Tila Tequila Ethnicity: Model’s Twitter Account Gets Suspended After ‘Heig Seil Salute’ Photo

Television personality Tila Tequila had her Twitter account suspended after she posted a picture of herself at the National Policy Institute gathering in Washington D.C. Saturday. She saluted the camera and captioned the photo, “heig seil,” which is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. But she wouldn’t be welcomed at the table in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Tequila, 35, is not white. The “Shot At Love” reality star is of Vietnamese descent. Her parents emigrated from postwar Vietnam to Singapore. That's where she was born. They later moved to Houston, which is where the former queen of MySpace ultimately grew up.

Tequila was perplexed about her identity as a teenager. “I was really confused then, [because] at first I thought I was black, then I thought I was Hispanic and joined a cholo gang,” she once told Import Tuner, a car magazine.

Still, Tequila, whose real name is Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen, was at the white nationalist event. She was there to reportedly support her friend, American white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Once a liberal, her views shifted after becoming a mother in 2014. “I went full circle from the liberal stuff, and all that…I wouldn't want my daughter growing up in that,” Tequila told The Daily Beast Saturday.

In the early 2000s, Tequila was the most popular person on MySpace. Though it doesn't seem like much now, the star had more than 1.7 million friends. But it didn't last for long. Her popularity dwindled when the social media outlet died with the rise of Facebook.

Now, Tequila is on the alt-right. “I'm becoming more conservative ever since I became a mother,” the former reality star said. “I wouldn't want porn all over the internet [for instance]…Law and order, I think that's very important to have. Most people are so used to being all about their 'freedom,' so they becomes these little crybabies. They can't live by laws and rules. Civilization needs to be civilized.”

Tequila’s Twitter account has not been reinstated.

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