary inspiration for people traveling to Washington on Jan. 6. Last year, the committee investigating Jan. 6 laid out how a Dec. 19, 2020 tweet from Trump helped galvanize his supporters to travel to the capital.
“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election,” Trump tweeted. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
This week also saw the reinstatement of the account belonging to Ron Watkins, one of the primary promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack became one of the primary vectors for election fraud conspiracies and whose Twitter posts were shared by Trump.
Also back on the platform is Roger Stone, who was filmed advocating violence in the lead up to Jan. 6 and who was present in the so-called war room at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 6 with Flynn and others, including members of the Oath Keepers militia.
Stone personally thanked Musk when his account was restored last month:
Also back on Twitter is Mike Lindell, the MyPillow owner who became the biggest funder of the Big Lie movement over the last two years and who was in Washington on Jan. 6. In December, Lindell thanked Musk for reinstating his Twitter account.
Joining Lindell and Stone on the platform once again is the far-right internet troll Baked Alaska (real name Anthime Gionet) who was sentenced on Tuesday to two months in jail for breaching the Capitol.
While the vast majority of those who were kicked off the platform because of their posts about Jan. 6 have been reinstated, there are a few who have yet to have their accounts restored.
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon, who defied a subpoena to appear before the Jan. 6 committee, doesn’t have a personal Twitter account, but his hugely popular “War Room” show does, and it remains banned.
The account, which spread election fraud conspiracies in the days after the 2020 election, was banned for calling for the beheadings of the director of the FBI and government infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Another major Jan. 6 figure was Alex Jones, who was riling up protesters with a bullhorn and was on restricted grounds during the insurrection, though he didn’t enter the Capitol itself. Jones, best known for mocking the parents of the 20 children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, took the fifth on virtually all the questions he was asked by investigators for the January 6 committee.
Jones’s account is unlikely to be reinstated any time soon: Musk said in November that the conspiracy theorist would not be allowed to return because Musk “had no mercy” for anyone who “would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”
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David Gilbert, Khareem Sudlow
