Elon Musk, a self-declared “free speech absolutist,” has been accused of suspending the account of a group organizing voters to support Vice President Kamala Harris.
Leaders of the newly formed Democratic outreach group “White Dudes for Harris” hit back at technocrat Musk after the group’s X (formerly Twitter) account was temporarily suspended Monday night, following a wildly successful fundraiser earlier that evening.
More than 190,000 people tuned into a massive virtual call, reportedly raising more than $4 million for Harris’s campaign. The group had originally hoped for a turnout of 10,000 people, and to raise $50,000, a milestone they passed before the call even began, according to the organizers.
There were appearances from a few white guys who are reportedly in contention to be Harris’s vice presidential nominee, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.
Shortly after the call ended, the group’s organizers said they had received notice that their account on X, which Musk owns, had been suspended for supposedly “violating our rules against evading suspension.”
“Seems like @elonmusk might be a little scared,” wrote Ross Morales Rocketto, one of the group’s organizers in a post on X, adding a screenshot of the email.
Mike Nellis, another organizer, also posted a screenshot of the email. “We scared @elonmusk and @DonaldJTrumpJr so much tonight they suspended our account and won’t let us back in,” he wrote. “These guys are running scared of the success we’ve had tonight, but we’re not going to quit. More coming tomorrow (unless they shut down my account too!)”
The group’s account was restored by Tuesday morning.
It’s not clear that Musk was involved in the account’s suspension, but Rocketto and Nellis aren’t all that crazy to think that the X CEO might be behind it.
Musk endorsed Trump earlier this month and has since been increasingly outspoken about the presidential race online, repeatedly claiming that President Joe Biden has been “importing” immigrants into the country to illegally vote for Harris. Last week, Musk posted a parody ad for Harris, which used an A.I.-generated version of her voice to call Harris the “ultimate diversity hire,” raising concerns about the use of A.I. in political campaigns.
While Musk boosted the conspiracy theory that Google was suppressing answers about Donald Trump, many have accused him of making it difficult to follow Harris’s campaign’s X account in the days after she became the presumptive nominee.
