‘Terrible bigot’ Elon Musk misses the point – again

Instead of apologising for agreeing with an anti-Semitic slur, Elon Musk went to Israel and met its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on 7 October.

Instead of pointing out that the utterly improbable anti-Semitic conspiracy theory he endorsed by calling it “the actual truth” was wrong, or even apologising for it, Musk tweeted: “Actions speak louder than words.”

We could debate the definition of action, but Musk is in such an ivory tower and so embedded in his own sheltered world, that he appears to have lost contact with rationality and common decency. 

Writing something hurtful and fundamentally untrue that perpetuates six thousand years of bullying Jews just for being Jewish is ultimately as action-filled as wearing a flak jacket at a massacre scene.

Musk has emerged as a terrible bigot who victim-blames anyone who highlights how X – the once-thriving “digital town square” called Twitter – is failing to contain misinformation, hate speech or terrorism.

The day after Musk endorsed the heinous – and patently and obviously false – “replacement theory” drivel, media watchdog Media Matters pointed out how anti-Semitic posts glorifying Hitler and the Nazis appeared next to the advertising of IBM, Apple, Oracle and Xfinity.

How did Musk respond? He called Media Matters “an evil organisation” after having threatened a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against it.

Lawyers for X filed a complaint with a Texas court that “Media Matters has manipulated the algorithms governing the user experience on X to bypass safeguards and create images of X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts adjacent to racist, incendiary content, leaving the false impression that these pairings are anything but what they actually are: manufactured, inorganic and extraordinarily rare”.

It’s the same strategy Musk employed against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in September, tweeting that the Jewish group’s highlighting of an increase in anti-Semitic posts on X was the cause of US advertising being “down 60% primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL”.

He accused ADL of “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being antisemitic”. Typing and tweeting that is an action, by the way, not just words – as is threatening to sue the ADL.

Musk’s attack in May on Holocaust survivor George Soros – who he said “wants to erode the very fabric of civilisation. Soros hates humanity” – is another example of an undignified assault on a significant Jewish figure whose philanthropy is renowned.

What did Soros do wrong? He sold his Tesla stock.

Meanwhile, CEO Linda Yaccarino, an advertising industry heavyweight hired to literally restore Twitter’s fortunes, doubled down, blaming Media Matters for the decline in advertising.

“Kowtowing to external criticism or pressures is simply not how X will ever operate,” she wrote in an employee email, which The New York Times reported on. 

“The people at X are free speech defenders. We stand in solidarity with those who believe in this fundamental right and the critical checks and balances of a thriving democracy.”

But here’s the problem. Musk’s assault on content moderation by firing all of Twitter’s safety teams is the real cause of the advertising malaise. 

Already halved in value since Musk bought it for $44bn last October – after advertisers fled when Musk wiped out its content moderation guardrails – Twitter could lose $75m in advertising this year alone, according to internal X sales documents, The New York Times reported. 

Some 200 advertisers – Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft – have stopped advertising, or are considering it, the paper reported. 

That advertising was “paused” – the new polite word that is being used – because of Musk’s reprehensible behaviour and his tolerance, and often endorsement, of hate speech, misinformation and anti-Semitism.

That’s why IBM, Apple and Disney “paused” their advertising – not because a hate-speech group pointed out what everyone else but Musk can see: he’s ruined the “digital town square” he professed to want to save.

Twitter is now so toxic that the major brands don’t want to be seen on it or even associated with X.

Victim-blaming the do-gooders who highlight the abusive content is not a good look. It’s also a concrete example of “actions speak louder than words”. DM