Sipa via AP Images

Controversial billionaire and X owner, Elon Musk, vowed to allow avowed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back onto his platform on Thursday. Fuentes, the leader of the so-called Groyper Army, has been banned from the platform since 2021 and is infamous for his violent and bigoted rhetoric.

Fuentes has long been active on the far-right in American politics and in the past has hosted a conference meant to be counter-programming to CPAC, which included speeches by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ).

Fuentes also dined with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort days after the former president announced his 2024 presidential campaign as a guest of anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West. Fuentes and West also later appeared on Alex Jones’s InfoWars where West declared his affinity for Hitler, a regular talking point of Fuentes – who has denied the Holocaust and called for non-Christians to be executed.

Musk replied to one of Fuentes’s followers on Thursday demanding to know why the “free speech absolutist” hasn’t lifted the ban. “Very well, he will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes,” Musk replied, adding:

It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering in the darkness.

Fuentes leads the Groyper Army, a loose network of alt-right figures who are vocal supporters of white nationalist ideals, often trolling mainstream conservative events to try and move conservativism more toward the far-right. Reports have recently tied a former aide in Gosar’s office to Fuentes and the Groypers.

Fuentes is known for fusing violent imagery into his neo-Nazi tirades. In January, he vowed to kill if Trump asked him to.

“I am a soldier for Donald Trump. I am part of, I serve at the personal pleasure of Donald Trump, my supreme leader. I am part of the paramilitary wing of the Trump movement. I am part of the Revolutionary Guard. I do not answer to the Pentagon. I do not answer to the civilian government. I answer. I am the pretorian guard of Donald Trump. If Donald Trump ordered me to do an extrajudicial killing, I would perform it,” Fuentes said.

Musk replied to an X user who noted allowing Fuentes back would cause an “enormous backlash,” saying:

Fate loves irony, but hates hypocrisy.

I cannot claim to be a defender of free speech, but then permanently ban someone who hasn’t violated the law, no matter how much I disagree with what they say.

This will probably cause us to lose a lot of advertisers and makes me sad, but a principle is a principle.

Here’s a sample of Fuentes’s rhetoric:

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