Ben Shapiro engages Elon Musk in the least Jewish debate on Jews
Elon Musk in Germany in 2020. Photo by Getty Images
Senior Columnist Rob Eshman September 29, 2023
A day after the Republican candidates for president held a debate about former President Donald Trump without Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro held a debate about the Anti-Defamation League without the ADL.
At least the Republicans actually debated.
For two hours on Thursday morning, the men — it was all men, so many men — trashed the ADL and largely agreed that Musk is doing his best as the owner of X, the platform formerly known as Twitter on which the conversation took place.
Billed as a conversation about antisemitism, faith and free speech with Musk, the fawn-athon proved that the best way to get the attention of the richest man in America is not to annoy him with hard questions or facts.
That’s a shame, because there is a difficult and important conversation that Musk needs to have with people who have evidence that X is not living up to its own stated commitment not to spread misinformation, hate and violence.
Or he could talk to Ben Shapiro.
One telltale sign that this was not going to be the difficult search for truth and best practices X needs was Shapiro’s introduction.
“The Anti-Defamation League is a group that was once dedicated to fighting antisemitism in a nonpartisan fashion,” said Shapiro. “They’ve become significantly more partisan in their progressive politics to say the least, like a lot of progressive interest groups.”
The ADL has been “falsely accusing Musk of antisemitism,” Shapiro continued, “and pressuring advertisers” to boycott the platform.
None of that is true. The accusation that ADL, which has taken both Democrats and Republicans to task, is partisan and “progressive” will be news to progressives, who have long criticized the group’s positions on Israel and the Palestinians.
Moreover, Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO, has never called Musk or Twitter antisemitic, nor is ADL calling for an advertiser boycott.
What happened was this: Greenblatt had a long Zoom conversation with Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, last month, about how to address hate on the platform, after which Yaccarino tweeted her appreciation to Greenblatt. Then Musk threatened to sue the ADL and retweeted #BantheADL, a hashtag that is used by antisemites to imply a Jewish attack on Western civilization.
With the exception of Alan Dershowitz, who referred to himself as a liberal, the men playing softball with Musk during the conversation were almost all politically conservative and Orthodox, intent on pushing an anti-left agenda even if meant amplifying antisemitic conspiracy theories themselves.
“These institutions are generally in favor of more censorship, more restrictions on speech,” asserted Shapiro, making ADL sound like part of a vast Leftist conspiracy “whether we’re talking about COVID or transgenderism or foreign policy.”
Needless to say, none of them asked one of the most powerful men in the world—who during the talk repeatedly and convincingly professed his admiration for Jews and Judaism — why he retweets antisemites.
There were so many questions they could have asked, should have asked. As the lovefest went on, I found myself screaming the most obvious ones at my laptop:
- Elon, you have repeatedly referred to George Soros as a danger to civilization. Are you aware that broad accusation, which you haven’t supported with facts, is an article of faith among antisemites, who have long blamed shadowy Jewish financiers for the world’s problems?
- You said your data shows antisemitic hate has decreased on X since you took over in October 2022. At least one outside monitor found antisemitic speech increased by 106% in that time period. Why should we believe you? Why won’t you share your data?
- You said you want to make X, “a force for good for civilization.” Just last month you tweeted that a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter lied when in fact her reporting was fully accurate. Consequently, your followers bombarded her with vicious antisemitic harassment. Do you understand how your behavior makes it difficult for us to believe your good intentions?
- Last November, after you fired X’s trust and safety team and replatformed several extremist accounts, 60 organizations, including the ADL, asked for a pause in advertising while X addressed their concerns. Why did you single out ADL, and why do you continue to do so?
- Your Jewish conversation partners repeatedly pressed you to adopt the IHRA standard of antisemitism as it pertains to criticism of Israel. Many Jews who support Israel, including the man who wrote the IHRA definition, think it can be used to shut down productive if painful debate. Will you adopt it? In other words, will you only suppress the free speech your questioners don’t like?
- Knowing that #BantheADL is used by antisemites to imply a world Jewish conspiracy, will you stop retweeting the hashtag?
I must add here that I’ve frequently been critical of ADL myself. Like any organization, it sometimes falls short.
But America doesn’t have an ADL problem, it has a hate speech problem. It is literally killing us. The man who shot up the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 was fueled by online hate. Same with the murderer of 23 Latinos in El Paso in 2019 and Black students in Jacksonville, Florida this September.
Musk told the self-appointed defenders of the faith that he is a free speech absolutist, but only Dershowitz pushed him a little on what that means and how you draw lines that even absolutists would deem necessary.
No one asked Musk what further steps X, other social media sites, the government and NGOs could take to mitigate online hate. Funding media literacy, investing in anti-hate programs, paying a lot more for more content monitors, and yes, rethinking laws against hate speech to come down hard on multiple offenders are all possible solutions that were not floated to the richest man on earth.
The issue isn’t censorship or free speech. It’s life or death.
And with that at stake, the conversation with Musk was even more of a missed opportunity.
Musk’s Jewish interlocutors were so intent on agreeing with his demonization of one Jewish organization, they forgot to challenge, probe, argue and debate—you know, be Jewish.
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