The White House condemned tech billionaire @elonmusk for boosting antisemitic posts on his social media platform, X, calling it an “unacceptable” act that endangers Jewish communities. https://t.co/pdQNxhLT5K
— Akayla Gardner (@gardnerakayla) November 17, 2023
*White House Response to @elonmusk from @AndrewJBates46: https://t.co/ADhYuzZMHJ pic.twitter.com/H6xPuwB8ND
— Herbie Ziskend (@HerbieZiskend46) November 17, 2023
Things that need to be said, even if it’s probably more important to Musk that Twitter’s been hemorrhaging advertisers. Per CNN Business:
A growing list of companies said they have suspended advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
On Friday, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, confirmed that they both halted ad spending on the platform.
The decision by two of the world’s most prominent film and television companies suggests an intensifying advertiser backlash to X after the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists.
Disney and Warner Bros.’ advertising pauses follow similar moves by Lionsgate and IBM…
IBM’s ads were found appearing alongside pro-Nazi content on the platform. In a statement, IBM explicitly called out what it described as an “entirely unacceptable situation.”
“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” an IBM spokesperson said…
Amid the pullback, X reportedly lost one of its most visible advertisers: Apple. The iPhone maker also pulled its advertising from the social media platform, according to multiple news outlets, including Axios, which first reported Apple’s withdrawal…
“At risk of stating the obvious, anyone advocating the genocide of *any* group will be suspended from this platform,” Musk wrote on X Friday evening…
A spokesperson for X said the pro-Nazi accounts identified in Thursday’s Media Matters report would no longer be eligible for monetization, meaning ads would no longer be run on those pages…
Everyone is so judge-y these days! How was a smol bean who grew up in apartheid South Africa supposed to know that antisemitism is no longer considered a social positive?
I chuckled when I saw Musk lost IBM. There’s some history there… https://t.co/EEhOYHjnyf pic.twitter.com/r61F6nnJZe
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 17, 2023
Where it started:
It is not an exaggeration to describe Elon Musk's embrace of rhetoric like this as "straight up Nazi shit" pic.twitter.com/QVmGd1pfUv
— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) November 15, 2023
Elon Musk thinks the Jews deserve what’s coming for them because they didn’t stand up for white people enough ?????? pic.twitter.com/RDa9HwmwQg
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) November 15, 2023
Seems bad that the richest man on Earth — the owner of a major information hub with companies deeply connected to various government agencies and a GOP hero, — is doing Daily Stormer bits. https://t.co/Q7JnD0zfU8
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 15, 2023
How it’s going:
We can continue to debate the relative toxicity of the Jew-hatred on the right vs. the antisemitism on the left. But Musk’s message was unmistakable and his groyper Nazi fans absolutely loved it.https://t.co/mahe71HoB7
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) November 16, 2023
The actual problem is that the CCP's and Musk's systematic effort to disseminate and popularize genocidal antisemitic conspiracism, not simply their ownwrship of particicular media outlets.https://t.co/NdpdeySkwS
— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie) November 16, 2023
Scout211
I just read an interesting commentary on Slate
Suzanne
You know what…. I just literally have no idea how these anti-Semitic conspiracy theories grow so huge. It’s so weird to me. I literally never hear anyone ever mention them, except when I read about white supremacists on the intertubes. Like when I read about the Charlottesville tiki torch march, and they were chanting “Jews will not replace us!”, my first thought was, “Ummmm, was that something you were concerned about?”.
eclare
@Scout211:
Also his self-reverence is extreme. He thinks it is comedy genius when he makes 4/20 allusions and responds to all press questions with a poop emoji. Hi-larious I tell ya, no one else could be so witty!
eclare
@Suzanne:
I guess they’ve been around so long, thousands of years? I don’t know.
SpaceUnit
I trust the bigs at The Lincoln Project about as far as I could throw them, but sometimes they’re very on-point. Credit where credit is due:
Pro-American Rally
dmsilev
@Suzanne: There’s a whole nasty underbelly of the Internet that we all prefer not to see. 4chan and its relatives/descendants, for example. A lot of the hatred spreads there. And, thanks to Musk and other malignants, it’s now metastasized to more “mainstream” venues. Though, also thanks to Musk, Twitter is becoming less mainstream all the time.
RevRick
Musk probably comes by it naturally. According to Wikipedia, his “maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American born Canadian… a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada, possessed antisemitic beliefs, and supported the Technocracy movement.” And “the Social Credit Party was a populist party in Canada… In its early years, the Socreds gained a reputation for antisemitism.”
Suzanne
@eclare: Maybe I’ve just been utterly fortunate to never encounter these ideas in real life?
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: If you don’t associate with bigots, then yeah, you probably wouldn’t encounter such things. But they are nothing new. They might take new forms as societies change and technology advances, but the demonization goes back to antiquity.
CarolPW
@Suzanne: When I was a kid watching the nightly replay of civil rights marches, and the reactions to them, I was aware that there were many Jewish supporters in the marches. And I saw that they were lynched with no more concern than what was given to the lynching of black marchers.
eclare
@Suzanne:
I never have either, I was just guessing.
Antisemitism has existed for a few thousand years, a lot of people have kept it going.
Suzanne
@Alison Rose: Oh, certainly. I just…. have had to learn about it through reading about it. It feels like such a niche thing, but I’m probably the one in the niche.
