Maybe, finally, Musk won’t get away with it after calling an antisemitic post ‘the actual truth’

• Elon Musk is getting called out for his response to an antisemitic post.
• “You have said the actual truth,” Musk told a user who criticized “western Jewish populations.”
• Signs Musk might regret it: Rich people are slamming him and he’s losing business.

X, formerly Twitter, does not have a lot of community spirit left, but there are a few rules its users just about agree on.

Don’t become its main character.

And if you do, delete or apologize ASAP.

Elon Musk, who main-charactered his way into owning X last year, regularly breaches both rules with impunity.

He may finally have gone too far.

On Wednesday, Musk responded to an antisemitic post by a verified X user, @breakingbaht, with the words “You have said the actual truth.”

The exchange went like this:

An X user named Charles Weber, who describes himself in his bio as a conservative Jew, posted an ad that ran during NFL games this year titled “Stand Up to Jewish Hate.”

The ad campaign shows a man admonishing his son for writing “Hitler was right” online, an obviously antisemitic phrase common on the far right.

The pair are sitting in a car outside a busy synagogue, and the father tells his ashamed son: “Get out of the truck and say it to their faces.”

The ad was produced for the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism.

Another X user, @breakingbaht, replied to this post: “Okay. Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.”

Musk replied to this: “You have said the actual truth.”

He then followed this up with a criticism of the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group against antisemitism. Musk has previously threatened to sue the ADL.

“The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel,” Musk wrote.

The exchange is diffused with antisemitic ideas, says researcher

As with much hate speech online, the layers of hate in this exchange are hidden in “coding and euphemism,” said Ben Gidley, an academic at Birkbeck, University of London with expertise in antisemitism.

Gidley pointed to @breakingbaht’s phrase “dialectical hatred.”

“It’s this idea of antiwhite racism as a kind of Jewish conspiracy,” he said.

This, he said, is rooted in the American far right’s conspiracy theories about critical race theory, its supposed spread in universities, and the idea that Jews support it. “It’s this idea of Jews taking offense at racism and ignoring anti-white racism,” he said.

The exchange also echoes the “great replacement” theory, or the idea, widely embraced by white nationalists, that nonwhite people will replace white populations, Gidley said. Some versions of replacement theory baselessly accuse Jewish people of orchestrating the replacement. “It’s not always antisemitic, but in many cases it’s this idea of blaming the Jews, Jews supporting this, is the antisemitic version,” Gidley said.

“I feel Musk must be aware that all these ideas are at least adjacent to antisemitism,” he added.

Commenting directly on the Musk exchange, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X that it was “indisputably dangerous” for influential people “to validate and promote antisemitic theories.”

Criticism of Musk is snowballing

Musk’s reality-distortion field is strong, but there are signs he may join the growing list of people facing real-world consequences for real or perceived antisemitism.

First: Other rich people are criticizing him.

Dustin Moskovitz, a cofounder of Facebook, said Musk should resign from every company he’s involved with. Moskovitz has previously criticized Musk.

Ross Gerber, a longtime investor in Tesla, said he planned to give up his electric vehicle after Musk’s tweet and criticized his behavior as “outrageous.”

And Kristin Hull, the founder of an impact fund that also owns Tesla stock, said Musk’s speech was antisemitic.

“The impact of erratic, racist, and antisemitic speech from a CEO directly affects Tesla’s brand and bottom line in significant ways,” said Hull in an email, according to Bloomberg. “This behavior has the power to tarnish the brand long-term.”

Second: Musk was already losing business.

Advertisers, already scared away from X since Musk’s takeover, are unlikely to feel reassured by this latest fiasco. On Thursday, IBM became the latest to pull the plug after its ads ran next to Nazi content.

And third: Following Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel’s tough militaristic response, there is heightened scrutiny on what high-profile figures have to say about Israel, Jewish people, Gaza, or Palestinians. Getting it wrong has already lost several people their jobs.

There is a third and final golden rule of what was once Twitter. And that is: Never tweet.