On Sunday, Elon Musk explained why he decided Alex Jonesโ account will not be reinstated. Jones was permanently banned in 2018 over โabusive behaviorโ towards a CNN reporter and not, despite public perception, for statements relating to the authenticity of the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre – that took place six years before Jones was banned.
Back in 2018, in Washington DC, Jones confronted Republican Senator Marco Rubio, interrupting his conversation with reporters. Jones called Senator Rubio a โfrat boy.โ Jones later confronted CNN’s Oliver Darcy, calling him a โrat,โ a โsociopath,โ โa possum that crawled out of the rear end of a dead cow,โ and โHitler Youth.โ The interaction was live-streamed on Periscope, a streaming app owned by Twitter, that has since been shut down. Twitter suspended Jones following the incident.
However, the reason Alex Jones will apparently not be allowed back on the platform, at least according to new CEO Elon Musk, has nothing to do with the reason he was banned and is actually about decade-old comments Jones made questioning the authenticity of the Sandy Hook school massacre in which 26 lives were lost, the majority of which were children. Jones was successfully sued by the families of the victims.
โAlex fucked up with Sandy Hook. He admitted that and apologized,โ entrepreneur Kim Dotcom wrote on Twitter.
โHe also got a lot of โconspiracy theoriesโ right. If serial liars like Biden and Trump are allowed on Twitter then Alex Jones should be allowed too. Please reconsider in the interest of real free speech.โ
Musk responded by explaining why Jones was not going to be reinstated: โMy firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.โ
Jason Calacanis, a venture capitalist and friend of Musk, who is in part assisting with Muskโs direction for Twitter, also explained why Jones would not be allowed back.
โAlex Jones is pure evil and the easiest case for any platform to adjudicateโin my opinion (and thatโs all it is folks!),โ Calacanis wrote on Twitter. โ$1.4b in judgments across multiple jurisdictions in the United States, where speech almost always default wins over victim suffering.โ
Some of the key figures that have been allowed back on Twitter include former President Donald Trump, comedian Kathy Griffin, and Kanye West. However, Trump said he would not be using Twitter, preferring his own social media platform Truth Social.