Elon Musk restores the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax

• Conspiracy theorist was booted off the platform in 2018 over his campaign to prove the deaths of 20 children at the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax
• X owner Musk cited his feelings towards his own children for refusing to allow him back on 
• But he changed his mind after seeing the results of an X poll on Saturday

Elon Musk restores the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.

Numerous Twitter accounts linked to Alex Jones were permanently suspended from Twitter in 2018 and he has not been on the platform since. 

The X owner insisted in November last year that he would not let the conspiracist back on the platform citing his own sense of loss after the birth of his own child.

‘My firstborn child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat. I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame,’ he wrote.

But he changed his mind, citing free speech, after nearly 2 million X users voted 70:30 to let the far-right radio host re-access his account.

‘The people have spoken and so it shall be,’ Musk posted.  

Elon Musk restores the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax

Elon Musk restores the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after holding a public vote – despite repeatedly calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax

Jones claimed for a decade that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, in which 20 children and six staff members were gunned down, was a hoax.

He finally admitted it was no hoax shortly before he was ordered to pay more than $1bn in compensation to the victims’ families after losing a pair of highly publicized court battles which he plans to appeal.

The decision to allow him back on the platform sparked fury from other users.

‘I hope everyone remembers that Elon Musk is letting a man who owes $1.1 BILLION to Sandy Hook parents, even after trying to weasel out of it through bankruptcy, for his lies back on social media,’ tweeted mental health campaigner Ryan Shead.

‘X is about to be filled with a lot more hate.’ 

‘Sandy Hook families should sue Musk for propping up the propagandist who terrorized their families,’ added singer Ricky Davila.

Musk’s first child, Nevada Alexander, was born in 2002, two years after Musk and his first wife Justine married. He died from sudden infant death syndrome aged 10 weeks, after he was put down for a nap.

Piers Morgan was among those  who begged Musk not to change his mind.

‘Elon, you were right the first time about Alex Jones,’ he tweeted on Saturday. 

‘Remember what he did to those poor Sandy Hook parents, purely to trade off their terrible grief with his vile lies…. and please don’t let him back.’ 

Hours after 26 people were shot and killed at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, Jones began spouting false claims that the killings didn’t happen.

He claimed that Sandy Hooks was an ‘operation’ engineered by the government to take away Second Amendment rights and promote stricter gun control laws. 

Relatives of the victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones´ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being ‘crisis actors’ whose children never existed. 

Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones at a defamation trial last year in lawsuits over repeated promotion of the false theory.

But the families are yet to see a penny of the money that juries awarded them.

Musk tweeted that he continues to ‘vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook’.

‘But we are a platform that believes in freedom of speech are we not?

‘If the people vote him back on, this will be bad for X financially, but principle matter more than money.’   

After Musk announced the poll results Morgan tweeted ironically: ‘Great to have this calm rational human being back on here.’

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