I don’t know about you, but I have trouble referring to Twitter as X. A single letter is not a name. And I have decided to stay on Twitter, because that’s how I reach nearly 150,000 people. When they retweet (re-X?) my posts, I reach even more. So I’m sticking with Twitter, despite Elon Musk and the proliferation of racists and anti-Semites on Twitter.
Michael Hiltzik, my favorite columnist at the Los Angeles Times, recently blasted Musk for blaming the misfortunes of Twitter on the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights racial and religious hatred, and especially anti-Semitism. Musk has threatened to sue the ADL for defamation. That’s ironic, almost funny.
Hiltzik writes:
Elon Musk has long been known for blaming everyone else but himself for the various fiascos visited upon his companies — meddlesome bureaucrats for COVID-related production slowdowns at Tesla, the Pentagon and conniving rivals for the loss of a government contract by SpaceX, nasty woke advertisers for the decline of X (ex-Twitter).
So what were the chances that he would get around to blaming the Jews? Based on the evidence at hand, 100%.
Over the weekend, Musk launched a ferocious, spittle-flecked attack on the Anti-Defamation League, which describes itself (accurately enough) as “a global leader in combating antisemitism, countering extremism and battling bigotry wherever and whenever it happens.”
Musk decided that the ADL is responsible for (in his words) “most of our revenue loss [at X]….Giving them maximum benefit of the doubt, I don’t see any scenario where they’re responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so ~$4 billion.”
My goodness! When does he blame George Soros?
He asserted that the U.S. advertising revenue at X is “down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” And he tweeted that he has “no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League.”
Not to put a fine point on things, but all this shows Musk to have gone utterly off the rails and over the edge of conspiracy-mongering paranoia. It’s the most extreme outburst of antisemitism by a purportedly mainstream public figure in more than 100 years.
Musk’s hate-spasm easily outflanks the previous champion of public antisemitism, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was caught on tape in July arguing that COVID-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” while leaving Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese relatively immune. It’s as if Musk challenged Kennedy’s effort to seize the antisemitism crown by saying, “Oh, yeah? Watch this.”
Musk’s outburst makes the position of Linda Yaccarino, the formerly respected entertainment executive who accepted the job of X’s CEO to restore the platform to the good graces of corporate advertisers, hopelessly untenable. Why she doesn’t resign is a mystery. His words also should prompt the federal government to question his suitability, and that of his company SpaceX, to hold government contracts of any kind.
Musk has bought into the notion — advanced by openly antisemitic X accounts — that the ADL fosters antisemitism by calling it out wherever it appears.
“The ADL, because they are so aggressive in their demands to ban social media accounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform,” he tweeted on Sunday. He was responding to a tweet quoting the far-right conspiracy-monger Alex Jones calling the ADL “the most pro-Hitler organization I’ve ever seen.” He further implied that the ADL is “somehow complicit in creating the very thing they complain about!”
So in this bizarro world, fighting antisemitism promotes antisemitism!
Musk implicitly endorsed the hashtag #BantheADL,” advocating banning the organization from X, by replying, “Perhaps we should run a poll on this.” Surely he knows that his right-wing followers would swamp any such poll on the “yes” side.
It’s crystal clear that X’s revenue problem is Elon Musk and his policies. He has welcomed dispensers of antisemitism, racism and other varieties of hate speech back onto the platform, while amplifying misinformation about purported COVID treatments and homophobic slurs retailed by conspiracy movements such as QAnon.
Corporate advertisers in the consumer market don’t need the ADL to tell them that it’s bad for their brands to be associated with a social media platform bristling with neo-Nazis and other denizens of the cultural underworld.
It’s true that the ADL has had its eyes on Musk and X for some time. That’s because the platform’s content moderation policies have fostered a documented surge of hate speech since Musk acquired it last October.
In March, the ADL reported that Twitter had refused to remove tweets or accounts that incited violence against Jews. Two months later, it followed up with a report that Musk’s decision to reinstate 65 Twitter accounts that had previously been banned for hate speech had contributed to the antisemitism surge.
