Musk’s X sues Media Matters after report shows ads next to pro-Nazi posts

Last week, X CEO Elon Musk endorsed a tweet accusing Jews of pushing “dialectical hatred against whites” and supporting “hordes of minorities … flooding their country.”

“You have said the actual truth,” Musk replied.

In parroting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, and giving antisemites free rein on his site, Musk is emulating Henry Ford, a car mogul who bought a media platform to spread antisemitic libels.

The Great Replacement is the delusional belief that someone is trying to replace white people by championing liberal immigration policies and racial justice. As is typical, Musk cast the Jews in the role of racial puppet masters.

When fascists in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us,” they were referencing the myth of the Great Replacement. The following year, Robert Bowers accused the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HAIS) of perpetrating white genocide before his shooting spree at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh:

“HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people,” Bowers said. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

In 2019, a gunman killed 52 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. His manifesto was entitled “The Great Replacement.” The same year, a shooter cited the Great Replacement to explain why he took 23 lives at an El Paso Walmart. The Buffalo supermarket shooter was also a believer.

Jewish philanthropist George Soros is routinely cast in conspiracy theories for his foundation’s support of liberal causes, such as criminal justice reform and the Black Lives Matter movement.

During the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, American Jews played a prominent role in founding and funding major civil rights organizations. Many of the white student Freedom Riders were Jewish and 17 rabbis were arrested alongside Martin Luther King in St. Augustine in 1964. Segregationists spread their own conspiracy theories about Jews teaming up with Blacks to destroy the white way of life.

In fact, the image of the liberal Jew goes back at least as far as the French Revolution. In the prevailing spirit of liberalism, the revolutionary government became the first in Europe to grant citizenship to Jews in 1791. In keeping with this liberalizing ethos, various European countries emancipated their Jewish residents. This wave of emancipation vastly expanded opportunities for Jews in terms of where they could live, what jobs they could do, and how they could participate in politics, business and the arts. Not surprisingly, many Jews embraced liberal ideologies because liberal tolerance improved their lives.

It was during the 19th century that Europe’s longstanding Jew-hatred curdled into modern antisemitism. It was during this time that the myth of the international Jewish conspiracy was fully fleshed out.

Some scholars argue that conspiracy theories are the defining characteristic of antisemitism. It’s wrong to hate someone for their religion, but the animosity is rooted in a real difference of opinion: Jews aren’t Christians, and some Christians have had a problem with that for centuries. Whereas, antisemitism is based on pure racial and political fantasy.

X, the Elon Musk-owned social media company formerly known as Twitter, filed a lawsuit against Media Matters and its writer Eric Hananoki on Monday, over what it called an “intentionally deceptive report” about antisemitism on the platform, according to a filing. Media Matters, a nonprofit based in Washington, says it engages in “monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

On the same day as the filing, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into “potential fraudulent activity” by Media Matters.

Paxton said in a statement that his office was examining the issue “to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square.”

Media Matters released a report by Hananoki on Thursday, which included screenshots of mainstream advertisements appearing beside pro-Nazi content on X. A wave of businesses, including IBM, Apple and Disney, subsequently suspended advertising.

The lawsuit by X — which claims interference with contract, business disparagement and interference with prospective economic advantage — said some of X’s largest advertisers were among the companies pulling their ads.

The lawsuit said that Media Matters manipulated the X algorithm by following 30 accounts made up only of controversial users and large companies, then undertaking “excessive” scrolling and refreshing.

“The overall effect on advertisers and users was to create the false, misleading perception that these types of pairings were common, widespread, and alarming,” the filing said.

X’s safety protocols “under normal, organic conditions operate seamlessly,” it said.

When asked for comment, X replied to The Washington Post with a post by its CEO Linda Yaccarino, who wrote that “Not a single authentic user on X saw IBM’s, Comcast’s, or Oracle’s ads next to the content in Media Matters’ article. Only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters.”

Media Matters President Angelo Carusone said the filing was “a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully X’s critics into silence” and that Media Matters stood by the reporting, in an X post shared by Hananoki. Media Matters did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The suit was filed in Texas, a state where the filing said X did significant business, although it is incorporated in Nevada, and its principal place of business is in San Francisco.

On Wednesday, Musk tweeted agreement with a user posting an antisemitic conspiracy theory alleging Jews promoted “hatred against whites,” under which the billionaire wrote, “You have said the actual truth,” a move widely criticized including by the White House. He later posted that “nothing could be further from the truth” than the claim he was antisemitic.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump ally Stephen Miller has urged Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — another far-right MAGA Republican — to investigate Media Matters for fraud. And Popular Information's Jeff Legum, on X (formerly Twitter), reports that Bailey "took him up on it." The Missouri AG tweeted, "My team is looking into this matter."

Legum, however, is highly critical of Bailey in a November 21 X thread, describing him as someone who "routinely exceeds his legal authority to grab headlines."

Legum explains, "Bailey expanded on his investigation of Media Matters on Newsmax, a far-right cable channel. He said he had authority to investigate Media Matters under the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act. That law is inapplicable. It only applies to selling goods or services."

Antisemitism has long festered online, but the Israel-Gaza war and the loosening of content moderation on X have propelled it to unprecedented levels, coinciding with a dramatic rise in real-world attacks on Jews, according to several monitoring organizations.

Since Oct. 7, antisemitic content has surged more than 900 percent on X and there have been more than 1,000 incidents of real-world antisemitic attacks, vandalism and harassment in America, according to the Anti-Defamation League — the highest number since the human rights group started counting. (That includes about 200 rallies the group deemed to be at least implicitly supporting Hamas.)

Factors that predate the Gaza war laid the groundwork for the heightened antisemitic atmosphere, say experts and advocates: the feeling of empowerment some neo-Nazis felt during the Trump presidency, the decline of enforcement on tech platforms in the face of layoffs and Republican criticism, even the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2021, which gave rise to harsh criticism of Israel’s actions and sustained antisemitism online.

But Musk plays a uniquely potent role in the drama, disinformation specialists say. His comments amplifying antisemitic tropes to his 163.5 million followers, his dramatic loosening of standards for what can be posted, and his boosting of voices that previously had been banned from the platform formerly known as Twitter all have made antisemitism more acceptable on what is still one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

Musk’s endorsement of comments alluding to the great replacement theory — a conspiracy theory espoused by neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017 and the gunmen who killed people inside synagogues in Pittsburgh in 2018 and Poway, Calif., in 2019 — brought condemnation from the White House.