Category Archives: Elon Musk

Elon Musk has an idiosyncratic way of engaging with X, the once-known-as-Twitter social media platform that he now owns. He does his share of corporate posting, offering up videos of Tesla cars and SpaceX rockets. But he also spends a lot of time amplifying right-wing propaganda, both directly in his feed and by replying to posts made by other people.

When you or I reply to a post on X, a few people might see it. When the owner of the site a guy with more than 187 million followers does it, it vastly boosts the visibility of that post. That holds true even when the poster is offering misinformation about crime and race in the United States.

On Monday evening, Musk offered a characteristically terse reply to one such post: !

The claim that prompted that expression of amazement? That there had been a marked increase in the number of White Americans killed by Black Americans over time.

Its true that things have changed since the 1950s, user eyeslasho wrote. 1950s: Blacks killed about 600 more whites each year than whites killed blacks. Now: Blacks kill nearly 1,500 more whites each year than whites kill blacks.

This isnt true, which well get to in a second.

This line of argument is not a novel one. For some time, racists have pointed to disparities in homicide rates as a way of suggesting that Black Americans are inherently dangerous or threatening to public safety. These assertions are often flatly wrong and almost always ignore extenuating factors, like poverty.

In 2015, Donald Trump shared an image suggesting that 4 in 5 White murder victims were killed by Black offenders, which is also false. At the time, the most recent available data showed that the vast majority of White murder victims were killed by White people, just as most Black murder victims are killed by Black people. Victims tend to be killed by people they know, and most people know mostly people who share their racial identity.

Setting aside the specific numbers offered by eyeslasho for a moment, theres a very good reason the number of people killed might have more than doubled since 1950 the U.S. population also more than doubled over that period.

The assertion being made isnt about rates of homicide, its about raw totals. So the number of people in the country matters. If you go from 1,000 murders in a population of 100 million to 1,800 murders in a population of 200 million (for example), theres a raw increase of 800 murders but a lower murder rate.

We should note that the rates of increase in the size of the White and other populations since 1950 have not been the same. The size of the White population increased by 50 percent between 1950 and 2020 while the size of the Black population increased by 170 percent. But, again, the baseline matters: The country added 70 million White people and only 26 million Black people.

In a later post, eyeslasho presented a chart that purported to be the source of their claim. It attributed the estimates of the number of homicide victims to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions WONDER database. That tool uses data from the National Vital Statistics System, which doesnt include information about the race of the perpetrator of a homicide, only of the victim.

The FBI, though, does collect both pieces of information. An analysis of homicide trends from 1976 to 2005 posted at the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) website doesnt tell us what the numbers looked like in the 1950s, but it does show that over time most homicides have been committed by offenders of the same racial group as victims.

In the late 1970s, the difference in the number of White homicide victims killed by Black offenders and the number of Black victims killed by White offenders averaged about 580. The peak came during the crime wave in the early 1990s, when the gap was about 960.

By 2019, the last year before crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, the gap was 320 lower than at any point between 1976 and 2005. Washington Post analysis of raw data for 2022, obtained through the FBIs Data Discovery Tool, shows a gap of 444 killings. That is also lower than any point during the three decades in the BJS data.

Again, these are raw numbers, not ones adjusted for population. So even with the increase in population from 1976 to 2022, the number of homicides is lower, including across racial lines. Again, too, the homicides for which we have 2022 data show that 87 percent of White or Black homicide victims who were killed by a White or Black offender were killed by an offender of their own race.

One question that emerges here is how Musk saw this post in the first place. He largely follows right-wing users, so its possible that one of them retweeted it and brought it to Musks attention. Another question that emerges is why he felt that this claim suspect just from the standpoint of population increases deserved that exclamation point of amazement. What was it about a false claim that Black killings of White people had increased relative to White killings of Blacks that piqued his interest?

In May 2023, eyeslasho had another post on X that bears mentioning here. In it, he asserted that Musks acknowledging data on race and crime has done more to raise awareness of the disproportionalities observed in these data than anything I can remember.

Observed is doing all of the work in that sentence.

Excerpt from:

Analysis | The data on race and murder that Elon Musk gave a '!' deserved a '?' - The Washington Post

Twitter is one of the internets favorite places for internet beef and Elon Musk is no stranger to it. A particular beef involving a college student tracking his private jet was the catalyst for the billionaire purchasing shares of Twitter, commencing his takeover of the social media platform, according to a new book about the ordeal.

