Twitter accounts linked to the far-right white nationalist movement America First faced a crackdown on the social media platform on Wednesday.
The profile @OfclAFUpdates, the official channel for America First announcements, was suspended, while the man behind the America First podcast, Nick Fuentes, was hit with an account lockdown that restricticted him from tweeting for the next week.
Jaden McNeil, who has voiced support for the white nationalist Groypers movement —a loose collective of activists supporting Fuentes—was also suspended. When he was formally enrolled at Kansas State University, McNeil ran America First Students.
The exact reasons for the crackdown on the three accounts was not immediately clear. Newsweek has contacted Twitter for comment.
According to a screenshot posted to his Telegram on Wednesday, Fuentes' Twitter was "temporarily limited" without a specific reason being provided by the company. A notice said he could send messages, but was forbidden from tweeting or retweeting.
Fuentes wrote in a Telegram comment: "It's a totally coordinated purge of AF [America First] people. We knew this would happen, already happened everywhere else." In his last available Twitter post, he directed followers to make Telegram and Gab accounts.
McNeil acknowledged the Twitter enforcement on Telegram and Gab, sharing an image of a notice that said he had been suspected for violating its rules against "promoting or encouraging suicide or self harm." The offending tweet was not referenced.
Fuentes shared a screenshot of McNeil's account on his personal Twitter profile.
— Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes) March 31, 2021
Pro-Donald Trump activist McNeil wrote on Instagram: "We had a good run boys! I'm now banned from Twitter, TikTok, PayPal, Venmo, Streamlabs, and Stream elements."
Newsweek has contacted Fuentes via email. Jaden McNeil could not immediately be reached for comment.
Groypers, sometimes referred to as the Groyper Army, do not have a formal leadership structure but are believed to broadly support Fuentes and his far-right stances.
The name was taken from a meme that surfaced on 4chan in 2017 that was a variation of the Pepe the Frog cartoon that became popular in far-right circles.
Prominent Jewish civil rights group The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says in a fact sheet that people who identify with the group "hold racist and antisemitic views" but have tried to create distance from the term "white supremacists" by describing themselves as Christian conservatives.
The fact sheet adds: "To the Groypers, 'America First' means that the U.S. should close its borders, bar immigrants, oppose globalism and promote 'traditional' values like Christianity and oppose 'liberal' values such as feminism and LGBTQ+ rights."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights advocacy non-profit, has noted Fuentes previously spoke about the idea of killing U.S. lawmakers on January 4, 2021, two days prior to the deadly storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
On an America First show livestreamed at the time, Fuentes said: "What are we going to do to them? What can you and I do to a state legislator besides kill them? We should not do that. I'm not advising that but I mean what else can you do, right? Nothing."
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Jason Murdock is a staff reporter for Newsweek.
Based in London, Murdock previously covered cybersecurity for the International Business Times UK ... Read more
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