About

Tila Tequila is the stage name of American actress, model and singer-songwriter Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen, best known for starring in the 2007 reality television show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequilla. Online, Nguyen has been widely mocked and criticized for her bizarre blog posts and vlog videos about the Illuminati and the Holocaust.

Online History

In July 2001, Nguyen launched the site TilasHotSpot, featuring photo galleries and information herself, originally requiring visitors to pay a monthly fee for access. After appearing on the reality television show Surviving Nugent in 2003, Nguyen gained a large following on the social networking site Myspace. In 2005, Nguyen launched the now defunct fashion website TilaFashion.com. By April 2006, Nguyen had the most popular profile on Mypsace, with over 31.5 million views.^[3] In 2007, Nguyen starred in the MTV reality dating show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.

Insane Clown Posse Concert

On August 14th, 2010, Nguyen suffered facial injuries after being pelted with rocks and other objects on stage at The Gathering of the Juggalos festival, an annual concert for fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse and other artists on the record label Psychopathic Records.

Sex Tape

In 2011, the adult film company Vivid Entertainment released sexually explicit footage of Nguyen with two adult actresses. On January 31st, TMZ^[1] reported that Nguyen claimed the video was for personal use and was released without her consent.

Antisemitism Controversy

On January 13th, 2012, TMZ reported that Nguyen had announced plans to convert to the religion of Judaism. In December 2013, Nguyen posted a photoshopped picture of herself wearing a Nazi SS uniform while standing in front of the Auschwitz concentration camp on her Facebook^[2] page, which contained the super imposed signature of political comic artist Ben Garrison (shown below). After being widely derided online as anti-Semitic, the photo was removed by Facebook.

That month, Nguyen published a blog post titled "Why I Sympathize with Hitler: Part I," in which she claimed that Hitler "stood up for his country in a desperate time of need." The post was subsequently deleted. In August 2015, Nguyen apologized for previous antisemitic comments and claimed they were spurred by depression and drug addiction.^[5]

Flat Earth Tweet

On January 7th, 2016, Nguyen posted a tweet^[6] asserting her belief that the Earth is flat, a far-fetched pseudoscientific theory that has been a long-running topic of discussions on the Internet.

Twitter Suspension

On November 21st, 2016, Twitter suspended Tila Tequila's account after she posted a series of neo-Nazi tweets, including a photograph of herself and two other men making the Sieg Heil salute at a conference sponsored by the National Policy Institute (NPI), an alt-right, white supremacism think tank group, over the weekend in Washington D.C (shown below, left). In addition to the tweets, the former reality TV celebrity had changed her profile tagline describing herself as an "alt-reich queen" and "literally hitler" (shown below, right). That same day, The Atlantic posted a YouTube video of other attendees at the conference performing the Nazi salute during a speech given by the group's chairman Richard B. Spencer.

Throughout the weekend, the news of Tila Tequila's Twitter ban quickly spread across entertainment news outlets^{[7][8][9][11]} and social media platforms. In the light of the controversy, Maggiano's Little Italy, the restaurant where the NPI conference was held, to issue an apology via their Facebook page^[10] on Monday for hosting an event that "resulted in hateful sentiment."

On November 22nd, YouTuber Arminius uploaded a video of the two men depicted in the photo standing outside of the restaurant with a crowd, one of whom can be heard yelling “we’re Jews and we’re going to see what it’s like.”

On November 23rd, Salon^[14] ran a story titled "Man who did Nazi salute with Tila Tequila outside Richard Spencer’s alt-right conference is Jewish, and it’s causing problems," which reported that one of the two men shown in Nguyen's photograph is Jewish. That same day, Andrew Anglin, the editor of The Daily Stormer, expressed resentment towards Spencer for inviting Jewish and non-Whites to the conference in an article^[13] filled with racist slurs.

“If Spencer is now going to be a representative of the neo-Nazi agenda, he needs to tighten-up his ship. The last thing we need is the world believing that neo-Nazis are just a bunch of k**es and g**ks.”

Search Interest

External References