Tarek El Moussa's road out of debt to being a millionaire | Your Wallet

Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal [CEO of Twitter at the time] to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane, says an excerpt from Battle for the Bird, a new book on Musks takeover, published by Bloomberg on Thursday. The billionaire started buying Twitter shares shortly after Agrawal denied his request.

The new book is a detailed investigation into the power struggle at Twitter, now called X, in the last few years. The book seems to confirm that Musks personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

Musk touts free speech as the main reason he bought Twitter, but the billionaire was actively trying to silence a college student he had a feud with before he was CEO. A Twitter account tracking Elon Musks private jet, @elonjet, was front of mind for the billionaire in Jan. 2022 when Musk started buying stock in the company, according to a tweet from the books author Kurt Wagner.

Nearly a year later, Musks acquisition was complete and he ended up banning @elonjet. The person behind the account, Jack Sweeney, is a college student whos now famous for tracking the private jets of Musk and Taylor Swift. Sweeney simply amplifies publicly available flight information, but celebrities hate him.

Musk promised to not ban Sweeneys account a month before he did, crediting his commitment to free speech, even though the account posed a direct personal safety risk. Sweeney now operates @elonjet on Threads.

The billionaires feud with Sweeney is a case study of Musks motivating factors. Yes, free speech is important to him, but not as important as getting his way. Buying Twitter made Musk king of the sandbox, and hes certainly exercised that control in the year since.

Musks acquisition of Twitter has always been confusing. Its widely been seen as a misstep for the billionaire, distracting him from other projects at Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Musk was heavily focused on promoting right-wing speech when he bought Twitter, which was lacking under Jack Dorseys management, but also on settling his internet beef.

This article originally appeared on Gizmodo.

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Elon Musk bought Twitter because the account tracking his private jet annoyed him, book says - Quartz

Elon Musk believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot lose in the war. He has also opposed the approval of assistance to Ukraine.

Source: Elon Musk to US Republican senators during a discussion on X Spaces; Bloomberg

The discussion was joined by opponents of the draft law on further assistance to Ukraine to combat the full-scale Russian invasion.

Elon Musk said that "there is no way in hell" Vladimir Putin could lose the war in Ukraine. He said this in response to the words of one of the speakers, who said that people who expect victory in Ukraine are "living in a fantasy world".

Commenting on the assistance to Ukraine from the United States, the billionaire said that it is ineffective.

"This spending does not help Ukraine. Prolonging the war does not help Ukraine," Elon Musk said about the bill which provides further assistance to Ukraine.

Elon Musk also drew attention to the fact that he is often accused of defending the Russian president. However, in his opinion, this accusation is "absurd". In this context, the billionaire added that his companies "have probably done more to undermine Russia than anything". This, of course, is not true because, in addition to activating the Starlink satellite and transferring a limited number of terminals at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the contribution of Musk's companies to the "undermining" of Russia is minimal. After all, neither Tesla, with its electric vehicles, nor SpaceX, did not cause problems for the Russian raw material economy.

The billionaire also believes that Vladimir Putin is being pressured to bring the war to an end because "if he were to back off, he would be assassinated".

The businessman noted that his interest is to stop the death of people on both sides. However, he expressed doubt that seeking to remove Vladimir Putin is a wise decision.

"For those who want regime change in Russia, they should think about who is the person that could take out Putin, and is that person likely to be a peacenik? Probably not," Elon Musk said.

In his opinion, such a person will likely be "even more hardcore than Putin".

Background: Last year, a scandal broke out due to Elon Musk's unilateral decision to not activate Starlink near Crimea. The incident occurred in 2022 and became known from an excerpt out of a biographical book about the billionaire.

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Elon Musk opposes aid to Ukraine, says Putin can't lose Bloomberg - Yahoo News

Earlier this week, I published my book, Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musks Twitter. Next week, another book on the topic comes out: Its called Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitters Soul, by Bloombergs Kurt Wagner. And its excellent.

Today I sat down with Kurt to discuss his book, which he had pitched as a biography on Jack Dorsey but morphed into a deep dive into Twitters tumultuous transition into X. Despite not speaking with Dorsey directly, Wagners book offers significant insights into the enigmatic leader, from his early years to his 2015 return as CEO and his eventual desperate bid to sell the company to Elon Musk. The portrait isnt entirely flattering Dorsey comes across roughly as strange as I suspected but it is humanizing.

