Ahead of the 2024 election, billionaire Elon Musk is using the social media website he owns, X, formerly known as Twitter, to provide neo-Nazis a platform to unleash a geyser of antisemitic, racist and anti-immigrant bile, enabling them to receive millions of views.
The fascists, and fascistic content, Musk is promoting and allowing to proliferate is the same propaganda and lies used by the Nazis prior to and during the Holocaust.
Virtually every day, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX engages with far-right accounts that launder versions of QAnon or the “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT). At their core, both conspiracies—which claim adherents in the Republican Party, including ex-president Donald Trump—allege that Democrats and an elite (Jewish) cabal is seeking to annihilate (white) Christian American families.
QAnon cultists believe a “deep state,” with Democrats such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at its center, maintains supreme control through child sacrifice and rape. To break the grip of the “satanic deep state,” QAnon cultists have elevated ex-president Donald Trump as their savior. In this warped reality, Trump will lead a fascist “storm” that will end with the execution of his political enemies inside the Democratic Party and the “deep state.”
Far from disavowing QAnon, Trump cultivates and encourages this delusion among his followers. Trump regularly pipes in lightning sound effects and dramatic music linked to the movement at the conclusion of his rallies. Asked to disavow the conspiracy theory in an October 2020 town hall on NBC, Trump refused, replying, “I don’t know about QAnon. What I do hear about it, they are very strongly against pedophilia.”
Another tenet of the modern Republican Party, the “Great Replacement Theory” or GRT, posits that Democratic Party politicians, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their (Jewish) donors are purposely “flooding” the United States with migrants from the “third world,” in order to carry out a “demographic change” that will ensure Democratic Party electoral victories and the eventual elimination of the “white” race.
Republican politicians openly and regularly regurgitate GRT to justify their anti-immigrant polices, including the continued militarization of the border and the elimination of the right to claim asylum. The WSWS has written previously on Trump’s Hitlerian comments concerning “poisoning the blood of our country.” Neo-Nazi adherents of GRT have carried out deadly mass shootings in recent years, including at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh (2018), the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand (2019), and the Buffalo grocery store shooting (2022).
Musk, who has 168.8 million followers on X/Twitter, regularly promotes and engages with accounts that traffic in both fascist conspiracy theories. On January 10, Chaya Raichik, creator of “Libs of TikTok” (a social media account that spotlights LGBTQ people and places for her fascist followers to target), posted a truncated version of the QAnon conspiracy, writing, “The media is complicit in covering up sex trafficking to protect democrats and elites.”
Musk responded, “Exactly.”
In the last two weeks, Musk has specifically and repeatedly attacked immigrants. He has shared bogus graphs made by fascist accounts specifically aimed at providing succor for GRT promoters.
In a post that has garnered over 31 million views as of this writing, on January 10, Elon Musk wrote, “New York City just forced kids out of their school to house illegals.” The post was retweeted by neo-Nazi Ryan Dawson, whose Twitter/X account was reinstated in January 2023.
The day before, Musk tweeted, “This is what happens when you run out of hotel rooms. Soon, cities will run out of schools to vacate. Then they will come for your homes.” He tweeted two hours later, “They’ve run out of hotel rooms, are kicking kids out of school for illegal housing and now they want your homes too.”
In a December 29, 2023 post, Musk retweeted a graph from a fascist account comparing “American Births vs. Illegal Immigrants Oct. 2019–Oct. 2023,” with “illegal” supposedly surpassing the former.
Musk retweeted the graph, and said: “To give you a sense of the immense and growing size of illegal immigration.”
In the previous 72 hours, the fascist account Musk retweeted to his 160 million+ followers had shared racist “graphs” purporting to show “percent of Black Men who commit murder before turning 50” and other “race-based” crime statistics.
Musk, enamored with the anti-immigrant graph, retweeted it again on December 30, 2023 and wrote, “Almost no one seems to be aware of the immense size and lightning growth of this issue.” Musk made this post his “pinned” tweet for several days, meaning it was the first tweet one would see when viewing his profile.
