Elon Musk claims accusations of rising antisemitism on Twitter 'absurd,' says he is 'aspirationally Jewish'

In a live discussion on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk rejected claims that his social media platform is experiencing an increase in antisemitism as “absurd.”

The discussion was hosted by Orthodox Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro and his website the Daily Wire. It came after more than 100 American Jewish activists signed an open letter asking advertisers to boycott X, in addition to asking Apple and Google to remove the platform from their app stores, claiming that it is “a breeding ground for antisemitism” that “represents one of the largest dangers to Jews in years.”

“We have watched in horror as a new stage in antisemitic discourse has spread like wildfire on one of America’s largest social media networks,” read the letter.

“All of this has been facilitated and enabled by its owner: Elon Musk…We are alarmed by his targeting of the ADL: not because of our views of the organization (we represent a wide range of views, including some who fundamentally oppose the ADL as well as staunch supporters), but because of the way he has used the organization as a very clear stand in for an antisemitic representation of Jewish power,” the open letter continued.

Last month, Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, saying that the Jewish organization’s statements about rising antisemitism on the social media platform had brought down advertising revenue on the site by 60%.

In March, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the CASM Technology firm reported that antisemitism had more than doubled on X since Musk acquired the social media giant.

During the live discussion, Musk emphatically denied he is an antisemite. 

“I actually went to Hebrew preschool in South Africa when I was a kid. Now, I don't know if I'm sort of genetically Jewish or what but maybe somewhere. I am aspirationally Jewish,” he said, adding, “In some respects I think I am Jewish, basically,” owing to what he said was his large proportion of Jewish friends.

“They use the X platform and I’m like, ‘Do you guys see anything?’ And they’re like, ‘Nope,’” he said.

One of the participants in the live discussion, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who is the chairman of the European Jewish Association, asked Musk to visit Auschwitz, a request that Musk at first rejected, saying, “I’m very well aware of the Holocaust and Auschwitz and Dachau and whatnot, and all the things that happened that were terrible. So this is not certainly new information for me. So I don’t need to visit Auschwitz to understand. I get it.”

After Margolin implored Musk “to walk there, to feel it, to understand it,” Musk offered a tentative yes to the proposal. 

“Consider it a tentative yes,” he said.

Musk also said that one of the main things he had concluded from learning about the Nazis was that “Hitler and the Nazis were extremely censorious. … The Nazis loved censorship, big time.”

In addition to Margolin and Shapiro, the live discussion also featured, among others, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Natan Sharansky, former chairman of the Jewish Agency, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Alan Dershowitz.