Wagner also paints a vivid picture of Twitters culture before Musk, particularly the combination of glamor and goofiness that pervaded the companys live events. During one all-staff retreat in Houston, Texas, the company brought the supermodel and Twitter power user Chrissy Teigen onstage. She was greeted by a standing ovation while Hail to the Chief played in the background, Wagner writes. A chyron described her as mayor of Twitter. After she sat down, she asked Dorsey if he drinks his own pee.

There really was no other company like it.

Kurt also had some questions for me about the process of writing my book, and the different approaches we take to tackling the same subject matter.

It may seem unusual for competing authors to interview each other about their books on similar topics. But Kurt and I have remained friendly throughout this process, and I have enormous respect for his work. The tale of Twitter is vast and complicated, and I like to think that theres room for multiple books particularly ones that embrace different angles and characters, as ours do

[Also I just thought this would be fun to read. And it was! Casey]

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Zo Schiffer: When you started writing this book, it was a biography of Jack Dorsey. Did your life fall apart after Musk bought Twitter? Or did it end up feeling like an incredible gift?

Kurt Wagner: It took me a while to appreciate the incredible gift part, although I think at the end of the day, that's exactly what it was. I got very lucky with my timing. I was planning to do a Twitter-Jack book, essentially. And I was literally pitching publishers with a book proposal the week that Elon showed up as the largest shareholder at Twitter. I remember being frustrated in the moment, because a lot of the publishers were asking me, well, where does Elon fit into this book? And I kept being like, He doesn't! This is a Jack-Twitter book! He literally just showed up.

As the story unfolded, I kept being like, okay, I'll just add a chapter about that. Okay, I'll add a chapter about that. And then at a certain point, and I'm embarrassed to say it probably took me all the way until late summer, I finally just was like, okay, this can't just be a Twitter-Jack book with Elon tacked onto the end.

Schiffer: How much material did you have to walk away from?

Wagner: A decent amount? I did a lot of condensing. The first chapter of my book now is a Jack Dorsey history chapter. In my proposal, that was maybe three chapters. I originally thought I was going to do a full chapter on Vine, which I didn't end up doing. I thought I was going to do a lot more about Square (now called Block), which I didn't end up doing. But again, I think it was for the best. It kept me more focused than I would have been otherwise, and as we both know, oftentimes when you're forced to condense stuff, it actually makes it stronger.

Wagner: Pivoting a bit: Ive got a question for you. You wrote your book incredibly fast. You went in knowing what you wanted to write about, I assume, and you did it incredibly quickly. I'm wondering what you learned from that process. If you did it again, would you do it any differently?

Schiffer: So you and I sat down for drinks in March of 2023, and you were already writing your book, and I was feeling really jealous. And we talked really honestly about it. Casey had just told me he didnt want to write the book, because originally wed thought about doing it together, but he was focused on Platformer. So if I was going to do it, I needed to do it on my own. And originally I felt like OK, Im not going to be able to do it then. We had that conversation and I was honest with you I was like, I don't think it's going to happen.

But I left that meeting just feeling really bummed that I had spent the last year reporting on this company, feeling like I'd made really good headway on getting in and really, really sourcing up. And then this piece of history was going to be told by a bunch of other people, all of whom are incredible Twitter reporters. But I was like, I also have a piece of that story that I want to tell. So I did end up signing the book contract solo and moving forward with it. And when I signed, I think the manuscript was supposed to be turned in April of 24. And I went on book leave immediately and was like if I write 1,500 words a day, I can have the manuscript done by October and I can try to publish it sooner. I already had done so much reporting, and I knew I was going to focus on the timeframe immediately surrounding the acquisition. I spent the summer working seven days a week, and my husband watched my daughter on the weekends.

I do want to write another book, but I want it to be way less competitive.

Wagner: How did you decide when to end it? I struggled with this. This is a company that has a seemingly endless amount of news and intrigue, right? So how'd you say, here's where my version of this story stops?

Schiffer: When Musk named Linda Yaccarino as CEO, at first I thought that was kind of a neat ending. But then it didn't feel like that was actually that big of a change at the company. So by last October, Twitter had become X, it had been a year since the acquisition, and violence broke out in the Middle East. It felt like all of Musks product and policy decisions from the last year were culminating in this disinformation disaster on the platform. At that point, I felt like I was able to say, this company is fundamentally different from what it used to be, and the place that it holds in culture and society is not what it once was.

