‘Stop the Steal’ Scoundrel Ali Alexander Reinstated to Twitter Day After Praising Brazilian Riot

The timing could hardly be more troubling. Following the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and just hours after copy-cat rioting in Brazil that he cheered on, Ali Alexander has been reinstated to Twitter.

Alexander is an acolyte of Roger Stone, the political dirty trickster and Trump-pardoned felon, and an ally of Trump himself. He was a key organizer of the Big-Lie-promoting “Stop the Steal” rallies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and was instrumental in drawing massive crowds to Washington, D.C., on the day of the Jan. 6 insurrection. In advance of Jan. 6, he’d tweeted incendiary rhetoric including “1776 is always an option” and warned that if efforts to challenge the Electoral College vote count were stymied in Congress, “everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building.” The day before the riot, he lead a D.C. crowd in a chant of “Victory or death!“

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In the aftermath of the violence, Alexander deflected responsibility — insisting he did not deserve “an iota of blame” and arguing, “I didn’t incite anything.” But he was permanently suspended from Twitter on Jan. 10, 2021.

In a pinned Truth Social post, Alexander now takes credit as “the main organizer of the January 6th protests” that he conspiratorially alleges were “hijacked by dark elements of the Deep State.” Alexander has faced no criminal repercussions for his role in Jan. 6, but his centrality to the events of that day is reflected in the fact that his name appears more than 100 times in the final report of the Jan. 6 Committee, which highlights his call for the president’s loyalists to transform Washington, D.C., into “Fort Trump.” (The transcript of Alexander’s deposition by the committee can be found here.)

There’s no evidence that Alexander has toned down his explosive rhetoric. In fact, his reinstatement to Twitter follows just hours after his cheering of this weekend’s riot in Brazil, where thousands of backers of defeated president Jair “Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro broke into and desecrated federal buildings in Brasilia in a direct replay of the Jan. 6 playbook.

Writing on Telegram and Truth Social, Alexander decried the results of what he called Brazil’s “fake CIA backed rigged election” while insisting: “I do NOT denounce unannounced impromptu Capitol tours by the people 🇧🇷”; “Do whatever is necessary!”; and “January Sixers ❤️ January Eighters.”

Alexander’s reinstatement to Twitter comes amid Elon Musk’s moves to reverse lifetime bans for a panoply of dangerous, far-right figures, ranging from Donald Trump to literal neo-Nazis. In mid-December, Alexander posted a video in which he’d claimed to have “just talked to Elon a little while ago” and insisted: “I’m gonna get back on Twitter soon.”

Twitter no longer has a press office from which to seek comment. Musk has been criticized for dismantling the Twitter staff in Brazil previously responsible for taking down tweets that could inspire violence. Far from endorsing the democratic results that turned Bolosnaro out of power in favor of left-leaning president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Musk himself has made only a generic plea for calm:

For his part, Alexander has yet to use his newly restored Twitter account, but he posted on Telegram Monday that his account will be dedicated to “Jesus Christ, Love, @J6families, YE, and beating up Naughty Republicans.”

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