Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk during a heated discussion on the dangers of artificial intelligence with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London, UK, on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.
Tolga Akmen | Bloomberg | getty images
The White House on Friday criticized Elon Musk for promoting “anti-Semitism and racist hatred.” Tesla The CEO and owner of X Corp said he agreed with a social media post that accused “Jewish communities” of spreading “hate against white people.”
Musk responded to X, saying the post “tells the real truth.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said, “It is unacceptable at any time to repeat the despicable lies behind the most lethal act of anti-Semitism in American history.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms this despicable propaganda of anti-Semitism and racist hatred, which runs counter to our core values as Americans,” Bates said.
The White House statement noted the proximity of Musk’s post to the deadly October 7 attacks in Israel by Hamas, which it described as “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Bates said, “We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of our fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.”
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 on Wednesday that claimed the Jewish community is “fostering exactly the same kind of dialectical hatred against white people that they claim they want people to stop using against them.” Do it.”
Musk, who has the most popular account on X, replied: “You said 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 being promoted by Musk, who is followed by more than 163 million accounts.
In the same ” are promoting.
In another post, he claimed that the ADL “unjustly attacks the majorities of the West” because they “cannot criticize the minority groups that are the primary threat to them.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt reacted to Musk’s post “It is undeniably dangerous to use one’s influence for.”
Musk, the world’s richest man, had previously threatened to sue the ADL for defamation, accusing the group of trying to “destroy me and this platform by falsely accusing me of being anti-Semitic.”
Wednesday’s exchange was not the first time Musk was accused of promoting anti-Semitic conspiracies.
in 2018 do “Who do you think *owns* the press? Hello,” he wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter. After that tweet prompted accusations of anti-Semitism, Musk blamed a “glitch” on Twitter for hiding another post in the thread and “removing context” that made it clear he was only talking about “powerful people”. Were mentioning.
In 2022, he tweeted a meme comparing Adolf Hitler to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but deleted it after criticism.
When they acquired Twitter, they allowed previously banned users back on the platform, including neo-Nazi website publisher Andrew Anglin.