Schiffer: What about for you? Why did you decide to end it where you did?

Wagner: I really wanted to end it before the next phase of the company started. For me, this was a Twitter book. So much of it had been about the history of this prior company and the prior leadership. And so I ended up stopping it at the very end of 2022, with the change of the calendar year. So there was also a natural literal calendar timing that made sense. I had no idea, of course, that he was going to change the name or anything. But I felt by that point, he'd now owned the company for two months, and it didn't feel like Twitter was Twitter anymore.

I ended up putting a bunch of stuff from 2023 into an epilogue. I don't know if that was the right choice, but it feels at least to me, okay, the Twitter version of this story is in the book.

Schiffer: Did you know when you were pitching your book originally that Jack wasnt going to speak with you?

Wagner: There was a little bit of hesitation at the beginning. Anytime you set out and say, I want to write a big profile or project,, and knowing the subject may or may not participate, not having that in the bag

Schiffer: So at first, you thought there was a chance he might talk?

Wagner: I did. But remember when I started, it had a very different ending. The ending I thought when I first started was, Jack Dorsey leaves his job. That's a very different end than the company gets sold to Elon and everyone gets fired and everything seems terrible. So I was optimistic, or at least holding out hope, that maybe if I did enough reporting around Jack that he would ultimately come around.

There's pros and cons to both realities. Of course, I would've welcomed that conversation, but I don't think the book is lacking because of it. And I think in some ways it allows you to delve into areas that maybe you wouldn't have room for if you were trying to squeeze in a bunch of details from an interview with the main subject.

Schiffer: You were able to get Jack's girlfriend from way in the past, and people around him, people who hadnt spoken about this before, to talk.

Wagner: Yeah, I feel proud of the reporting I was able to do around him. Obviously for me, I do share in the book that I didn't talk to Jack or Elon. I felt like I owed that to the reader, since those are the two main characters in this story. I don't really get into who I did or didn't talk to otherwise. I think savvy readers can probably figure that out if they wanted to. But yeah, I mean, I do feel like part of the appeal was going back and doing a deep dive into history. Sometimes the further away things are, the more likely that people are willing to talk.

Wagner: You had a bunch of Twitter employees that pop up throughout the book and serve as repeat characters. And I'm curious how you decided who to profile.

Schiffer: I come from a labor reporting background. In some ways, Im not the most natural tech reporter, in that the thing I'm most interested in is the people. I wanted to tell the story of the demise of this important social app, and also the company culture and the people who worked there.

And I specifically wanted to tell it through someone who really didn't like Twitter 1.0, and didn't fit in there, and then was really excited about Elon coming in. And then I wanted to tell the story of someone who stuck it out for different reasons, and maybe wasn't as huge a fan of Elon.

One of my main characters is JP Doherty, the former global director of Twitter Command Center. I knew when I met him that I wanted him to be part of it. He has a really compelling personal story. He had to stay at Twitter because his son, who has health issues and is on his insurance, was having an important surgery in January of 23. JP rose up the rinks under Elon despite having serious misgivings about what was going on at the company. And he just seemed like such a standup guy, a really principled person, and someone who wasn't reflexively anti-Elon.

And then Randall Lin, a machine learning engineer, who's kind of my all-in character, he was a lot harder to find. Because it felt like anyone who had really liked Elon, even if they had changed their mind later, probably weren't the biggest fan of my reporting, and didn't want to talk. I really, really, really wanted Esther Crawford to talk to me. And there was not a chance in hell she was going to, although I tried.

Wagner: I was so jealous! I was jealous of a lot of great details in your book, to be clear. But there was a moment a couple of weeks after Elon took over where he emails everyone and he's like, be in the office this afternoon. And then he sends a follow-up email: please fly here if you need to. And I was joking with sources like, Hey, could you imagine if someone literally ran to JFK right now and tried to fly to San Francisco because of this email, wouldn't that be hilarious? And then reading in your book that that's actually what happened I thought that was really great.

Schiffer: Jack is just such an enigma to me. He just seems really out of touch with reality. I'm curious, given all your reporting, what do you think of him?

