Twitter suspends dozens of accounts associated with white nationalist Identitarian movement

Twitter said it suspended dozens of accounts associated with the Identitarian movement, a white nationalist ideology whose adherents oppose multiculturalism in Europe.

More than 50 accounts connected to the movement were suspended from the social media service Friday after the publication of a report about its proliferation on the platform, NBC News first reported Friday.

“The accounts in question were suspended for violating our policies in relation to violent extremism,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Washington Times.

Published earlier this week, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’s report said its researchers found scores of Identitarian accounts services including Twitter.

Identitarian groups including Generation Identity, which started in France and has spread across the Atlantic, are “rampant” on platforms such as Twitter, the report said, adding that adherents to the so-called “Great Replacement” — a conspiracy theory at the center of the ideology which essentially purports White are being replaced by non-Whites through immigration — has inspired six terrorist attacks worldwide since October 2018.

“It would be inconceivable for social media platforms to allow ISIS propaganda to spread and grow unchecked, but that is exactly what is happening with Identitarianism,” reads part of the report released Tuesday by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, or GPAHE, a U.S-based non-profit group.

Researchers had found 67 accounts on Twitter for Generation Identity chapters in 14 countries, as well as 25 accounts belonging to various Identitarians, according to the report.

Twitter later confirmed it suspended those accounts, including the one used by Martin Sellner, the head of the Austrian chapter of Generation Identity, and another belonging to Schild en Vrienden, a self-described “Flemish nationalist youth” group.

“It is another act of censorship of freedom of speech,” Mr. Sellner reacted over the phone, NBC reported. “We are the only group really talking about mass immigration and population replacement. The mainstream has no answers to our question: Why should we accept becoming a minority in our own countries?”