Far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes had his Twitter account restored by the platform on Tuesday, but he's apparently already been subjected to another suspension.
Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who caused controversy for former President Donald Trump when he joined Kanye West for a dinner with the Republican leader at Mar-a-Lago in November, received a permanent ban from Twitter in 2021. A Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek at the time that the ban was for "repeated violations" of the company's rules.
It took all of 24 hours for Nick Fuentes to be suspended from Twitter. pic.twitter.com/uS7VS415sw
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 25, 2023
Fuentes was allowed back on Twitter on Tuesday, and he celebrated the news by posting an image of the cartoon character Patrick Star from the show SpongeBob SquarePants pushing open a set of doors.
The image and the rest of Fuentes' account was not available as of publication time. On Wednesday, a notice was attached to Fuentes' official @NickJFuentes account that stated it had been suspended. No other information has been made available for why Fuentes was again punished by the platform.
News of Fuentes' reinstatement on Tuesday was met with the backlash against Twitter CEO Elon Musk from users of the platform.
Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, also denounced the move in a statement provided to Newsweek.
"There is no excuse or reason why someone as antisemitic as Nick Fuentes has been rewarded with exponential reach to spew his bigotry on Twitter," Rez wrote. "Someone who's been known to incite real acts of violence and spread misinformation about a marginalized group of people should never be given a platform, period."
Speculation for why Fuentes was suspended includes that his account was subjected to mass flagging by people angry about his reinstatement. Other Twitter users also reported that he made comments on Twitter Spaces on Tuesday about Adolf Hitler and domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber.
Nick Fuentes is back on Twitter and talked up the "salient point" the Unabomber made in Twitter Spaces tonight.
— Jay McKenzie (@jamesfourm) January 25, 2023
This was followed by a rant against his enemies in which he said, "Israel did 9/11, and we love Hitler."
Why was this guy reinstated again?
On his Telegram channel, Fuentes addressed his suspension by encouraging his followers to tweet #FREENICKFUENTES and tag Musk, Ella Irwin (Twitter's head of trust and safety) and Esther Crawford (Twitter's director of product management).
Fuentes asked his fans to "be nice" in their messages to Twitter.