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Tribune News Service
Entertainment
Adam Graham

Jack White sounds off again on Musk, calls Ye 'anti-Semite egomaniac'

Detroit-bred rocker Jack White is firing back at Elon Musk after the Twitter owner's overnight suspension of Ye's account on the social media platform.

"So Elon, how's that 'free speech' thing working out?" White wrote in an Instagram post Friday morning.

To quickly catch up: White pulled his record label, Third Man Records, off Twitter last month after Musk reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump. "Shame on you for giving trump and other professional liars the platform you are now in control of, and shame on anyone who does," White wrote in an Instagram post at the time.

On Thursday, Ye — the rapper formerly known as Kanye West — appeared on Alex Jones' "InfoWars" program and praised Adolf Hitler. He followed up his appearance with a series of inflammatory tweets, including one that positioned a swastika inside the Star of David, and was in turn suspended from Twitter by Musk for violating the service's rules against incitement to violence.

White on Friday took to Instagram to call out Musk over his Twitter practices.

"Oh, I see, so you have to CHOOSE who gets free speech and who doesn't then?" he wrote. "What kind of crybaby liberal suspends someone's free speech? Hmm...."

He went on to point out "conspiracy liar" Alex Jones is also banned from the platform.

"So you're learning that these folks incite violence and hatred but trump... DOESN'T? Hmmm," he wrote.

"Or is it that liar jones, and anti-Semite egomaniac kanye can't provide tax breaks for billionaires the way the former president could? Or that maybe the controller of this 'free speech' is insulted personally? Or that just maybe, there needs to be, oh I don't know, RULES and REGULATIONS or else you breed chaos?"

White is one of several artists who have left Twitter following Musk's takeover of the platform and his reinstatement of Trump's twitter account. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has also deactivated his account from the social media network.

Musk announced he was reinstating Trump after running a public poll on Twitter. Trump has yet to rejoin the service.

White has a history of action against Trump. In 2016, White and Third Man sold T-shirts with the phrase "Icky Trump," a play on the White Stripes' song "Icky Thump," after Trump used the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" in a campaign video.

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