This reporting is featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
Was former Kanye West confidant Nick Fuentes, an unabashed Holocaust denier and white supremacist, evading his Twitter ban with an obvious burner account? It sure looks like it.
In recent days, a user named @grimaceshake01 popped up to promote the antisemitic #BantheADL campaign boosted by Elon Musk. Aside from overt references to the “Groyper Army,” Fuentes’ name for his followers, @grimaceshake01 shared and engaged with tweets specifically claiming the account was his. And, of course, it posted aggressively racist and antisemitic content.
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Last week, the account hosted a Twitter Spaces about the push to boot the ADL from X (formerly known as Twitter). The main speaker was unmistakably Fuentes, and a recording of that hour-plus event was shared on his Telegram channel.
Shortly after Confider reached out to the social-media platform to ask about Fuentes apparently skirting the ban, @grimaceshake01 was quickly suspended.
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Prior to that, Fuentes had admitted he was on the site: “I’ve been back on—uh, my friend has been back on Twitter,” he said on his Saturday web show, sporting a shit-eating grin. “This friend of mine who represents me in some ways has been back on Twitter, and he’s been having a great time.”
Just before the apparent burner was axed, @grimaceshake01 had been quoting other conservatives’ 9/11-related tweets by telling them to “GOOGLE DANCING ISRAELIS,” peddling an antisemitic conspiracy theory. “I wonder what happened,” Fuentes coyly wrote on Telegram, acknowledging @grimaceshake01 was banned.
While Musk let thousands of previously banned far-right accounts back on the site after purchasing it last year, he ended up booting Fuentes in January—one day after reversing his suspension—for expressing love for Hitler and defending Ye’s antisemitic rants.
Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Fuentes appeared to reveal that he had another burner account on Monday, posting our email to him on an account called @birthdayshake1 and reacting to a tweet about his ban evasion.
“How is this news ive done this like 50 times,” Fuentes tweeted from the new account.
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