George Farmer

After emailing a nameless press contact for Parler, the last thing I expected was to get a flattering reply from George Farmer, the CEO himself. “I’m a Spectator subscriber, nice to e-meet,” he said. Farmer joined the right-wing social media app Parler in March 2021 as operating chief, and was promoted that May to CEO. “My goal is to provide the platform for the disenfranchised and the voiceless who feel that the mainstream has cut them out,” Farmer told the Financial Times at the time. “It is almost like we are an ‘anti’-company.” Just over one year on, and that "anti"-company has been acquired by rapper and businessman Kanye West. After a string of recent controversies, Kanye and Parler are under the spotlight.

A great American poet once wrote: I went to the malls and I balled too hard/ “Oh my God, is that a black card?”/ I turned around and replied, “Why yes/ But I prefer the term 'African-American Express.’” How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband. It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.