Backlash spreads over Elon Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic post

By Dana Hull and Ian King | Bloomberg Fallout from an Elon Musk post endorsing antisemitic views continues to spread, with Tesla Inc. investors criticizing the billionaire and more advertisers fleeing his social media platform X. The European Commission joined International Business Machines Corp.

in announcing it will stop advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Musk agreed with a post that said Jewish people hold a “dialectical hatred” of white people. Musk responded by saying: “You have said the actual truth. ” “X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination,” X Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino said on the platform Thursday.

“There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop. ” Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and the world’s richest person, has repeatedly been criticized for promoting content attacking Jewish people and his latest comments come at a time of rising antisemitism and Islamophobia around the world amid the Israel-Hamas war. The Anti-Defamation League found antisemitism on X increased by more than 900% in the week following the initial Oct.

7 attack by Hamas compared to the previous week. Last year, the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy organization, called on Musk to apologize after he deleted a controversial tweet that made a satirical comparison between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Adolf Hitler. “I’ve just never had this with any company I’ve ever invested in, ever in my life, where the CEO of the company himself does so many detrimental things,” Ross Gerber, co-founder and chief executive officer of wealth-management firm Gerber Kawasaki Inc.

, said on CNBC on Thursday. “It’s destroying the brand. ” Musk has accused the ADL, a Jewish civil rights group, of undermining X’s advertising revenue by highlighting a rise in extremist content that has caused advertisers to flee.

Ad sales on X are down 60% “primarily due to pressure on advertisers” mounted by the ADL, Musk said in September, after the organization said reports of harassment and extremist content spiked since he took over the company. In September, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu at Tesla’s offices in Fremont, California, for a broadcast discussion and said, “obviously I’m against antisemitism. I’m against anti-anything that promotes hate and conflict.

” At the end of the long and wide-ranging conversation, Musk shared that he had attended a Jewish school while growing up in South Africa and could even sing “a great ‘Hava Nagila,’” a Jewish folk song. Kristin Hull, founder and chief executive officer of Nia Impact Capital, said she was “appalled” by Musk’s new posts. The social-impact fund owned about $282,200 of Tesla stock as of midyear and has waged pressured campaigns against the company for years, including via shareholder resolutions.

“The impact of erratic, racist, and antisemitic speech from a CEO directly affects Tesla’s brand and bottom line in significant ways,” Hull wrote in an email Thursday. She said an appropriate response to Musk’s actions may include censure by Tesla’s board, demotion, re-assignment, suspension or removal. Tesla shares fell 3.

8% on Thursday and were down less than 1% as trading got underway in New York on Friday. The European Commission advised staff to stop advertising on X due to “an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech,” it said in a statement on Friday, which didn’t specifically cite Musk’s posts. The move was initially reported by Politico.

Related Articles Business | Elon Musk and X can’t escape government oversight, judge rules Business | A top LGBTQ+ advocacy org is quitting X over safety concerns Business | Elon Musk almost needed SFPD wellness check after ‘breakdown,’ getting booed at Dave Chappelle show Business | First Tesla Autopilot jury trial ends in loss for family of driver killed in California crash Business | X starts subscription tiers that cost up to $16 a month Media Matters released a report Thursday showing ads for IBM, Apple Inc. , Oracle Corp. , Comcast Corp.

’s Xfinity brand, and the Bravo television network, which is owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, running on X next to pro-Nazi posts. “IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” a company spokesperson said. Comcast is looking into the matter, a spokesperson said.

Apple and Oracle didn’t respond to requests for comment. IBM’s decision was reported earlier by the Financial Times. X did a sweep on the accounts that Media Matters found associated with the offensive content and they will no longer be monetizable, Joe Benarroch, head of business operations at the company, said in a statement.

The specific posts will be labeled “Sensitive Media. ” The X system is not intentionally placing a brand actively next to this type of content, nor is a brand actively trying to support this type of content with an ad placement, Benarroch said. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, also head of project-management software maker Asana Inc.

, said Yaccarino should ask Musk, who serves as the company’s chief technology officer, to resign. “Yaccarino faces her biggest test yet as she decides whether to terminate her antisemitic CTO or risk losing even more advertisers,” he wrote on Threads, another social media site. “How will she handle this tricky, yet morally unambiguous situation?” –With assistance from Todd Shields, Jillian Deutsch, Craig Trudell and Ed Ludlow.

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