Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Inc., during a fireside discussion about the risks of artificial intelligence with Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not pictured, in London, United Kingdom, on Thursday, November 2 of 2023.
Tola Akmen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The White House lashed out on Friday Elon Musk to promote”antisemite and racist hatred” after the Tesla The CEO and owner of X Corp. they said he agreed with a Social media publication accusing “Jewish communities” of fueling “hate against whites.”
moss, answering to X, he wrote that that post “told the real truth.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said it was “unacceptable to repeat at any time the horrific lie behind the deadliest act of anti-Semitism in American history.”
Bates seemed to refer to the mass murder at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, in which 11 people were shot dead by a gunman who expressed anti-Semitic beliefs.”white genocide“conspiracy theory.
“We condemn this abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hatred in the strongest possible terms, which goes against our core values as Americans,” Bates said.
The White House statement noted the proximity of Musk’s post to the deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7, which it called “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
“We all have a responsibility to rally people against hate and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of our fellow citizens and compromises the safety of our communities,” Bates said.
Spokespeople for Tesla and X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on the White House statement.
Musk responded to a post Wednesday that claimed Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical anti-white hate they say they want people to stop using against them.”
Musk, who has X’s most popular account, responded: “You spoke the real truth.”
The original post, from an account with fewer than 5,000 followers, has been viewed more than 1.1 million times since it was amplified by Musk, who is followed by more than 163 million accounts.
Moss in the same X thread criticized the Anti-Defamation League, a non-profit Jewish advocacy group, and others who, he says, are promoting “de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind.”
In another post, he claimed that the ADL “unfairly attacks the majority of the West” because they cannot criticize “minority groups that are their main threat.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt responded to X on Musk’s post, warning that: “At a time when anti-Semitism is exploding in America and rising around the world, it is undeniably dangerous to use the influence of ‘one to validate and promote anti-Semitic theories’.
Musk, the world’s richest man, has done this before threatened to sue the ADL for defamation, alleging that the group “has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing him and me of being anti-Semitic.”
Wednesday’s exchange wasn’t the first time Musk has been accused of pushing anti-Semitic conspiracies.
In a 2018 tweet on the platform formerly known as Twitter, wrote: “Who do you think *owns* the press? Hello.” After that tweet spurred accusations of anti-Semitism, Musk blamed a “mistake” on Twitter for hiding another post in the thread and “removing the context” that made it clear he was referring only to “powerful people.”
In 2022, he tweeted a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler, but deleted it after a reaction.
When it acquired Twitter, it allowed previously banned users back on the platform, including neo-Nazi website publisher Andrew Anglin.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last year. Engagement on the site has declined during that time, some studies have shown, though Musk disputes that traffic is down. Musk, however, has admitted that US ad revenue is down significantly.
With Musk’s latest anti-Semitism controversy still swirling, some companies are distancing themselves from him and his platform. IBM announced this week that it has paused advertising on X after a report found that its ads were placed next to anti-Semitic content.
Musk is also the founder of SpaceX, a NASA contractor. The spacecraft maker on Saturday is ready to try again release from Starship, which is part of a NASA contract.