The White House condemned Elon Musk as promoting “antisemitic and racist hate” after the tech mogul endorsed a conspiracy theory that Jewish people “promote hatred against whites.”
On Wednesday, Musk — CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X — agreed with an X user who promoted the conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” In the now-removed post, the X user said they were “deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations” who are facing “hordes of minorities that support flooding their country.”
In response to that, Musk commented, “You have said the actual truth.”
In a statement released Friday, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust… We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans. We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.”
Reps for X and Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An email sent to X’s press email generated an autoreply message that said, “Busy now, please check back later.”
On Thursday, Musk posted “Bullseye!!” in reply to another X user’s post that said this: “If you’re spending all your waking moments trashing Elon Musk for ‘antisemitism’ because he had the audacity to criticize progressive Jewish organizations for their anti-white policies but you remain completely silent about actual anti-Semitic politicians and groups, it’s transparently clear where your priorities lie, and that you’re not actually a serious person.”
The White House’s Bates, in his statement, cited President Biden’s remarks last month memorializing the victims of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, where he said the “devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of antisemitism” and that under his administration “we will continue to condemn antisemitism at every turn.”
Separately, after progressive watchdog groupMedia Mattersfound that five major brands, including IBM, had their ads run next to posts that “tout Hitler and his Nazi Party” on X, IBM said it was immediately pulling its ads from Xand released a statement toPvNewsaying it has “zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.” The other brands identified in the Media Matters report were Apple, NBCUniversal’s Bravo, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity.
On Friday, Media Matters published a new report claiming that it found ads for Amazon, NBA Mexico, NBCUniversal Catalyst, Action Network and Club for Growth next to white nationalist hashtags like “KeepEuropeWhite,” “white pride,” and “WLM” (“White Lives Matter”).
Also Friday, the European Commission said it was suspending ad spending on X, citing “an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech.”