It’s great here in my niche. We’re nice here and we have snacks.
geg6
@CarolPW:
Yes, same here. My mother was very pro civil rights and she made sure we saw Walter Cronkite every night to see what was happening in the country and the world, regardless of age. And my parents always provided context like that. They made me the raving liberal that I am.
Betty Cracker
David Simon with a Twitter requiem for the ages.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
En fuego. Thanks.
VOR
@Suzanne: These people are out there. Nothing new. But they used to understand that normal society did not approve so they kept a low profile. TFG showed them you didn’t need dog whistles, that you could be out in the open with the ugliness. He set them free. Now the wealthiest man in the world is telling them to let their freak flag fly. No, TFG and Elmo did not invent this, they simply enabled it.
CarolPW
@geg6: My parents also subscribed to Life and Look, and both magazines had photo essays showing and talking about the dogs, fire hoses and lynchings.
My folks were Republican, but they weren’t idiots. I turned out to be a flaming liberal. My sister initially turned into an east coast independent voting both ways depending on the election, but has now firmly become a Democrat.
eclare
@CarolPW:
Sounds like your parents did a good job.
CarolPW
@eclare: I think they did. A farmer and a clerk. The best thing my dad did was say he didn’t care what we grew up be and do, as long as it was interesting. Neither parent went to college. I have a Ph.D. and my sister has an undergraduate degree from Harvard and an MBA.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishments☘🌈 Koch
Musk’s bigotry is clearly driven by economic anxiety
dmsilev
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishments☘🌈 Koch: Well, you too would be anxious if you overpaid by several billion dollars for a plaything.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The best part of this whole mess for Apartheid Clyde is that he gets to keep complaining that Jews are driving his advertisers away.
Burn, Shitter, burn… be the flaming outhouse that represents Elon’s ego.
Raoul Paste
I hope this represents a tipping point for Musk. Not that he will change, but decent society as a whole shuns him
I don’t think Musk will be back on Saturday night live any time soon
geg6
@CarolPW:
I have five siblings, though one has passed. All of us are (or were) yellow dog Dems. My parents did it right. Regardless of other disagreements I may have had with my mom, she was on the side of good 95% of the time.
RevRick
@eclare: There’s a story in the Bible (the book of Esther) about the threat of a Jewish pogrom in the Persian Empire, so at least 2,400 years.
SFAW
@geg6:
Your description of your family’s politics brings to mind my own family. I consider myself quite fortunate that, at Thanksgiving, when the extended family (incl. cousins, etc.) gathers at Chez SFAW, we are ALL on the same page re: politics. The closest thing to conflict was some years ago, when one cousin’s then-beloved thought Nancy Pelosi was too conservative.
And then I read about the troubles of some jackals — Jeffro comes to mind, although there are certainly others — re: having rational discussions with their RWNJ family, and it only reinforces how fortunate I am.
eclare
@RevRick:
Thank you!
eclare
@SFAW:
There are no rational discussions with one of my cousins, who assumes everyone thinks like he does. I try to avoid him, I never argue, as he is a very successful and wealthy litigator. You know, full of economic anxiety.
Calouste
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Also, this is literally the worst time of the year for a company that depends on ads for their advertisers to walk away. About 25% of the total yearly advertising budget in the US is spend in the six weeks between now and Christmas. And that won’t be coming back.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Calouste:
Yup. I’m damned sure that the Emerald Edgelord intended all along to destroy Twitter. Tesla and SpaceX show that as bad as he is, he can be successful in business. I think his Boring Company is just a 420-type thing. It’s a boring company that promises a lot and delivers nothing except shits and giggles for the owner. I think he wanted to destroy Twitter because the peasants used it to call out rich assholes like the Saudi royals and his own sorry ass (flight tracking, for example).
This wreckage is intentional. When you have stupid money you can afford to do stupid stuff like destroy a communication platform for the lols.
Ksmiami
Billionaires deserve massive massive taxation. They are a threat to our nation. And I believe in capitalism, but these people rise to a level where there are no consequences and no one to tell them no.
Thor Heyerdahl
Oh FFS – I look at my Xitter profile and it says “paid”. I updated my profile to say “I haven’t paid Musk anything.”
Pink Tie
Jews have done so much to advance civil rights in the US, promote creativity in the fields of literature, drama, film, and music, and led academic fields. My father wrote a textbook about human sexuality coauthored by Ruth Westheimer. Fuck off with the argument that Jews manipulate American democracy or anything else for that matter. American Jewish people are the very definition of self-made people, particularly when you consider that our government refused European refugees until after Pearl Harbor. My great-uncle was a lawyer in Vienna pre-war and he came to the Midwest to be a paintbrush salesman because the American government wouldn’t recognize his law license. While he was grieving his wife and 3 daughters who died in camps. I am so infuriated by the anti-semitic arguments. I’m sorry that it pissed you off to be called anti-semitic, but if you stop saying, I’ll stop too.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I think the way it works is that for a long time, antisemitism mostly hid itself behind euphemisms about “woke liberals” (or “PC” or whatever), “ivory-tower eggheads” and “Hollywood elites”, and it just now got to a point where the practitioners feel safe saying it’s the Jews they hate out loud. But it really never went away. They were always talking about the Jews.
Matt McIrvin
@Odie Hugh Manatee: The Boring Company was a ruse to inhibit public-transit projects by presenting itself as a (nonsensical) alternative. Hyperloop was the same thing–there, Musk didn’t even bother actually founding the company, he just put the idea out there and got people buzzing about it so they’d think it was an alternative to high-speed rail.