Elon Musk’s Disturbing ‘Fact’ – The Atlantic

The Hebrew Immigrant Support Society “likes to convey invaders in that kill our folks… Screw your optics, I’m getting in.” These had been the final phrases posted on-line by Robert Bowers earlier than he massacred worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. It was the one deadliest anti-Semitic assault in American historical past. In earlier postings, Bowers defined the grievances that led him to commit mass homicide. He shared meme after meme asserting that Jews had been conspiring to flood the nation with brown folks with a purpose to oppose and displace the white race. “Open you Eyes!” declared one, “It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Nation!”

On Wednesday evening, the world’s wealthiest man affirmed this identical conspiracy idea on X, previously Twitter, the social media web site he owns. Like so lots of Elon Musk’s acts of self-immolation, it occurred within the area of a tweet. The incident started with a put up from a conservative Jewish person, who complained about anti-Semitic content material on social media throughout the present Gaza battle. “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the web and posting ‘Hitler was proper,’” he wrote, “You bought one thing you need to say? Why don[’]t you say it to our faces.” A small-time white nationalist account quickly responded by attributing this anti-Semitism to minorities, and blaming it on the Jews:

This change would have languished in obscurity had Musk not replied to this bigoted bromide with six phrases: “You may have mentioned the precise reality.”

It shouldn’t must be mentioned, however sadly it does: Jews—a famously fractious folks that features Jared Kushner, George Soros, Invoice Maher, and Noam Chomsky—would not have a shared consensus, not to mention a collective conspiracy to subordinate white folks via immigration coverage. And even when there have been a unified Jewish agenda, it will make completely no distinction. That’s as a result of, opposite to deranged delusions of anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists, public coverage will not be set by the 0.2 p.c of the world inhabitants that’s Jewish, however by the 99.8 p.c that isn’t.

All of those fundamental details someway escaped America’s most well-known entrepreneur.

Over an hour later, after it grew to become clear that Musk’s missive was doing profound harm to his already dented fame, the billionaire tried to scrub up his claims in regards to the Jewish group’s perfidy by saying that he was solely referring to the Anti-Defamation League—as if being anti-Semitic in direction of one group of Jews is someway much less objectionable. (It’s not.) In any case, the walkback lasted 5 minutes. After one other critic complained that it was “not truthful to say or truthful to say that ‘Jewish communities’ promote dialectical hatred in direction of white,” Musk replied: “You[’re] proper that this doesn’t prolong to all Jewish communities, however it is usually not simply restricted to ADL.”

None of that is new. It wasn’t the primary time Musk had echoed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories from his social-media bubble. And it wasn’t the primary time he’d blamed anti-Semitism on Jewish actions, pinning the bias on its victims. After months of marinating in essentially the most conspiratorial cesspools of his personal web site, Musk arrived at present at his inevitable vacation spot.

However simply because Musk’s affirmation of white-nationalist ideology was the unsurprising consequence of his on-line radicalization spiral doesn’t make it any much less devastating—or harmful. Anti-Semites imagine {that a} miniscule Jewish minority controls the route of the non-Jewish majority. However the reality is the other: The destiny of the tiny Jewish group rests within the arms of non-Jewish society. Whether or not the anti-Jewish concepts of Musk and others change into the brand new regular is less than Jews; it’s as much as everybody else.