"Unvarnished antisemitism": Musk says conspiracy that motivated mass shooting is "the actual truth"

Musk praised a tweet from a user responding to a post challenging Nazi defenders that say "Hitler was right"

By Tatyana Tandanpolie

Staff Writer

Published November 16, 2023 10:33AM (EST)

X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk gestures during an in-conversation event with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on November 2, 2023. (KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk gestures during an in-conversation event with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on November 2, 2023. (KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Elon Musk on Wednesday declared on X/Twitter that a paid X Premium user's peddling of an antisemitic conspiracy theory attacking Jewish people was the "actual truth," media watchdog Media Matters for America reports. The user claimed, in part, that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," to which Musk responded, "You have said the actual truth," screenshots of the exchange show. The antisemitic post Musk praised came in response to another user who wrote, "To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting 'Hitler was right': You got something you want to say? Why dont you say it to our faces…”

The conspiracy theory the Musk-endorsed tweet spews — that Jewish populations are pushing "hatred against whites" and supporting "hordes of minorities" coming into the country — is the same one that motivated the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooter in Pittsburgh, The Atlantic's Yair Rosenburg emphasized online. "Elon Musk pushing unvarnished anti semitism at a time of rising antisemitism and violence against Jews," CNN anchor Jake Tapper wrote on X. "Meanwhile, America's richest man chimes in to say that Jews are getting what we deserve for being liberals," Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias tweeted. "The ADL clearly had Musk all wrong, the dude has zero tolerance for anti-semitism and just wants the world to know that 'Hitler was right' about the Jews because Jews advance 'hatred against whites," Yglesias snarked, seemingly referencing Musk's recent feud with the Anti-Defamation League after the watchdog criticized the changes he made to X for boosting the spread of antisemitic and extremist content on the platform.