Twitter Initiates Mass Purge Of Prominent Alt-Right Accounts Following Trump Victory

Twitter has initiated a major purge of prominent accounts associated with the alt-right exactly a week after GOP President-elect Donald Trump’s stunning electoral victory.

One of the first and most prominent accounts caught up in the deletion is Richard Spencer, president and director of the National Policy Institute, an alt-right think tank focused on white identity and related policy issues.

Twitter removed Spencer’s verified account, formerly available at @RichardBSpencer, Tuesday evening.

“This is corporate Stalinism,” Richard Spencer told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Twitter is trying to airbrush the Alt Right out of existence. They’re clearly afraid. They will fail!”

Not only did Twitter kill Spencer’s personal account, but Twitter also suspended the National Policy Institute’s official account (@npiamerica) and its online magazine (@RadixJournal), in addition to a separate book publishing company run by Spencer called Washington Summit Publishers (@washsummit).

The ban took place the same day Spencer appeared on NPR and The Daily Show.

Numerous Twitter users expressed shock at the suspension, while others tried to come up with explanations for the purge.

Paul Town, one of the alt-right trolls responsible for feeding Olivia Nuzzi at The Daily Beast a false and outlandish narrative on how Pepe the cartoon frog came to be associated with white nationalism, was also suspended.

Other suspended users, among many, include Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers — all notable alt-right accounts.

The move by Twitter threatens to diminish the explosive power of the alt-right, which has made use of Twitter to brutally troll journalists and political pundits, in addition to supporting Trump and spreading its political philosophy in front of millions of people.

While Twitter has in the past slowly cracked down on accounts near the alt-right, such as those of WeSearchr CEO Chuck Johnson and journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, the major purge Tuesday evening of prominent alt-right accounts is so far unprecedented.

In response to the purges, many alt-right users are heading over to Gab, a Twitter substitute platform with a much more aggressive free speech policy.

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