A controversial Utah blogger, who predicted she’d be removed from Twitter in its purge of so-called “alt-right” ideologues, appears to have had her account suspended on Saturday.
Links to Ayla Stewart’s “Wife with a Purpose” account now redirect to a page saying it has been suspended.
Stewart, whose verified user status was recently removed, had anticipated she’d soon be booted from Twitter, writing on Nov. 18, “My Twitter days are numbered, not because of anything I’ve actually said or anything I actually believe but because other people think I’m hiding some secret Nazi agenda that I’m ‘sanitizing.’”
The suspension comes as Twitter is ramping up its efforts to remove accounts that post violent, abusive or hateful content, specifically banning those who target individuals or groups with that behavior. It removed several alt-right — or white nationalist/supremacist — affiliated accounts on Monday.
Stewart, who described herself on Twitter as a Christian mother, wife and author/educator, in addition to a “Nationalist pundit on white Western heritage,” blogs about home matters and posts commentary on news events.
As BuzzFeed reporter Jim Dalrymple II wrote last March, she also “fuses Mormon concepts with alt-right themes. On Twitter, she retweets David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, and uses the #whiteculture hashtag. … She cites Mormon scripture as evidence that races should be separate, recently issued a ‘white baby challenge’ and has argued that long-dead Mormon leader Brigham Young ‘predicted Cultural Marxism.’”
Stewart, whose blog was updated Saturday with an original Christmas story about a dormouse joining a church choir, hasn’t released a statement about her account suspension. When reached by The Tribune, she declined to comment.