The tweet-and-reply threads of many of these accounts, the ADL found, had become “magnets for vile antisemitic content.” They were rife with such “familiar antisemitic tropes” as “conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Rothschild banking family controlling global politics, finance, and media” and accusations that Jews are aiming to “destroy ‘the West’ by promoting transgender identities and lifestyles and ‘replacing’ white people via immigration (e.g., the Great Replacement).”
Tellingly, beyond stating his determination to “clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism,” and declaring, “I’m pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind,” Musk in his weekend outburst made no effort to address the specific points raised by the ADL — he merely asserted that the organization’s accusations were “unfounded.”
Obviously, that won’t do. According to ADL Chief Executive Jonathan Greenblatt, Yaccarino reached out to him last month, leading to a “frank + productive conversation…about @X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform,” he tweeted.
ADL will “give her and Elon Musk credit if the service gets better… and reserve the right to call them out until it does,” Greenblatt added.
It’s a safe bet that as long as Musk reigns over X, the platform will have a long, long way to go to warrant any credit for eradicating hate speech at all.
There are few precedents in American history for someone with the public renown of Elon Musk voicing or hosting opinions of such unalloyed virulence. The closest analogue is probably Henry Ford, who in 1920 began publishing screeds in the Dearborn Independent, a local weekly he had acquired, alleging the existence of a vast Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination.
“Musk is sometimes compared to the innovator Henry Ford,” Josh Marshall observed Tuesday on his website, Talking Points Memo. “The comparison seems increasingly apt, if not in the way many have intended.”
“the ADL fosters antisemitism by calling it out wherever it appears.”
This is the same logic that the Republicans use when they blame Obama for “bringing back racism” after the sainted Dr King won that war so many years ago. I understand the Republicans. They are responding to the almost universal adoration of Dr King, who is almost as close to being sainted in America today as George Washington was in the Nineteenth Century. How do you Willie Horton and Dr King simultaneously? You accuse your opponent of what you are perpetrating.
Exactly. When King was alive, the same Repugnicans trying to co-opt him now wanted him dead.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
It seems as though Musk is not that great with names. He named his son Tao Techno Mechanicus. 🙂 🙂 🙂
He has many children and he does get creative with names. One of his children is trans and wants nothing to do with Musk. So he hates all things trans.
It’s funny to think about this in the context of the classroom. “Techno Mechanicus, would you please do number 7 for us.” Funny….unless you’re Techno Mechanicus. 😦 🙂
Dear Diane Ravitch, Everyone,
Reading this post reminded me of my original reply to this post here:
That post is so dense in knowledge, most of its contents has never been written before or ever looked at in that light, and sadly, it goes over even the most educated minds.
With Elon Musk, did he develop his brain to love all people? Did he develop what I write and talk about in that post?
Did those in this video, the Seattle police develop their brains in a kind and loving way? https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.6559297
Or in this video:
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.6560149
And if you have 150,000 followers and you care about helping developing brains fully so that there is no divide amongst people, please share this and advocate for my original post-posted above in that link.
And Diane, everyone, I leave you with this poem ‘A Silent Yearning’:
https://salmonstudio.wixsite.com/yohnke/post/a-silent-yearning
I thank you for reading and the platform to write on.
As always, love is the way,
Miles Patrick Yohnke
Mr. Yohnke, sadly, sometimes the answer is not love but tanks and bombers and people with guns. Someone had to drive Hitler out of Europe. Someone had to stand up to the genocide, theft, rape, and violation of the territory of a sovereign nation that was and is the Russian incursion into Ukraine.
Dear Mr. Bob Shephard,
I greatly appreciate your time but you’re not grasping the many layers found in my original post. To make it more convenient – it can be found here:
The End of War:
https://salmonstudio.wixsite.com/yohnke/post/the-end-of-war
As always, love is the way,
Miles Patrick Yohnke
I’ve read it, Mr. Yohnke. I read it when you originally posted it. I do not think pacifism a sustainable position in a world with evil that must be contained or eliminated because it presents no other choice.
Dear Mr. Bob Shephard,
You’re not grasping a large portion of the article, of this new philosophy, this new way of approaching life. You’re not (and most) are not grasping the root of the problem. The whole aspect of developing your brain fully.
