Free Speech Hero Man Elon Musk Bravely Protecting Actual Nazis From People Speaking Their Names
It's like that law where you're not allowed to out an undercover CIA operative, but for Nazis.
Ever since Elon Musk, the world’s most brilliant businessman, bought the company formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, the social media platform has been swirling the shitter. Its value has plummeted 72 percent, daily users have dropped by 20 million, and advertisers have been fleeing in droves since CEO Hairplugs opened the digital gates to a sweaty stampede of white supremacist trolls, Russian bots, anti-vaxxers, and crypto scammers. Turns out he’s a bit of a “Great Replacement theorist” himself, and Disney does not want to advertise its family cruises next to some groyper denying the Holocaust, TYVM.
But for Elon the money clearly was never the point. It’s always been about making a litterbox for himself and his fleabitten friends to shitpost their right-wing agenda.
Lest you doubt that, he’s spent the last two days putting his bitter-divorced-dad energy into defending neo-Nazi cartoonist Stonetoss, who was unmasked last week as a former security guard and IT specialist with Puerto Rican heritage named Hans Kristian Graebener of Spring, Texas, by the Anonymous Comrades Collective blog.
In its telling, the antifascist research group linked the Stonetoss cartoonist to another anonymous racist cartoonist known as Red Panels by comparing their voices from appearances on extremist podcasts. The researchers say they found an email address linked to Graebener that was used to register the Red Panels accounts on the far-right social media platform Gab. Then, the group says, it was able to match up comments made by Stonetoss with events in Graebener’s life. In one case, Graebener took a trip to Japan in 2019 with a Houston IT company he then worked for; at the same time, Stonetoss posted a picture on X of a “welcome to Japan” sign with the comment, “Finally made it to the ethnostate fellas.”
ACC even noted that Graebener, Stonetoss, and Red Panels shared an obsession with circumcision, and that Graebener discussed his penis problems (dry glans). Secure your anonymous accounts, people!
You’ve probably seen his comics, and if not, lucky you. They are more than a little hateful, putting a cartoony face on full-frontal Holocaust denial, “jokes” about trans people committing suicide, and depicting rabbis as bloodsucking vampires. The comics were even referenced in the writings of the Allen, Texas, mall shooter. Here’s a milder one:
And a very Nazi one:
Can you figure out the secret code?
Elon himself is a fan, posting this one with an altered fourth panel:
Graebener went to extraordinary lengths to keep his name hidden, even having himself removed from a family obituary. Too bad he trusted his security to the dogshit site Gab! Then, instead of denying or embracing his identity, Graebener all but confirmed it was him by taking it up with the manager:
Elon listened, and mass-suspended accounts mentioning his name, including tech journalists and Harvard Law instructor Alajandra Caraballo (who has since been reinstated). He even overnight changed Twitter/X’s terms of service to prohibit posting “the identity of an anonymous user, such as their name or media depicting them.”
That’ll come as a surprise to users such as Chaya Raichik/LibsOfTikTok, another member of the right-wing brain trust who was un-banned in the Musk Takeover. She regularly shares names, workplaces, and identities of people she accuses of pushing a “woke” agenda, including children’s librarians, teachers, and doctors, and has been linked to dozens of bomb threats. Think he’s going to actually enforce it against her?
All the attention has worked out well for Graebener, actually, and he’s on there bragging he’s more popular than ever.
He’s also selling plushies of his character, which he calls a “Flurk,” and runs a Telegram channel from his main site, where neo-Nazis meet to say the N-word together, post anti-Semitic cartoons, and extol the pleasures of rape and murder. So don’t cry for him, Argentina! Hans Kristian Graebener will be just fine.
[Anonymous Comrades Collective Blog]
Keep Wonkette going forever, if you are able!
I just went through a DEI training on things like using someone's proper pronouns. Or not trotting out for display your favorite prejudices about old people, young people, LGBTQ people, Muslims etc. RWNJ heads explode over this: they want the freedom to be assholes, with zero consequences. Up to and including Nazi stuff in word and print. Said freedum does not extend to any out-groups, who are expected to sit back and take it, but certainly not give it. Well, my workplace has low tolerance for any of that shit.
When Elon bought Twitter, after being forced to, he insisted on something I think he really managed to convince himself he wanted- that he envisioned it being a space for free speech of all kinds, and that he would mould it into that.
He convinced himself he wanted this for the same reasons he and his neo-nazi fanboys whine at others- he lives in an echo chamber, and has no recognition of the fact.
I have often stated that I think conservatives, and by extension their drabber, more aggressive cousins the fascists, really do believe that their views are those of the majority, because they choose to only consume media and associate with people which tells them that is the case. They hear and read this incessantly, so they believe it.
Musk and his dullard followers believed that if Twitter were turned into a "free speech" haven they would win, because all that was stopping everyone else from agreeing with them and lauding them as special clever boys was that they were not being heard. The left was censoring them, wherever on the the scale of right-to-centre that left happened to be.
When Musk decided this was what Twitter would be, he very quickly discovered that actually people really do hate his ideas, and by extension him. He did not like this. He very quickly backtracked on what he believed free speech actually was, banning people for mocking him, cancelling accounts that posted readily available but not necessarily flattering public information about him and so on.
It's not quite a monkey's paw, but it's in the same sort of area- he convinced himself he wanted one thing, because he thought it would give him everything he wanted- adulation, respect and, most importantly, a flood of messages telling him he's funny and cool. But what he got was what he actually said he wanted, which was... Twitter.
The Nazis will tell him he's funny and cool and they are eager to hear his ideas about eugenics. That's what he meant by free speech- every one would be free to laud him.