Elon Musk’s X reached out to the ADL, but somehow the ADL is to blame
Ian Haworth
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In recent days, the Anti-Defamation League has been the center of attention on social media, fueled by the viral hashtag #BanTheADL.
On Aug. 30, just one day prior to the explosion of #BanTheADL, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted the following on X:
“I had a very frank + productive conversation with [X CEO Linda Yaccarino] yesterday about X, what works and what doesn’t, and where it needs to go to address hate effectively on the platform. I appreciated her reaching out and I’m hopeful the service will improve. ADL will be vigilant and give her and Elon Musk credit if the service gets better … and reserve the right to call them out until it does.”
https://twitter.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1696908233317769427
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Some onlookers were outraged about ADL’s push for content moderation on X. It is true the ADL has morphed into another left-wing activist group that cherry-picks convenient (or even imaginary) forms of bigotry to further a political agenda. But regardless of your opinion of the ADL and its political activism, it’s become depressingly clear that two obvious points are being completely ignored.
First, the messenger matters as much as the message.
While it started with honest and worthwhile aims, it is true that the ADL is a partisan, left-wing entity. Not only did it redefine racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people,” but it also presents itself as an opponent of bigotry and hatred … while simultaneously working alongside Al Sharpton, the same Al Sharpton who has been accused of inciting deadly attacks against Jews on at least two occasions and has a sordid history of spewing antisemitic bile such as “if the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
But that doesn’t mean all criticism of the ADL is valid or virtuous.
Let’s take two hypothetical critics of former President Barack Obama as an example. These two men both criticize Obama as an authoritarian tyrant. The first couldn’t care less about race and is motivated by a desire for liberty. The second hates Obama because he’s black. The criticism might be the same, but the motivation couldn’t be more different.
The same is largely true when we consider the figures behind the sudden social media assault on the ADL through #BanTheADL. There’s white supremacist Nick Fuentes, there’s Keith O’Brien (the pseudonym of far-right Irish activist Keith Woods, who is “best friends” with Fuentes), and there’s Jake Shields, former MMA fighter, defender of Kanye West, and conspiracy theorist who claimed that the ADL was founded by the “Jewish mafia” to defend Leo Frank, an accused child rapist and murderer who was lynched in 1915 after his death sentence was commuted.
His response to the fact that the “consensus among historians today is that Frank was innocent”? That Jewish control of … history is to blame!
“The ‘historians’ are being pressured from the ADL,” Shields scrawled.
The ADL is indeed a terrible organization, but when white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorists are its loudest critics, you have to be somewhere between naive and moronic not to consider their primary motive.
Second, Jews — this time, in the form of the ADL — are the scapegoats again.
Let’s not forget how this all began. People are ignoring a few key words from Greenblatt’s post: “I appreciated her reaching out.”
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Musk’s X, supposedly a bastion of free speech absolutism, reached out to the ADL, yet people are furious at the ADL for pursuing its objectives. Meanwhile, Musk gets off scot-free, aided by his sudden deluge of anti-ADL rants, accusing the ADL of trying to “kill” X, being the “biggest generators of antisemitism” on X, and being primarily responsible for a 60% decline in advertising revenue.
But none of this addresses why X reached out to the ADL! Perhaps Musk will never need to explain if he can fan the reliable flames of online antisemitism and hide behind the world’s favorite scapegoat: Jews.
Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and host of “Off Limits.” You can follow him on X at @ighaworth. You can also find him on Substack.