Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for some $22 billion over its slandering of him as an antisemite, which he alleges has tanked X’s advertising revenue. “Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss,” Musk says.
Judging from my own feed, there are plenty of real-life antisemites who have taken to X, formerly Twitter, to participate in the #BanTheADL movement over this kerfuffle. It’s unsurprising that more open discourse brings out more bigots. That’s an unfortunate price of free speech. Clearly, those who campaign to “ban” accounts don’t care about an open platform, anyway. Nothing stops us from calling them out.
That said, though, Musk’s criticism of the ADL isn’t antisemitic. Perhaps he has a case, perhaps not, but neither Musk nor anyone else has a responsibility to let a mob of online nuts dictate their reactions to the ADL’s activism.
For another thing, the ADL isn’t a “Jewish” organization in any genuine ethnic or theological sense. Its primary mission is no longer to stop the defamation of Jews. The ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Barack Obama appointee, has created a partisan leftist social justice outfit. And its primary goal these days is cynically using the organization’s historical position to advance often illiberal, completely irreligious, leftist ideas.
One of the ways it does this is by dishonestly framing an endorsement of free expression as an endorsement of the things people say using free expression,
