After weeks of tangling with the Anti-Defamation League, on Thursday Elon Musk defended his social media platform, X, against claims that it has facilitated anti-Semitism—and he did it in bizarre fashion.
In a conversation with conservative author Ben Shapiro, he cast himself as “pro-Semitic,” noting that he had attended a Jewish preschool in South Africa and that his first name is common in Israel. (Elon means “oak tree” in Hebrew.)
“Now I don’t know if I’m sort of genetically Jewish or what,” Musk said. “Maybe somewhere. But I’d say I’m aspirationally Jewish, let me put it that way.”
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Later, he added that he was aware of that “old trope of, like, you know, ‘I have a Jewish friend.’” In Musk’s case, he said, “I don’t have a Jewish friend. I think probably I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. That’s why I think, in some respects, I think I am Jewish basically.”
Musk said he has visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and has also been to Masada, an ancient fortress in the Israeli desert once besieged by the Romans. “I’ve been to Masada twice,” he emphasized. “I don’t know how many people can say that.”
As for other elements of Jewish culture he endorses: “I wouldn’t say the Hava Nagila is the best… but it’s pretty, pretty good,” he said, referring to the Hebrew song often sung at weddings.
The Anti-Defamation League—which has a stated mission of working to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all”—is one of numerous nonprofits that criticized Musk after his takeover of Twitter last year.
Following the acquisition, Musk axed many of the company’s content moderation staffers, and his espoused belief in “free speech” raised concerns that he was letting hate speech run rampant. (Musk has denied that accusation, though he has separately been accused of bending his free-speech principles to serve his own interests.)
Earlier this month, Musk assailed the ADL, alleging that the group was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” He said that the company’s advertising revenue in the United States was “still down 60 percent, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL,” and that he was considering filing a lawsuit over the matter. (The group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, called the threats “frivolous.”)
In a statement, a spokesperson for the ADL told The Daily Beast, “Israel and Jews are frequently targets of hateful antisemitic and anti-Zionist invectives on Twitter/X. At the end of the day, the way to judge any conversations or policies is in whether they reduce the amount of antisemitic hate on the platform.”
Musk sought to use Thursday’s Twitter Space to reset the narrative in his favor. He said he had consulted his many “Jewish friends” about accusations of anti-Semitism on X and that they did not “see anything” either.
The billionaire also used the moment as an opportunity to defend Russell Brand, the comedian turned right-wing media personality accused of multiple instances of sexual assault. “Why now?” he said, suggesting that Brand was only targeted because of his alignment with right-wing causes.
Musk claimed he had spoken to female friends who “worked closely with [Brand] and they said that he was actually a gentleman.”
“I think we’re running out of conspiracy theories that didn’t turn out to be true,” he said.
