Twitter suspended the accounts of Vice Magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes and his far-right Proud Boys group Friday afternoon. The suspension came ahead of this weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally in Washington D.C.
The accounts were shut down for violating the company’s policies prohibiting violent extremist groups, Twitter said in a statement to Buzzfeed News.
McInnes co-founded Vice Magazine with Vice Media’s current president Shane Smith in 1994, but left the company in 2008. He went on to found the Proud Boys in 2016.
The group and its members self-identify as “western chauvinists,” and McInnes has in the past publicly distanced himself from white supremacists. However, Proud Boys regularly take part in far-right events, where members have been observed taking part in violence against counter-demonstrators. Before its suspension Friday, the official Twitter account of the organization featured a cover photo of a Proud Boy punching a counter-protester.
Twitter’s suspension of McInnes and the Proud Boys comes as the company is under fire for not suspending the accounts of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars media outlet even after Facebook banned Jones from its platforms.
CEO Jack Dorsey claimed that Jones had not violated any of the company’s policies, but subsequent media reports pointed to tweets that may have been in violation of Twitter’s rules.