Please reread it. The material is new. It’s heavy and certainly not something for a quick response. A quick response tells us what about an individual? That too is addressed within the many layers of the article.
As always, love is the way,
Miles Patrick Yohnke
Well, I will just continue bumbling about, using my underdeveloped brain to convince people of the importance of an overwhelming deterrent.
Yes, if Hitler had thought like Jesus of Nazareth, then there would have been no reason to fight him. But he didn’t. Thinking that somehow the truly evil ones like him or Putin will somehow do good if we just shower them with love is like thinking that a poached egg will turn into a typewriter.
Dear Mr. Bob Shepherd,
You replied again within the time I originally wrote back to you.
Bob, you have a lot of aggression, why? Where does this stem from?
Again, this is addressed in my article.
As always, love is the way,
Miles Patrick Yohnke
Haaaa! Defense is not aggression, Mr. Yohnke. I have keen interests in philosophy, including moral philosophy, and in international relations and international law. My objection to pacifism is grounded in the necessity of defending vital interests, not in “hav[ing] a lot of aggression.” Russia is and has been from the beginning of its war against Ukraine indiscriminately dropping bombs on civilians and on cultural monuments and vital infrastructure, killing grandmothers and babies. Weirdly, in my aggressive, mentally undeveloped way, I think that we should be helping the Ukrainians to stop the slaughter of babies, the rapes of girls and grandmothers, by these barbarians. But hey, that’s just because I haven’t seen the light and raised my consciousness. Peace, love, rainbows, and my little ponies are always the way.
Mr. Yohnke, my satire seems to be escaping you. So, let me be straight up about it. So far, you have accused me of having an undeveloped brain and of harboring great amounts of aggression. In your nonaggressive,” passive aggressive way. ROFLMAO. Do you really think that Hitler would have withdrawn within his borders and ended the so-called “Final Solution” if we just showered him with love letters or something? Hey, Adolph. Moonbeams and rainbows.
Miles and Bob:
My father was a pacifist who was relieved of being drafted in World War II due to several factors. A student of Gandhian philosophy, he opposed all violence when the war came. I never had the opportunity to ask him how he felt when the news of the holocaust came out, but I think he struggled with the decision to support the war from his position as a farmer. One interesting thing he did was to carefully note how much money the war had indirectly made him and give the balance of it to charity.
As for me, I can see where he was coming from as the Nazis began their expansion with the Anschluss. After all, information coming to the American people in World War I had been particularly biased against Germany, and there had been a great catastrophe on account of that war. But the invasion of Poland and the very public Non-aggression Pact with Stalin made it plain that the only language spoken by the Nazis was power. I do not think I could have stayed on the sidelines.
Bayard Rustin was sent to federal prison during World War 2 because of his pacifism.
Years later, he said that he regretted his stand. He didn’t realize the depth of Hitler’s evil.
Musk is not well.
And we have allowed our military to become dependent upon his satellite communications tech. Not a good idea. We need to develop our own.
Musk’s tantrums and tendency to scapegoat should make political leaders wary of contracting anything of great consequence to national security like SpaceX to single, mercurial billionaire. There have already been conflicts between SpaceX and use of Ukrainian drones. IMO, technology of such importance should be produced by the US government for its national and international own purposes regardless of what resident billionaires believe or don’t believe. It goes back to the old adage. When you sleep with dogs, you’re bound to get fleas.
Musk’s shutting off access to StarLink to thwart a Ukrainian offensive to retake Crimea is a prime example. The guy is not dependable and is a loose cannon.
That’s the problem! We shouldn’t be dependent on the whims of billionaires.
It’s inconceivable that one private citizen, known for being erratic, controls communications across the world. Musk belongs in a James Bond movie as Dr. Evil.
If you would also post to threads, I would repost them when I see them. It probably took awhile for you to build your audience at Twitter, and I can see why you don’t want to abandon it. But no one can follow you at Threads if you don’t post content there. You have posted some things there, but not links to your blog, I don’t think.
I’m thinking that Musk and Trump may have had the same sperm donor.