After a scandal over Nazi content at Twitter’s successor X, other major advertising customers are turning their backs on Musk’s online platform. And the White House accuses the Tesla boss of spreading anti-Semitism.
The controversial post on Platform X, formerly Twitter, did not come from Elon Musk himself, but from another user. It said, among other things, that “Jewish communities” were fomenting “hatred against whites.” The background is a right-wing extremist conspiracy narrative according to which Jews are pursuing a secret plan to bring illegal migrants to Western countries in order to weaken the white majority. Musk wrote: “You told the truth.”
This approval was heavily criticized in the USA. The White House accused the Tesla boss of spreading anti-Semitism. A statement said this was unacceptable and “We condemn in the strongest terms this abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred.”
Dispute between ADL and Musk
Musk later qualified his statement. He means “some groups” like the NGO Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which he says spreads anti-white racism and anti-Asian racism. There have been tensions between both parties for a long time.
The ADL criticized that too little was being done on Twitter to combat anti-Semitism and hatred. Musk accused the ADL of being to blame for the decline in advertising customers on X after he made public that around 60 percent of advertising revenue had disappeared. He even threatened to sue the organization.
ADL CEO Josh Greenblatt said on CNBC at the beginning of September that violence against Jews had increased noticeably in the USA. If Elon Musk spreads and amplified anti-Semitic voices on X, that would be “very problematic.”
Musk encourages right-wing circles
Musk has 160 million followers on
Sarah Frier, a reporter at the business news service Bloomberg, said in the “Elon Inc” podcast that Musk’s statements caught the attention of right-wing circles in particular: Even if he only waves in the direction of right-wing circles, he encourages these groups to engage even more and more unbiasedly in social networks, such as also to express X.
X loses more major advertising customers
Musk’s Network For example, the computer company IBM stopped advertising on X after the company’s ads were discovered alongside Nazi posts. IBM said this was unacceptable. And Apple, Disney and the film studio Lionsgate no longer want to show advertising on X.
The non-profit organization Media Matters had previously shown that advertisements from other companies such as Apple or the software company Oracle were also published on X alongside posts with positive statements about Adolf Hitler. The EU Commission also doesn’t want to place any more advertising on X for the time being. This was justified by the increase in disinformation and hate speech.