Elon Musk downplays past antisemitic comments in new interview
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks as symposium on fighting antisemitism on Jan. 22, 2024. Photo by Omar Marques/Getty Images)
By Jacob Kornbluh March 18, 2024
Billionaire Elon Musk, in a testy interview with former CNN host Don Lemon published online Monday, pushed back against accusations that he’s been tolerating and promoting antisemitic posts on X, the social media platform he owns and formerly known as Twitter.
“Moderation is a propaganda word for censorship,” Musk said. “If content is on the platform, that doesn’t mean we promote it.”
The hour-long interview — streamed on YouTube and posted on X — was initially set to be the debut episode of a new talk show in partnership with X, but Musk withdrew from the deal after recording the interview at Tesla headquarters in Austin, Texas, because he was reportedly upset with the line of questioning.
Lemon pressed Musk about a study released last year that showed that antisemitic posts doubled since Musk took control of the platform in October 2022. Another report found that 86% of the posts reported for hateful content remained up.
“If nobody reads it, it doesn’t matter,” Musk argued, separating between the number of antisemitic posts and the views the content received. “What matters is, was the post given high visibility?” He suggested the sheer volume of content on the social media platform should be viewed as being out on the internet, thus not holding his company responsible for moderation.
Musk, who has 175 million followers on X, has himself promoted a QAnon conspiracy theory, quoted Nazis, engaged with antisemites, and compared George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, to the X-Men comic book villain Magneto. He also tussled with Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, which demanded that he cease allowing neo-Nazis and others to air antisemitic views on X. Musk in turn blamed the ADL for scaring away advertisers and a $4 billion loss in revenue.
“If I quote something, it doesn’t mean I agree with anything and everything in it,” Musk said in the interview. “It’s just that I think this is something people should consider.”
Musk also addressed his embrace of an anti-immigrant conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement that has gained traction in some far-right circles and motivated a number of antisemitic and racist attacks, including the October 2018 Tree of Life Massacre. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk replied to a user who claimed “western Jewish populations” were “flooding their country” with “hordes of minorities.” Musk apologized for the post and he visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland in January.
“What I’m saying is that a number of prominent Jewish philanthropists fund groups that they should really take a closer look at funding because some of the groups they fund I think are antisemitic,” Musk said without evidence. He added: “I actually don’t see an incentive for Jewish people to want to have illegal immigration.”
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