Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, embroiled in an ongoing war of words with the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has pushed for censorship of conservatives on all platforms, has said the organization was “instrumental” in getting Donald Trump blacklisted from Twitter.
Speaking to the All-In Podcast, Musk said that the ADL characterized his decision to allow the former President back on to Twitter/X as an example of hate speech.
Elon Musk (Chesnot / Getty)
Donald Trump (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
“The ADL was instrumental in getting Donald Trump deplatformed. And then when we restored the account, they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account… that constituted hate speech,” said Musk.
“He hasn’t even said anything! He has to at least say something, or post something, for there to be incremental hateful content — this is absurd! And what’s this got to do with antisemitism? Donald Trump’s son-in-law is Jewish, he has Jewish grandkids. I’m pretty sure he’s not antisemitic, okay. I mean, he was at their wedding!”
ELON MUSK: “The ADL was instrumental in getting Donald Trump deplatformed. When we restored the account, they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account on Twitter, now X, constituted hateful speech. He hasn’t even said anything”pic.twitter.com/RQYjYjMDJO
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) September 13, 2023
The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla also said it was the ADL that led efforts to choke off the platform’s advertising revenue, after Musk promised to restore free speech.
“The fact of the matter is, the ADL did initiate a boycott. They call it a ‘pause,’ but you know, a ‘pause’ that is a never ending boycott — same thing!”
“We saw a massive drop in U.S. advertising. We saw basically no change in advertising in Asia, but domestically where the ADL is strong we saw a 60 percent drop. So, you know, that’s pretty intense.”
“This is despite showing repeated analyses of the system, including third party analysis of the system, showing that the number of views of hateful content declined. Third parties that have all the data analyzed and said, actually, there’s less hate speech.”
“The issue I think, with the ADL, is not a question of hate speech, it’s not a question of antisemitism, obviously. It’s that the ADL and a lot of other organizations have become activist organizations which are acting far beyond their stated mandate, or their original mandate, and I think far beyond what donors to those organizations think they are doing.”
A massive backlash against the far-left organization took place earlier this month, with critics coalescing on the #BantheADL hashtag. True to form, ADL head and former Obama aide Jonathan Greenblatt in a CNBC interview denounced supporters of the hashtag, which included a number of prominent conservatives, as “white supremacists” and “hardened antisemites.”
Musk, meanwhile, has publicly discussed plans to sue the ADL for defamation, although a court filing has yet to materialize.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @AllumBokhari.