American broadcaster Alex Jones was reinstated to X, formerly known as Twitter, this weekend after the platform’s CEO held an online poll to approve his return.
“The people have spoken,” wrote Elon Musk, “and so it shall be.”
Jones’ first post since his 2018 ban was a “repost” of social media influencer Andrew Tate.
“Were so back,” Tate wrote.
The decision marks a reversal from Musk’s declaration in November 2020 that Jones would not be allowed to return to the platform.
Legacy press outlets were incredulous over the “conspiracy theorist’s” online comeback after the commentator was ordered to pay families of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting more than $1 billion in damages.
“Elon Musk restores account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X,” headlined The Washington Post.
“Elon Must Brings Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Back to X,” read another in The New York Times.
“Elon Musk restores X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones,” declared NBC News.
“‘The people have spoken’: Elon Musk restores the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after poll,” a headline from CNN read.
If peddling conspiracies were what it took to get banned from social media, the aforementioned outlets would have been nuked from the internet long ago. But this is not the case. Despite routinely spreading lies, The Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, and CNN operate with a massive institutional advantage. Legacy media is propped up and protected by the government, academia, and Silicon Valley and continues to lie with impunity. Did any of these outlets ever discover those Russian pee tapes featuring former President Donald Trump? What about the smoking gun evidence to indict the Republican president as a covert Kremlin agent? Or any evidence to plausibly implicate Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a serial gang rapist.
There’s a reason American distrust in the corporate press is higher than ever.
[READ: Don’t Let The Washington Post Get Away With Memory-Holing Its Anti-Kavanaugh Campaign]
Jones wasn’t deplatformed over sharing false information, though. Jones was removed from Twitter in 2018 merely because he yelled at CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy.
“I was taken down not because we lie but because we tell the truth and because we were popular,” Jones said on his own program following the altercation. “And then when we ran into Oliver Darcy, who is the secret police captain, who admits he goes around and gets people like Infowars taken off other platforms, because we confronted that monster that has abused us and lied about us, attacked our speech, because of that they took us down.”
In other words, Jones got taken down because he yelled at CNN.