On January 4, Musk tweeted another “graph” from the same fascist account that purported to show a jump in “encounters” along the US-Mexico border. Fear-mongering against immigrants, the fascist account warned of a “flood [of] humans.” Musk retweeted the post, adding, “there is no question that this administration is actively facilitating illegal immigration. The numbers speak for themselves.”
Questioned why the Biden administration would do this, Musk doubled down on the GRT: “They view them as future Dem voters.”
While dozens of left-wing and, in recent days, anti-genocide accounts have been suspended by X/Twitter, which Musk acquired in 2022, the billionaire has welcomed previously suspended neo-Nazis back on the site under the guise of “free speech.” Fascists/white supremacists who have had their accounts reinstated include the aforementioned Ryan Dawson, as well as Keith Woods, Stew Peters and Vincent James.
In recent days, many of these accounts have used an odd incident that occurred in New York City on Monday to launder ancient antisemitic conspiracy theories. On Monday, at least nine Hasidic Jewish worshipers were arrested for trespassing at the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Roughly 200,000 Hasidic Jews, a sizeable fraction of the Jewish population in New York City, live in Crown Heights.
The building where the arrests occurred is popularly referred to as “770” due to its address, 770 Eastern Parkway. Police were called to the site after some of the worshipers refused to allow workers commissioned by the leadership of Chabad to fill in an illegal cellar that had apparently been dug by some members of the community and had previously been discovered under the synagogue.
As of this writing it is unclear exactly what the purpose of the passageway was. Some reports indicate it was an attempt by more extremist members of the Lubavitcher sect to expand the synagogue. The building has been subject to court battles over ownership rights for years. Forward reported that the subterranean corridor connected to a “defunct Chabad mikvah around the corner.” A mikvah is a bath used for religious ceremonies.
A fracas occurred within the synagogue when police attempted to remove from the building some of the Chabad men who objected to the filling in of the cellar. No felony charges have been filed, and on Wednesday the cellar was filled in with cement.
Nevertheless, social media video of young Jewish men arguing with police and occupying part of the dug-out cellar quickly spread on Twitter/X, prompting Woods, Peters, James, Nick Fuentes and other fascists to uncork an avalanche of antisemitic propaganda.
Since Monday, thousands of blatantly antisemitic posts, accusing Jewish people of “tunneling” under the city in order to facilitate child rape and sacrifice, have garnered millions of views. This reporter has flagged several of them to Twitter for removal, but so far none have been taken down.
The above post by fascist @spaghettiboyx69 ranting about “Sewer Jews,” while depicting an evil stereotypical “hook-nosed” Jewish person with a red balloon—a reference to the child-murdering killer space clown from Stephen King’s It—“hasn’t broken our safety policies,” Twitter said in a January 10 email.
Despite being “banned” on the platform, videos of Fuentes ranting about Jewish people are being posted by his supporters on the website every day, garnering millions of views.
Neo-Nazi Keith Woods, who spearheaded the #BanTheADL campaign last year with Musk, Fuentes and far-right MMA fighter Jake Shields, has posted multiple times about “the tunnels,” insinuating that they are used for child rape/molestation, also accumulating millions of views.
A video interview featuring Stew Peters and Vincent James pontificating about Jewish people raping children, “as it says in the Talmud,” has been viewed over 2.6 million times as of this writing. James’ pinned tweet is a video featuring recorded tapes of former President Richard Nixon ranting about “disloyal Jews.”
A fascist “meme” shared by Andrew Torba featuring the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters as a “Shrine to Moloch” and “stained mattresses,” implying child rape, has been viewed over 1.3 million times on Twitter/X. Torba is the founder and CEO of far-right social media website Gab. Gab was the preferred social media network of Tree of Life Synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.
Bowers used Gab to make his final post before murdering 11 Jews in the largest antisemitic mass shooting in US history. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” Bowers wrote on Gab, referring to the Jewish American nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to refugees. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
On January 11, Musk responded to a post from @TheRabbitHole84 purporting to show the percentage of “Marxist professors” teaching at US universities. Musk responded, “Dang, that is a lot of Marxists! It is easy to live in a fake communist reality when colleges have massive endowments that insulate them from reality.”
“College donors need to become a *lot* more stringent in their requirements or stop donating,” Musk concluded.
Torba replied to Musk with a picture that featured “Jewish intellectuals.”