Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 20, 2023

(JTA) Hours after tweeting that George Soros hates humanity, Elon Musk bashed the Anti-Defamation League, appearing to draw praise from a series of white supremacist accounts on Twitter, which he owns.

On Tuesday afternoon, Musk tweeted, ADL should just drop the A.' The tweet implied that the group, which is the most prominent antisemitism watchdog in the country, should instead be named the Defamation League.

Musks tweet came after ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Musks remarks about Soros, marking the latest chapter in the roller-coaster relationship between the ADL and the Twitter CEO. When Musk was poised to buy the social media platform, Greenblatt praised him. But in the months since that acquisition, the ADL has been increasingly critical of Musk, accusing him of taking a lax attitude toward policing hate speech.

When asked for a response, the ADL pointed to Greenblatts statement from earlier in the day, in which he took Musk to task for his Soros remarks, including a tweet in which Musk compared the progressive megadonor and Holocaust survivor to a comic book villain.

Greenblatt tweeted that Musks comments will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result. (The shooter in the Pittsburgh synagogue attack in 2018 referenced a conspiracy theory about Soros.)

Another Jewish organizational executive, American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, echoed that criticism, tweeting, The lie that Jews want to destroy civilization has led to the persecution of Jewish people for centuries. Musk should know better. And David Saranga, a senior official at Israels Foreign Ministry, tweeted that Musks post had a whiff of antisemitism.

The current spat is a marked difference from Greenblatts attitude last October, when he praised Musk as an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator, and as the Henry Ford of our time. Even though he later acknowledged that the Henry Ford reference was wrong, given that Ford was perhaps the most notorious antisemite in American history, Greenblatt added, We want to be cautiously optimistic about how Musk will run the platform because he successfully has innovated other industries and tackled incredibly complex problems.

Since then, the ADL has taken a more negative view. Less than a month after the Henry Ford analogy, the ADL called for an ad boycott of Twitter due to a spike in antisemitism on the site. In the months that have followed, the ADL has criticized Twitter for removing hate speech guardrails by dissolving an advisory body focused on Trust and Safety and by allowing antisemites who had been banned to return to the platform.

The Musk-ADL dynamic parallels the deteriorating relationship the ADL had with another social media giant, Facebook. Several years ago, the ADL worked with Facebook to curb hate speech, but laterled a high-profile ad boycottof the platform when it judged that Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, were not committed to preventing bigotry on the site.

And Musk is not the only public figure who has targeted the ADL amid broader criticism of the left. Recently-fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeatedly criticized the group after the ADL called on him to be oustedwhen he promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory on his show. In December, Carlson claimed that the ADL, one of the countrys largest Jewish organizations, extorted companies for money. He said that Greenblatt leverages the ADLs reputation for moral authority and cash, and threatens, Send me money or Ill call you names.

Musks tweet about the ADL appears to have unleashed yet more antisemitism on Twitter. In the hours after Musk posted the tweet, he garnered praise from a string of accounts posting antisemitic content, which shared his tweet with their own commentary.

An account called White Power Ranger tweeted, The ADL is a jewish supremacist foreign lobby/spy group. Another with an avatar of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has become a symbol of the alt-right, tweeted a cartoon of a traditional fascist symbol along with the words, Were back. Another posted a GIF of Adolf Hitler smiling alongside the message, Based.

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Elon Musk takes aim at the Anti-Defamation League after its CEO says ...

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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