Phony free-speech advocate Elon Musk bans prominent left wing Twitter accounts

Right-wingers hail Elon Musk as a champion of free speech. He frequently boasts of his opposition to censorship in all forms and claims to defend the right of individuals to express their opinions, no matter how controversial they may be. In reality, Musk does not support free expression as much as he pretends to and is, in fact, opposed to its principles.

In Musk's view, free speech means spreading misinformation and personal attacks without consequence. Free speech that he finds offensive is, in his mind, not free speech. It's "spam," and he makes a habit of suspending the Twitter accounts of people he disagrees with.

From The Intercept:

Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter's complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations.

As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern California, has also been suspended.

Among the other prominent accounts suspended were the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, an antifascist group that provides armed security for LGBTQ+ events in North Texas, and CrimethInc, an anarchist collective that has published and distributed anarchist and anti-authoritarian zines, books, posters, and podcasts since the mid-1990s.

Elon paid $44 billion for his toy, and he gets to use it as he sees fit, including tweeting lies about his admiration of free speech.