Wagner: Yeah, I don't think his leadership style would necessarily be for me, either. He's very hands-off. He's very much a guide, if you will. He doesn't like to make the decisions. He likes to guide people there through questions. And for me, that's not how I would personally prefer to operate. But I do think for all of his flaws as a business leader, he had good intentions. I do think in Silicon Valley there's something to be said about that because not all leaders are doing it for the right reasons, so to speak. And if you want to give Jack some credit, I think he should maybe get some credit there.

He's someone I would actually love to spend time with. From everything I've heard, he's got a really great sense of humor. He's quite witty, a little sharp elbowed, but in a fun way, if he likes you. So I think he would be quite fun to have dinner with.

But I think what ultimately happened was he became blinded by this idea of Elon saving Twitter, and that led him to make what I thought were some very questionable decisions. And when you have built up a community and a culture where people are comfortable being vulnerable, they feel like they're working at a place that's different and unique, and then to see it sort of go through the very typical acquisition playbook where all the decisions are made for the value of shareholders, it just feels like a betrayal.

And I think a lot of employees eventually just felt really betrayed by Jack, even though it wasn't his decision solely. The fact that he wanted this to happen was a real slap in the face to a lot of people.

Wagner: I'm curious actually what you think. I know you didn't focus your book on the Jack Dorsey years, but I'm sure you've talked to several employees who have strong opinions about Jack, and I wonder how much he ever came up in your reporting.

Schiffer: I really strongly feel like there is no Elon buying Twitter without Jack. That situation seems like it was orchestrated by him. He put the wheels in motion.

Employees that I talk to feel like the Jack years were good years for being an employee at Twitter though they were frustrating years if you wanted to ship a bunch of features and get stuff done. But he encouraged a very open culture, and I think people really appreciated that. People could tag him on Slack and he would go back and forth with people questioning his decisions. And it felt like he really did encourage that type of open dissent, and that created a level of trust at the company, even though he was pretty absent.

In retrospect now, people feel a lot more resentment and frustration. It felt like he brought Elon in, abandoned the company, and then didn't do a lot to stand up for people like [former head of policy and legal] Vijaya Gadde and others who Elon was going after in a pretty horrific way.

Schiffer: How much responsibility do you think Jack feels for what's happened with Twitter now?

Wagner: Well, I don't know for sure. I can only go off of the few things that he said, but I think he feels a little remorse about how things ended up. I don't get the sense he really feels responsible, though. He sort of says, we had no choice. The shackles of Wall Street, or the way that the company was set up in terms of a single class of shares versus dual-class shares, he basically says here are a bunch of things that were outside of my control that were creating this unsustainable environment for Twitter. And we did the best thing we thought possible at the time, which was let it go private and hand it off to Elon.

I haven't really seen him be like, this was my mistake. It's more like this was the mistake of the environment we were in, and it's a bummer what it's become.

Schiffer: Yeah, I think that right, although I don't agree with it. If there's someone who had no choice and didn't really have a chance, it's former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. You have this great anecdote about how Elon asked Parag to ban the @ElonJet account, and it didnt happen. And that tips him over into being like, okay, well, I'm going to have to take the reins. And I have a different anecdote in my book about how the tipping point was that Elon wanted Parag to fire Vijaya Gadde, and Parag wouldn't do it. Yet I look at those moments and I'm like, even if Parag had done both of those things, do we really think that Elon would've been content to remain just a board member? That seems so far-fetched to me.

Wagner: I agree with you. I think Parag got a really raw deal. I mean, this is someone who worked at Twitter for a decade, presumably gets his dream job getting to run this company he spent a decade working at, and he was essentially handpicked by Jack. So he has the blessing and the encouragement of the founder, and then within three months, before he has any chance to really do anything, Elon shows up and flips the whole thing upside down.

Wagner: One of the things that I think you do a good job chronicling in your book is the mindset of what it's like to work for Elon when you want to work for Elon, right? Grueling hours, working nights, working weekends, literally jumping on a plane at a moment's notice to fly across the country. It's a unique mindset. Not everyone is willing to do that for their employer, certainly not when there's no job security. Why do you think people are willing to do this for Elon?

Schiffer: Elon has kind of a cult of personality around him. He just has such a big reputation in Silicon Valley for doing things that no one else is able to do. For employees, it really feels like, and I think someone says this directly in the book, you can make history if you're there.

Hes a master at framing what he's doing on global, saving humanity-type terms. You're not just buying a social network, you're resurrecting the global town square. You're not just building electric vehicles, you're saving the environment and humanity along with it.

