I was hacked, Seattle autonomous zone ‘warlord’ says, as old homophobic tweets surface from his account

Raz Simone, the self-appointed ‘warlord’ of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), blames a hacker for “old” tweets, after users found decade-old homophobic posts – similar to what once happened to MSNBC host Joy Reid.

Simone, a rap musician and activist, has risen to prominence as a leading figure in the CHAZ experiment, and his newfound status has brought with it new scrutiny of his record. This week, some right-wing outlets delved deep into his digital footprint and allegedly dug up some unsavory tweets from 2010 in which a homophobic slur was used. The screenshots of the now-deleted tweets have been circulating online.

The rules of ‘cancel culture’ being what they are, folks on the right gloated in expectation of the imminent cancelation of Simone.

Their expectations, however, might not come to fruition, since the rapper soon explained that he never posted anything wrong. Somebody hacked his account and tweeted the slur on an old timestamp, he said.

The situation is hauntingly similar to what happened to MSNBC star host Joy Reid in 2018. After old homophobic and personally insulting posts were found on her blog, she blamed hackers for altering the contents without her knowledge.

Unfortunately for Reid, evidence to the contrary soon came to light in abundance, and she was forced to own up to her old mistakes and apologize. Remarkably, unlike some other figures targeted for cancelation, she didn’t lose her job and came out of it all virtually unscathed.

In Simone’s defense, the incriminating tweets on his account were not captured by the Web Archive engine before entering the public spotlight. The oldest copies come on June 11, the day the alleged hack took place. But the internet-recording site does not capture every tweet, so a definitive answer about when they were posted could probably only come from the platform itself.

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