White House blasts Elon Musk for promoting antisemitic, racist ‘hate’

The White House on Friday lashed out at Elon Musk for promoting “Antisemitic and racist hate” after the Tesla CEO and X Corp. owner said he agreed with a social media post accusing “Jewish communities” of pushing “hatred against whites.”

Musk, responding on X, wrote that that post “said the actual truth.”

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said it was “unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind probably the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time.”

Bates seemed to be referring to the mass murder on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, during which 11 people were shot to death by a gunman who expressed a belief within the antisemitic “white genocide” conspiracy theory.

“We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate within the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” Bates said.

The White House’s statement noted the proximity of Musk’s post to the deadly attacks in Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, which it described as “the deadliest day for the Jewish people for the reason that Holocaust.”

“All of us have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to talk out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the protection of our communities,” Bates said.

Spokespeople for Tesla and X didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s requests for comment on the White House’s statement.

Musk on Wednesday responded to a post claiming Jewish communities “have been pushing the precise sort of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”

Musk, who has the preferred account on X, replied: “You may have said the actual truth.”

The unique post, from an account with fewer than 5,000 followers, has been viewed greater than 1.1 million times since being amplified by Musk, who’s followed by greater than 163 million accounts.

Musk in the identical X thread criticized the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish nonprofit advocacy group, and others that he claims are pushing “de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind.”

In one other post, he claimed that the ADL “unjustly attacks nearly all of the West” because they can not criticize “minority groups who’re their primary threat.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has responded on X to Musk’s post, warning that, “At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging all over the world, it’s indisputably dangerous to make use of one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories.”

Musk, the world’s richest man, has previously threatened to sue the ADL for defamation, alleging the group “has been attempting to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.”

Wednesday’s exchange was not the primary time Musk has been accused of boosting antisemitic conspiracies.

In a 2018 tweet on the platform formerly referred to as Twitter, he wrote, “Who do you’re thinking that *owns* the press? Hello.”  After that tweet spurred accusations of antisemitism, Musk blamed a Twitter “glitch” for hiding one other post within the thread and “removing context” that clarified he was referring only to “powerful people.”

In 2022, he tweeted a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler, but deleted it after a backlash.

When he acquired Twitter, he let previously banned users back on the platform, including neo-Nazi website publisher Andrew Anglin.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last yr. Engagement on the location has fallen on the location in that point, some studies have shown, although Musk disputes that traffic is down. Musk has, nonetheless, admitted that U.S. ad revenue is down significantly.

With Musk’s latest controversy over antisemitism still roiling, some firms are distancing themselves from him and his platform. IBM announced this week that it has paused promoting on X after a report found that its ads were being placed next to antisemitic content.

Musk can also be the founding father of SpaceX, a NASA contractor. The spacecraft manufacturer on Saturday is ready to try one other launch of Starship, which is a component of a NASA contract.