I also think with Elon, it's big risk, big reward. Like with Randall Lin, you see someone who was a mid-level engineer at Twitter 1.0 and then under Elon instantly kind of rises up the ranks because hes available and in the room and says yes to things and shows a lot of initiative, and Elon likes that. The Tesla engineers are always warning Twitter employees that every day could be their last. But I think there's a little piece of all those people who are like, well, not me. I certainly won't be one of those people. And when you're getting put on bigger and bigger projects and Elon's texting you on Signal, I think the feeling of being in his inner orbit feels almost like a drug.

Wagner: It's hard to walk away from the proximity to power.

Schiffer: My final question is, what is your larger takeaway after writing the book? Is there a lesson to be learned in everything that happened?

Wagner: There's this feeling that when tech companies get to a certain size, they lose some influence from the founders or the CEOs. It's sort of like, okay, how much influence can this one individual have on a company that has 8,000 people and has been around for 16 years?

Both Jack and Elon were just so impactful on Twitter in their own ways that it reminded me just how important it is to pay attention to the personalities at the tops of these companies. Knowing that it all trickles down from there, the good and the bad.

Can I throw the same question back to you?

Schiffer: My main takeaway is the internet and the open web as we know it are fragile. And these companies that we take for granted, and we think of as somewhat infallible, are for sale to the highest bidder. And when that happens, which we saw so clearly with Elon, there's very little a board or the employees, and certainly not the users, can do to stop it. With Elon in particular, there are very few checks on his power. I don't know what that means for all of us, but it certainly made me feel like there's a vulnerability to all of this that I hadn't fully appreciated before.

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On the podcast this week: A year after Kevin's fateful encounter with Bing's Sydney chatbot, we check in on the state of artificial intelligence. Then, Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas joins us to discuss building an "answer engine" that can take on Google and whether the news business can survive it.

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Who killed Twitter? - Platformer

KRAKW, Poland Elon Musk has upped his war on woke by saying that diversity-oriented hiring policies are fundamentally antisemitic and discriminatory, shortly after a private visit to the Auschwitz-BirkenauNazi concentration camp.

The controversial tech billionaire was speaking at a European Jewish Association (EJA) conference in the Polish city ofKrakw, amid rising criticism that his social media platform X, formerly Twitter has allowed rampant hate speech to spread. Musk himself sparked outrage in November when hepublicly agreedwith an antisemitic tweet claiming that Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

While his trip to Poland allowed him to push back at the charges of antisemitism, he also seized the opportunity to turn his fire against one of his favorite bugbears: Diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Always be wary of any name that sounds like it could come out of a George Orwell book. Thats never a good sign, Musk told American right-wing commentator BenShapiro, who joined him on stage. Sure, diversity, equity and inclusion all sound like nice words, but what it really means is discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation and its against merit and thus I think its fundamentally antisemitic.

Musk, who confirmed that he does indeed write all of his own posts on X, has been vocal about his feelings toward diversity, equity and inclusion, including by claiming, without evidence, that diverse hiring initiatives at Boeing and United Airlines have made air travel less safe.

His comments feed into a broader debate on inclusive hiring policies, most especially on U.S. college campuses. The resignation ofHarvard President Claudine Gayover a plagiarism scandal was seized upon by Republicans, who claim top schools are examples of American institutions in the throes of a leftist political transformation. Critics argue this radical leftist culture on campuses is stoking antisemitism, and top university leaders hit heavy flak last month for their poor handling of a congressional hearing on the bullying of Jews.

On Monday, Shapiro went easy on Musk, steering the conversation towards meritocracy rather than Musks increasingly controversial social media outbursts and allowing the Tesla boss to continue his attacks on a subject he has made a great deal of mileage out of.

I think we need return to a focus on merit and it doesnt matter whether youre man, woman, what race you are, what beliefs you have, what matters is how good you are at your job or what are your skills, Musk said.

At the EJA conference a daylong summit on the rise of antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas Musk also defended X against accusations of antisemitism and hate speech, saying freedom of speech must be protected even when controversial. According to the billionaire, who cited audits without offering further details, X has the least amount of antisemitism among all social media platforms, adding that TikTok has five times the amount of antisemitism that X has.

Relentless pursuit of the truth is the goal with X, Musk said. And allowing people to say what they want to say even if its controversial, provided it does not break the law, is the right thing to do.

