X (the artist formerly known as Twitter) was a bigot-infested cesspool before Elon Musk started running it into the ground; a cesspool that did very little to protect its most marginalized users.
And since Musk inserted himself as X’s Grand Poobah? Several reports, including one by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) about specific changes to X since Musk’s arrival and this independent study performed by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, show that English-language antisemitic tweets have more than doubled since Musk bought the platform in late 2022.
And that’s just in the United States. X has been threatened with legal action in several European countries for allowing antisemitic content and breaking the laws of several countries related to hate speech and personal threats on social media.
Meanwhile, Musk hasn’t felt the need to obfuscate his problematic views and politics, becoming more brazen and in less touch with reality as time goes on. Earlier this month, Musk took to X in a since-deleted tweet to blame the ADL for “destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion.”
Antisemitism is so ingrained it’s revealed by accident
Pajiba reports that the tweet somehow ended up in X’s latest marketing video, which was shared on the platform by X’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino (Musk transitioned into a role as “executive chairman and chief technology officer” according to PBS News Hour.)
Yaccarino removed the video when the company discovered Musk’s tweet. She later reposted the video “in higher res” minus the egregious tweet.
You know someone (or several someones) in the X marketing department got fired over that. I can imagine the folks creating the video just looking for random Musk tweets to include without paying close attention. I mean, it’d be weirder if they were specifically told to make sure not to use the antisemitic ones, right? But it looks like they clearly needed those instructions!
So, they pulled a random tweet, and it just happened to be an antisemitic one where he’s basically blaming the Jews for ruining his company. Like there were SO MANY, they could just reach in and blindly snag one.
Mr. Protector of Free Speech thinks the ADL should stop talking about how there’s lots of antisemitism on his platform because it’s “hurting business.” The hate speech itself, coupled with the off-the-wall antics of the company’s new CEO isn’t hurting business, oh no. It’s the ADL complaining about antisemitism that’s doing it. They’re the problem.
But it wasn’t enough for Musk to blame the ADL for X going down the toilet. He decided to shore up far-right, neo-Nazi supporters by promoting the #BanTheADL hashtag. He even proposed a poll to let people vote on whether he should ban the organization from the platform and threatened to sue the ADL for “defamation.”
How are Musk’s tweets and actions antisemitic?
Antisemitism has a loooong history. Hell, Jews have been globally scapegoated, expelled, and persecuted for so long, that discrimination against them has its own specific name. In all that time, it’s become insidious. Blatantly hateful statements about Jews have given way to coded dog whistles that, on their face, aren’t about the Jewish People at all.
So it’s understandable that some might look at Musk’s tweets about the ADL or George Soros and be confused about accusations of antisemitism.
Vox has a great explainer about it, which you should check out, but here are the two main takeaways:
1. Musk insists he’s not antisemitic, but he engages with, platforms, and promotes people and efforts that are:
Keith Woods is a known Irish white nationalist with #BanTheADL in his X bio, who Forbes reports referred to himself as a “raging anti-Semite” in a since-deleted tweet. And here is Musk casually chatting with the guy on X about what the ADL has “done” to his company.
Musk seems to recognize that “free speech” protections are about citizens in relation to their governments and that private companies can decide who says what on their platforms. But that recognition doesn’t extend to other individuals or organizations and their right to free speech.
So, he’ll absolutely stoke efforts to ban speech that’s critical of him and his actions. Still, when it comes to hate organizations like the Proud Boys and individuals like Kanye West and former President (and current defendant in several legal cases) Donald Trump, he’ll reinstate their suspended accounts, despite their flagrant antisemitism, racism, and homophobia. It’s all in the name of protecting “free speech,” as long as they haven’t “broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”
Musk can’t, won’t, or doesn’t care about the connection between hate speech and hate crimes, prioritizing his company’s health over that of actual human beings forced to deal with the repercussions of hate speech turning into hate actions.
It doesn’t matter whether Musk considers himself an antisemite. Just like a person can be guilty of doing something racist without considering themselves a racist, a person can do and say antisemitic things regardless of what they personally think of Jewish people. Antisemitism, like other forms of racism and discrimination, is systemic. Its effects are felt in more places than one might notice if they’re not paying attention. But every decision Musk has made since buying Twitter has prioritized antisemitic voices over those vocally opposed to antisemitism. That is the very definition of antisemitic behavior.
2. Musk is a conspiracy theorist, and conspiracy theories are inherently antisemitic:
The Vox explainer talks about Musk’s history of buying into conspiracy theories of all kinds. And the thing that all conspiracy theories have in common, no matter where they start, is that they all inevitably end up blaming Jews for something:
“This is because, in historical terms, antisemitism has always been a conspiracy theory. In fact, antisemitism created the tradition of “conspiracy theorizing” in the modern Western world.
Deborah Lipstadt, a historian currently serving as the State Department special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, traces the structure of antisemitic ideas back to the very origins of Christianity — specifically, the New Testament description of Jesus’s death.
The early church taught that “the Jews” conspired to kill Jesus — even though Jesus and his apostles were all Jewish and the Romans who actually executed him in the story were not. […]
“Jews, [early Christians] argued, repudiated this new faith because of their inherent maliciousness,” Lipstadt writes. “This formulation rendered Judaism more than just a competing religion. It became a source of evil.”
This is the crucial thing to understand about antisemitism: It is both bigotry and an explanatory framework. Jews aren’t just detestable people, in the antisemitic mind; they are the force responsible for all that is bad in the world.”
This long history of framing Jewish people as inherently evil, untrustworthy, and responsible for the world’s ills is how we get people like Marjorie Taylor Greene blaming Jews with space lasers for California’s wildfires. Or Elon Musk comparing Jewish billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor George Soros to Magneto, inspiring this exchange:
Despite what I think about the existence of billionaires in general (spoiler alert: they shouldn’t exist), Soros seems to be as “good” a billionaire as can exist. He’s used his considerable resources to fight oppression across the globe, fueled by his first-hand experience living under a fascist regime. Yet conservatives have turned Soros into a boogeyman, using antisemitic tropes (They’re controlling all the money! They secretly run the world and are trying to ruin everything that’s good!) to frame every single thing he’s ever done. It’s almost as if they want to protect fascism and white nationalism. Weird.
And here Musk is, casually comparing Soros to a supervillain and claiming that he “hates humanity” and is trying to destroy “the very fabric of civilization.”
Again, I don’t care whether Elon Musk “is an antisemite.” But he is clearly engaging in antisemitic conversation and using the trappings of antisemitism to fuel his image. The best-case scenario is that Musk is “not antisemitic,” but is using antisemitism to prop up his company and himself. Which, you know, isn’t great.
My cynical side doesn’t care. I firmly believe that X is going down in flames, so why bother caring about its antisemitic death rattle? However, there are still people of all races and demographics using X, and these marginalized groups deserve to feel safe and respected on social media platforms.
And if X and Musk don’t have the guts to address the fact that they’re becoming a membership-only social media platform for fascists, racists, and conspiracy theorists, they should expect vocal criticism of their practices to continue. After all, it’s a free country.
(featured image: Chesnot/Getty Images)
