Internet platform X has suspended a number of Identitarian Movement accounts shortly after the company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, met with the Anti-Defamation League. The bans come despite Elon Musk, the owner of X, criticizing the ADL for attempting to destroy X and squeeze it out of ad revenue.
One of the main Identitarian Movement accounts on Twitter, which remains unsuspended, pointed to the banned accounts in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland: “This is unacceptable, Elon Musk. You promised us freedom of speech on this platform, no totalitarian censorship like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is propagating.”
The account also pointed to the solidarity campaign these accounts were running to draw awareness to recent house raids on identitarian activists.
The banning of the accounts also comes after a meeting just a few days earlier between CEO of X Linda Yaccarino and Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL. Greenblatt had described the conversation as “productive.”
“I had a very frank + productive conversation with @LindayaX yesterday about @X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform,” Greenblatt wrote on X on Aug. 30. “I appreciated her reaching out and I’m hopeful the service will improve. @ADL will be vigilant and give her and @ElonMusk credit if the service gets better… and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”
In response to Greenblatt’s post, Irish nationalist Keith Woods started a campaign under the hashtag #BanTheADL which began trending on Twitter with tens of thousands of posts and support from major conservative figures. Musk, who liked two of Woods’ posts related to the campaign, also responded to the topic, writing: “The ADL has done a lot of good work in prior decades, but has been overzealous in recent years & hijacked by woke mind virus.”
Musk also claimed that the ADL nearly killed off Twitter by choking it off financially and that revenue remains down due to the ADL’s pressure on advertisers.
Nevertheless, the bans meted out to European identitarian accounts may indicate that censorship-hungry activists such as the ADL are getting their way after all.
The spokesman for Austria’s Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, warned against viewing the account bans for the Identity Movement as an isolated incident on X.
“How (the Identity Movement) is treated is always a good ‘gauge’ of overall development. After Musk’s takeover, there was a period of a few months when fewer bans were made. Now, directly after a major raid, there was a concerted firefighting operation,” he wrote on X.
The ADL has been accused of promoting nationalist, identitarian politics for the state of Israel and Jewish people, while simultaneously working against White Europeans from expressing any collectivist or nativist identity.
For example, in a guide for pro-Israel activists on the ADL’s website, it argues that the idea of “bi-nationalism” in Israel “is unworkable given current realities and historic animosities,” and amounts to “nothing less than an indirect attempt to bring about an end to the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
In another post since deleted from the ADL, the organization wrote: “With historically high birth rates among the Palestinians, and a possible influx of Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world, Jews would quickly be a minority within a bi-national state, thus likely ending any semblance of the equal representation and protections.”
Tucker Carlson also quoted a section directly from the ADL website, which has since been deleted, on his previous Fox News show. The ADL’s text outlined identitarian beliefs for the state of Israel, reading: “It is unrealistic and unacceptable, to expect the State of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and nationalist identity and become a vulnerable minority within what was once its own territory.”
Identitarian movements face serious hurdles in European countries. The French branch of Generation Identity, for example, participated in numerous court battles before the group was banned entirely. Remix News conducted a number of interviews with group leaders, including Thaïs d’Escufon, who told us she was a part of the identitarian movement to preserve her homeland but her group on ever partook in peaceful civil disobedience.
“I refuse to become a minority in France. It is unimaginable and unbearable for me to think that the French could become a minority in their own country within a few decades,” she stated.
