Twitter feuds claimed another high-profile casualty on Tuesday when the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates deleted his account after sparring with the Harvard professor Cornel West.
It started on Sunday, when Mr. West published an article in The Guardian calling Mr. Coates "the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle," and accusing him of "fetishizing white supremacy" while ignoring "Wall Street greed, U.S. imperial crimes or black elite indifference to poverty."
Mr. West, a professor of philosophy at Harvard (and a sporadic Twitter user), then posted about his article, calling Mr. Coates's views about race in America "dangerously misleading."
.@tanehisicoates fetishizes white supremacy. His analysis/vision of our world is too narrow & dangerously misleading, omitting the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, & the complex dynamics of class, gender, & sexuality in black America https://t.co/FytA7mLmNV
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) Dec. 17, 2017
The tweet drew hundreds of responses from friends and supporters of Mr. Coates, including the New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb, who picked apart what he called Mr. West's "threadbare commentary."
2. And also, given what I do for a living and the necessity of intellectual engagement I should say up front that no one is above critique. It's an indispensable part of growth. But I was frankly embarrassed by @CornelWest's threadbare commentary.
— jelani cobb (@jelani9) Dec. 18, 2017
Mr. West's tweet also drew plenty of agreement, including from supporters on the political left. But it was also retweeted by the white supremacist Richard Spencer, who added, "He's not wrong."
It feels like this might have been the straw that broke the camel's back for Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Richard Spencer endorsing Cornel West's criticism of him. pic.twitter.com/GrlZEcnzMj
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) Dec. 19, 2017
Late on Monday, Mr. Coates, who had more than 1.25 million Twitter followers as of earlier this month, tweeted, "Peace, y'all. I'm out. I didn't get in it for this." And at some point after that, he deleted his account.
Richard Spencer agreed with Cornel West's article about Ta-Nehisi Coates, and TNC had enough, said, "peace, y'all. I'm out." Then deactivated. pic.twitter.com/bIdkozg9hs
— Zachary (@zatchry) Dec. 19, 2017
It wasn't the first time Mr. West had taken aim at Mr. Coates. In 2015, after Mr. Coates's book "Between the World and Me" was published, Mr. West, a fierce critic of President Obama from the left, posted a critique on Facebook, calling him "a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power."
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Mr. Coates's latest book, "We Were Eight Years in Power," collects some of his columns from The Atlantic and reckons with Mr. Obama's presidency.
In his thread on Sunday, Mr. Cobb suggested Mr. West's argument was driven less by intellectual differences than by professional rivalry.
Others expressed dismay that many Twitter users were focused on what the writer and sociologist Eve Ewing described as "some dudes being mad at each other," rather than deeper issues.
I dream of black freedom and resistance that isn't unduly occupied by and centered on some dudes being mad at each other and not liking each other and thus pinning the entire moral failing of american empire on other individual dudes and making us read about it
— wikipedia brown (@eveewing) Dec. 17, 2017
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