Outrage Over Elon Musk’s Support of Antisemitic Content

The uproar regarding unregulated antisemitic content and remarks on social media platform X, some of which were supported by the platform’s owner Elon Musk, reached a critical stage on Friday. This led to major advertisers like Apple Inc. withdrawing their advertisements and the White House reprimanding the billionaire.

Musk, who regularly engages with anti-Semitic users on X, echoed the message that Jews have a “dialectical hatred” of white people. “You have spoken the real truth,” Musk replied.

The White House called Musk’s response an “unacceptable” act that puts Jewish communities at risk. Meanwhile, several Tesla Inc shareholders also spoke out against Musk, the electric car maker’s chief executive, with some saying he should be ousted.

Americans have a “duty to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of fellow Americans and threatens the safety of our communities,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement Friday. Musk’s companies, including Space Exploration Technologies Corp., have several government contracts.

Musk’s remarks added to the backlash sparked by a report Thursday by Media Matters that ads from Apple, International Business Machines Corp., Oracle Corp., Comcast Corp.’s Xfinity brand and the Bravo television network appeared on X on the side of the Nazis . contents. IBM said it will stop advertising on X until the situation is resolved. The European Commission and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. also announced they would take ads for X.

The Walt Disney Co. said it would suspend consumption of X, Paramount Global announced it would suspend all advertising, while CNBC reported that Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. has suspended its advertising campaign on the platform. Comcast Corp., owner of the NBCUniversal media empire, has also suspended advertising on X, Puck News reported.

The Media Matters story “grossly misrepresented” the actual user experience of X, Musk wrote in a post on Saturday, saying the platform plans to file a lawsuit against the company on Monday.

Apple, one of X’s biggest advertisers, said it would stop running ads on the site. Both companies already had an uncertain relationship. After Musk took over the social network last year — unleashing a flood of job cuts and policy changes — Apple also temporarily suspended advertising. Musk added to the tension by hinting that he might be breaking Apple’s App Store rules to stop paying the fees.

But he and Apple CEO Tim Cook met at the iPhone maker’s headquarters late last year and patched things up. Musk said in December that Apple had “absolutely resumed” advertising on Twitter.

Cook has previously called X an “important asset” but said he disagreed with anti-Semitic talk that has reportedly increased since Musk took over. He has said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is “constantly” asking itself whether it should continue advertising.

Axios reported earlier on Friday that Apple is suspending ads on X.

Listen: The impact and cost to X of Musk’s acceptance of anti-Semitism

“X has been very clear about our efforts to combat anti-Semitism and discrimination,” CEO Linda Yaccarino said at a forum on Friday, echoing her earlier remarks on the matter. “There is no place for that anywhere in the world.”

Musk did not respond to Bloomberg News’ request for comment.

The latest comments from Musk, the world’s richest person, come as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are on the rise around the world amid the war between Israel and Hamas. The Anti-Defamation League found that X’s anti-Semitism increased by more than 900% in the week following the October 7 Hamas attack compared to the previous week.

Last year, the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group, called on Musk to apologize after he deleted a controversial tweet that made a satirical comparison between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Adolf Hitler.

“I’ve just never had anything like this in my life with any company I’ve ever invested in where the CEO of the company himself is doing so many harmful things,” Ross Gerber, founder and CEO of Wealth Division. management company Gerber Kawasaki Inc. said on CNBC on Thursday. “It destroys the brand.”

Musk has accused the ADL, a Jewish civil rights group, of undermining X’s ad revenue by highlighting the rise of extreme content, which has caused advertisers to flee. X’s ad sales are down 60% “primarily due to pressure on advertisers from the ADL,” Musk said in September, after the organization said reports of harassment and extremist content had increased since he took over.

In September, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Tesla’s office in Fremont, Calif., for a discussion, saying, “Obviously, I’m against anti-Semitism. I’m against anything that promotes hatred and conflict.”

At the end of a long and wide-ranging conversation, Musk said that he had attended a Jewish school growing up in South Africa and could even sing “a great ‘Hava Nagila,'” a Jewish folk song.

Kristin Hull, founder and CEO of Nia Impact Capital, said she was “shocked” by Musk’s new posts. The social impact fund owned about $282,200 of Tesla stock at mid-year and has been waging pressure campaigns against the company for years, including through shareholder resolutions.

“The impact of the CEO’s erratic, racist and anti-Semitic speech directly affects Tesla’s brand and bottom line significantly,” Hull wrote in an email Thursday. He said an appropriate response to Musk’s actions could include a censure, downgrade, reallocation, suspension or removal from Tesla’s board.

The European Commission told staff to stop advertising on X “due to an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech,” it said in a statement Friday, which did not specifically refer to Musk’s writings. Politico first reported the move.

“The European Commission has only advertised about $5,000 so far this year, but continues to publish organically across all of its X handles,” Joe Benarroch, X’s chief business officer, said in a message to Bloomberg.

Apple and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. IBM’s decision was previously reported by the Financial Times, while the New York Times previously reported on Disney’s move.

X reviewed accounts that Media Matters found associated with offensive content and can no longer be monetized, Benarroch said. Certain messages are marked as “Sensitive Media”.

The X system does not intentionally actively place the brand next to this type of content, nor does the brand actively try to support this type of content with ad placement, Benarroch said.

Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz, who also heads project management software maker Asana Inc., said Yaccarino should ask Musk, who owns X and serves as the company’s chief technology officer, to step down.

“Yaccarino faces his biggest test yet as he decides whether to fire his anti-Semitic CTO or risk losing even more advertisers,” he wrote on Threads, another social media site. “How does he deal with this awkward but morally ambiguous situation?”