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Elon Musk promotes fascist “Great Replacement Theory” on X/Twitter

Last week, Elon Musk tweeted his agreement with the fascist and antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” on X/Twitter, the social media platform owned by the billionaire CEO of Tesla and Space X.

The “Great Replacement Theory” (GRT) is an anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims Jewish people and left-wing groups are seeking to “replace white people” in Europe and America with “inferior stock” from South America, Africa and Asia.

GRT has been embraced and promoted by sections of the financial oligarchy and much of the Republican Party. In August of 2017, then-President Donald Trump embraced white supremacists who marched in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and chanted “Jews will not replace us!” Trump called them “very fine people.”

Adherents of the fascist conspiracy include several neo-Nazis who have gone on to perpetrate deadly massacres in recent years, including the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting and the 2019 Poway synagogue massacre in California.

On November 15, a Zionist account posted a tweet attacking Nazis for being “cowards” and posting ‘Hitler was right.’” In response, a fascist account replied that “Jewish communities have been pushing... dialectical hatred against whites” through “hordes of minorities... flooding their country.”

Musk responded to the latter post with the statement, “You have said the actual truth.”

(Left) Musk stating his support for the "Great Replacement Theory," which prompted a neo-Nazi to create an image glorifying Musk as Adolf Hitler. [Photo: Elon Musk]

Musk followed up his support of the GRT with a fascistic attack on the Anti-Defamation League, writing that the “ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.”

“It is not right,” Musk declared, “and needs to stop.”

Musk’s recent attacks on the ADL, as with his promotion of the #BanTheADL campaign earlier this year, are not rooted in the organization’s defense of the state of Israel. Musk and the neo-Nazis to whom he is appealing use the ADL’s defense of Zionism to claim that the organization is “antiwhite.” In this way, the ADL is simply a stand-in for “international Jewry.”

At the same time, Musk and his fascistic followers have no problem with the right-wing and false definition of antisemitism embraced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the ADL which characterize all critiques of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as antisemitic.

As with Musk’s campaign against the ADL in September, his latest antisemitic outburst quickly went viral and has been celebrated and promoted by neo-Nazis and fascists over the past week.

Hitler-lover and leader of the America First “groyper” movement Nick Fuentes explained the significance of Musk’s statement to his fascist audience in a livestream appearance on November 15. “We are tired about hearing about antisemitism,” he said, “because Jews are supporting anti-white hatred.”

“This is what we were saying at Charlottesville,” Fuentes added. “This is like when the Charlottesville marchers said, ‘Jews will not replace us!’ That is like a summary, of that... Elon Musk replies, ‘You have said the actual truth.’”

Fuentes approvingly took note of a subsequent tweet in which Musk stated that not all Jewish communities support GRT, “but it is also just not limited to the ADL.”

Fuentes continued: “He said Jewish communities are attacking white people. Jewish communities are supporting non-whites that hate white people. It’s groups like the ADL, but it’s just not the ADL, and it’s anti-white hatred and it needs to stop.”

“This is the richest man in the world, and one of the top Twitter users with a 160 million followers,” Fuentes added, his voice rising, “drawing a link between Jewish influence and anti-white hatred. Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk are all now regularly talking about white genocide, anti-white hatred and the role of Jewish elites!”

Andrew Torba, the CEO of far-right social media site Gab, where the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter posted his antisemitic rants before carrying out his massacre, approvingly reposted Musk’s tweet on his social media accounts. One meme posted by Torba noted that “Elon affirms Jews are the ones pushing anti-white hatred.”

Fascist Patrick Casey, who was with Fuentes at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, showcased Musk’s tweet on his YouTube show last week. “So, pretty good stuff here,” Casey said, “I like what I am seeing from Elon Musk.”

Musk’s embrace of the GRT, while popular with neo-Nazis, provoked outrage among large sections of the population, including many Jewish artists, journalists and rabbis. Over 160 Jewish people signed a statement under the banner “X Out Hate,” calling on large corporations to stop advertising on X. The group had urged an advertiser boycott in September following Musk’s earlier antisemitic outburst.

In its updated November 16 statement, the group correctly noted that Musk “is spreading the kind of antisemitism that leads to massacres,” and that it was an “implicit support for Nazism.”

On November 16, an IBM spokesperson revealed that the company had “immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”

On November 16 and 17, Media Matters for America, an online publication founded by journalist David Brock in 2004 and closely linked to the Democratic Party, published several articles pointing out that Nazi content flourished on X and even appeared next to advertisements from major brands such as Apple, Oracle and Infinity.

On November 17, several large corporations, including Apple, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, Comcast, GM, Sony and Verizon, announced that they had suspended advertising on the platform. The same day, the White House released a statement condemning Musk and his “abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms.”

These empty words are betrayed by the billions in government contracts the US government, including under the Biden administration, continues to hand out to Musk and his companies. The New York Times noted in a November 19 article that in the last few weeks the US government has pledged “as much as $1.2 billion worth of SpaceX launches next year.” This is on top of a September announcement that “the Pentagon agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars for ‘Starshield,’ a new, secure communications system...”

In an attempt to stop the tide of advertisers fleeing and cover for his fascistic politics, last Friday, some 48 hours after affirming the GRT, Musk tried to appeal to Zionist CEOs by pledging to suspend accounts that used the words “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea.” He called these phrases “euphemisms” for genocide.

The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who has worked hand-in-glove with the US and Israeli governments to demonize anti-genocide protests as “antisemitic,” retweeted Musk’s pledge to censor pro-Palestinian posts and thanked the antisemite in a Friday X post.

Greenblatt called Musk’s pledge “an important and welcome move,” and said he “appreciates this leadership in fighting hate.”

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt thanking Musk for his "leadership in fighting hate" less than 48 hours after Musk promoted the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory. [Photo: Jonathan Greenblatt]
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