Musk purges X site of prominent leftist reporters, critics

Several prominent left-leaning journalists and commentators were suspended from Elon Musk’s X Tuesday with no explanation.

Among the most famous voices suspended from the platform were Intercept journalist Ken Klippenstein, MintPress News’ Alan MacLeod, podcast host Rob Rousseau and Texas Observer reporter Steven Monacelli. None of the accounts were given notice of their suspension before Tuesday.

Those four are outspoken critics of Mr. Musk, who owns X, and covered Israel’s war in Gaza.

Another left-leaning user ousted was Zei_squirrel, a prominent critic of U.S. foreign policy, especially as it concerns Israel. The move grabbed the attention of former Intercept journalist, and frequent defender of Mr. Musk, Glenn Greenwald.

This is a complete joke.@elonmusk pretends to be an advocate of free speech but he has merely created a different kind of bias—one that favours forever wars and US Imperialism.

Reinstate @zei_squirrel now! pic.twitter.com/1eKWG7ymw7

— Tiberius (@ecomarxi) January 9, 2024

“The account @Zei_squirrel was highly popular and polarizing. Its focus was on harshly criticizing US/EU foreign policy. That account survived the prior Twitter regime,” Mr. Greenwald wrote. “Their recent focus has been on criticizing Israel and [billionaire activist Bill] Ackman. Just got banned with no explanation.”

Sympathetic users were quick to complain about the bans, calling on Mr. Musk to uphold his supposed dedication to free expression on X.

“This is Orwellian and alarming,” leftist commentator Nathan J. Robinson wrote on X. “’Free speech’ does not mean ’free speech for those I agree with.’ It means allowing dissident viewpoints to flourish. It’s deeply troubling to see this kind of censorship become so common on here.”

No exact reason has been given by X for the suspensions, though some of the banned users implied that their recent coverage and criticism of Mr. Ackman’s plagiarism claims got them booted.