Musk has faced widespread criticism over the rise of disinformation and hate content since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022, criticism that intensified in the weeks following the escalation of the Israel-Hamas war last October.

The reported spread of fake and misleading content on the conflict led the EU to launch an investigation into X. And things got worse for Musk after progressive watchdog groupMedia Matterspublished a reportalleging that X had run ads for major companies next to neo-Nazi posts.

The Media Matters report and Musks endorsement of an antisemitic post sparked a backlash fromseveral public figuresand culminated in an advertiser exodus, as multiple companies pulled their adsfrom the site, including giants such as Apple, IBM, Disney and Coca-Cola. According to aNew York Times report, this could result in a loss of up to $75 million for X.

Musk has since apologized for the antisemitic post admitting he should not have replied to it and then traveled to Israel to meet with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu, in what could be seen as an apology tour.

Speaking about his visit to Israel, Musk said indoctrinated Hamas fighters have to be killed or imprisoned to prevent them from killing more Israelis. And the next step is fighting further indoctrination in Gaza, he added.

The indoctrination of hate into kids in Gaza has to stop, Musk said. I understand the need to invade Gaza, and unfortunately some innocent people will die, theres no way around it, but the most important thing to ensure is that afterwards the indoctrination stops.

According to Gazas Health Ministry, Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks have killed over 25,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 60,000 since the attack by Hamas onOctober7, in which Israeli officials say the militant group killed over 1,200 nationals and foreigners and took 240 hostages.

Musk said the West has shifted to a mentality that equates smaller, weaker groups with goodness.

We need to stop the principle that the normally weaker party is always right, this is simply not true, Musk said. If you are oppressed or the weaker party it doesnt mean youre right.

Musk who joked multiple times that he considers himself Jew by aspiration and by association was supposed to visit the Auschwitz-BirkenauNazi concentration camp on Tuesday alongside other speakers and political leaders from the EJA conference, but he instead took a private tour of the site with his young son.

The Auschwitz Museum itself was among one of the entities that had called out Musk for failing to contain antisemitic content.

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Elon Musk: Diversity-based hiring is antisemitic - POLITICO Europe

Tech and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who caused an uproar in November by endorsing a bogus Jewish conspiracy theory on his social media site, X, is expected to head to Poland next week to take part in a panel on online antisemitism and will tour the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Vile anti-Jewish posts have continued to flourish on X, called Twitter when Musk acquired it in 2022.

Under Musks ownership, the social media platform continues to allow users to post bigoted content, including antisemitic posts, and runs ads alongside these. Some of Xs premium users, who have posted antisemitic and other bigoted content regularly, have boasted on X about earning money through its ad revenue sharing program.

Just on Friday, divisive podcaster Jason Whitlock posted on the platform an interview with E. Michael Jones, who the Anti-Defamation League describes as being an antisemitic Catholic writer. He falsely claimed that the Jews control the government and Black people. The post appeared to have been taken down later Friday.

Musks two-day visit to Poland begins Monday, one week before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, which commemorates the murders of 6 million Jews by the Germans and their accomplices during World War II, according to the European Jewish Association.

The EJA organized the visit to address the worldwide surge of antisemitism in the wake of Israels invasion of Gaza, which was in retaliation for Hamas deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Everyone acknowledges what a great threat nationalism, populism, racism, and all manifestations of xenophobia and hatred are to democracy, human rights and the E.U., Polish deputy foreign minister Andrzej Szejna said Friday, according to the official Polish Press Agency (PAP). I think this is probably the reason why Mr. Musk is among the invited guests who have confirmed their presence.

The Jerusalem Post was one of the first news outlets to report that Musk would visit Auschwitz, where most of the 1.1 million people murdered there by the German occupiers were Jews.

NBC News has reached out to Musks representatives for independent confirmation that he will visit the death camp on Tuesday, but has not yet received a response.

Todd Gutnick, a spokesperson for the ADL, which is a Jewish organization that fights antisemitism and which Musk has criticized in the past, said Musk would benefit from making the pilgrimage.

Anyone who has the opportunity to bear witness to the atrocities that took place in Auschwitz-Birkenau should go, Gutnick said. Auschwitz serves as the ultimate reminder of what can happen when a society or its leaders are consumed with antisemitism.

Musk faced accusations of antisemitism in November when he replied, You have said the actual truth to a post on X that made the false claim that Jews push hatred for white people.

