Elon Musk, White House.Photo:Chesnot/Getty; Getty
Chesnot/Getty; Getty
The White House on Friday slammedElon Muskfor posting a “hideous” antisemitic lie on social media this week after the tech CEO endorsed a post falsely claiming that Jewish people were stoking hatred against White people.
“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates in a statement posted to Musk’s social media platform, X, on Friday.
The statement continued: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans. We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.”
On Wednesday, Musk responded “absolute truth” to a tweet that falsely claimed that Jewish communities were pushing “hatred against whites.”
As Bates himself noted, the same false conspiracy theory motivated the gunman who opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018,killing 11 people.
Musk’s tweet has also landed him in hot water with advertisers, withIBM suspending its ads on Xafter the company’s corporate ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content.
SinceHamas' Oct. 7 attackon southern Israel, in which terrorists killed hundreds of civilians and soldiers andtook around 240 people hostage, antisemitism has been on the rise.
She added that Hamas' terrorist attack earlier in the month marked “the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Musk has, in recent years, not shied away from discussing politics, particularly after he purchased Twitter,which he later renamed X.
In November 2022, shortly after his takeover of the social media site was complete, Musk urged followers to vote Republican in the midterm elections.
Musk’s tweet — which was pinned at the top of his Twitter profile after being published — effectively endorsed an entire swath of candidates and came months after the Tesla founder said at a tech conference he wanted to make the social media platform “balanced.”
Musk has also received criticism fortweeting a bizarre and false conspiracy theoryin the wake of last year’s attack on then-House SpeakerNancy Pelosi’s husband,Paul Pelosi.
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source: people.com
