Backlash spreads over Elon Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post

By Dana Hull and Ian King | Bloomberg

Fallout from an Elon Musk post endorsing antisemitic views continues to spread, with Tesla Inc. investors criticizing the billionaire and more advertisers fleeing his social media platform X.

The European Commission joined International Business Machines Corp. in announcing it will stop advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Musk agreed with a post that said Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people. Musk responded by saying: “You have said the actual truth.”

“X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination,” X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino said on the platform Thursday. “There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.”

Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and the world’s richest person, has repeatedly been criticized for promoting content attacking Jewish people and his latest comments come at a time of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia around the world amid the Israel-Hamas war. The Anti-Defamation League found antisemitism on X increased by more than 900% in the week following the initial Oct. 7 attack by Hamas compared to the previous week.

Last year, the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization, 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 this with any company I’ve ever invested in, ever in my life, where the CEO of the company himself does so many detrimental things,” Ross Gerber, co-founder and chief executive officer of wealth-management firm Gerber Kawasaki Inc., said on CNBC on Thursday. “It’s destroying the brand.”

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

In September, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu at Tesla’s offices in Fremont, California, for a broadcast discussion and said, “obviously I’m against antisemitism. I’m against anti-anything that promotes hate and conflict.”

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

Kristin Hull, founder and chief executive officer of Nia Impact Capital, said she was “appalled” by Musk’s new posts. The social-impact fund owned about $282,200 of Tesla stock as of midyear and has waged pressured campaigns against the company for years, including via shareholder resolutions.

“The impact of erratic, racist, and antisemitic speech from a CEO directly affects Tesla’s brand and bottom line in significant ways,” Hull wrote in an email Thursday. She said an appropriate response to Musk’s actions may include censure by Tesla’s board, demotion, re-assignment, suspension or removal.

Tesla shares fell 3.8% on Thursday and were down less than 1% as trading got underway in New York on Friday.

The European Commission advised staff to stop advertising on X due to “an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech,” it said in a statement on Friday, which didn’t specifically cite Musk’s posts. The move was initially reported by Politico.