Later, in the same thread, Musk went after the ADL, which had vocally criticized him and Xs management for allowing people to post anti-Jewish rants and conspiracy theories on the site.

The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel, Musk wrote. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.

The White House immediately condemned Musks posts as did the ADL.

In a visit to Israel a week later, Musk got a scolding from President Isaac Herzog, who told him, The platforms you lead, unfortunately, have a huge reservoir of hatred, hatred of Jews and antisemitism.

On that trip, the Israelis also got Musk to agree to operate his Starlink satellite internet company in Gaza only with government approval.

Previously, Musk had said he would work to bring Starlink satellite internet service to support internationally recognized aid groups in Gaza, angering Israeli officials who said Hamas would use the service to keep launching terrorist attacks against Israel.

Musk will be joined on the panel Monday by Ben Shapiro, a polarizing conservative political commentator who presided over a Sept. 28 discussion posted on X and other social media platforms in which Musk said he went to Hebrew preschool while growing up in South Africa and described himself as aspirationally Jewish.

The event is being held in a country which, before the Germans launched World War II, was home to the biggest Jewish population in Europe, and which recently ousted a conservative government that ruled Poland for eight years and had been accused by critics and the European Union of undermining democracy.

The new Polish government, which is more politically aligned with the European Union, recently jailed former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his ex-deputy, Maciej Wasik, after they were convicted of abuse of power for trying to frame political opponents on corruption charges.

Claiming they are political prisoners, the countrys former Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek has invited Musk to visit them in jail.

There was no immediate word on whether Musk would do so.

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Elon Musk, CEO of X, to visit Poland amidst online antisemitism uproar - NBC News

Ever since his support of an antisemitic Twitter post led advertisers to leave the platform, Elon Musk has attempted to rehabilitate his reputation, most recently by touring the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The Onion examines everything Elon Musk did during his visit to Auschwitz.

Luckily the vehicles engine caught fire before any of the buildings were damaged.

A student of history knows there is much to be learned from the past.

The docents were horrified, to say the least.

Musk stated that it would have made the trip across Germany a lot more comfortable for all the Auschwitz prisoners.

Five times he brought up how much he loved video games like Halo and Among Us, and five times the tour guide was forced to politely redirect things back to the matter at hand.

In a vaguely Italian accent, he kept making a face and saying, Wario is-a not-a antisemitic.

He said that Auschwitz needed to be willing to colonize other planets if it wanted to survive.

Musk said he wanted to make things feel a bit more epic sauce because people were being total downers.

He repeatedly said it was the only weight-loss method besides Ozempic that really made any impact on his weight.

After allegedly ingesting LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, and ketamine, he figured the notorious site of one of historys greatest horrors was as good a place as any.

According to Musk, he was very impressed with what hed seen.

The bestselling item is a $60 hoodie with the slogan Here Is Video Proof I Am Not Antisemitic.

He forgot headphones, so he had to put the speaker volume on.

Unfortunately, all they had was boring Jewish stuff.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation politely declined the billionaires offer.

It wasnt completely clear what he was going for here.

Musk spent the tour FaceTiming executives at Comcast, Disney, and other Fortune 500 companies so they could see how totally non-antisemitic he was being.

To be fair, this is happening every minute of the day no matter where he goes.

Original post:

Everything Elon Musk Did During His Visit To Auschwitz - The Onion

Elon Musk privately visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau site on Monday before speaking later at a conference on rising antisemitism, after his social media platform X came under fire for some content.

The European Jewish Association (EJA) said Musk made the visit with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, conservative US journalist Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev.

"Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial," an EJA spokesman said.

Musk was due later on Monday to speak in the southern Polish city of Krakow, a short drive from the memorial, at a conference addressing the rise in antisemitism since the Israel-Hamas conflict started in October.

X - formerly Twitter - has seen some major advertisers pause spending or flee since Musk late last year described as "the actual truth" an X post by a user espousing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

A report from liberal watchdog group Media Matters precipitated the advertiser exit, which said it had found ads next to posts that supported Nazism. The platform has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for defamation.

Musk traveled last November to Israel, where he said he was against antisemitism and anything that "promotes hate and conflict" and stated that X would not promote hate speech. He also toured the site of Hamas' assault in the country on Oct. 7.

The Auschwitz Memorial preserves the site of the death camp set up by Nazi Germany on the territory of occupied Poland during World War Two. More than 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, perished there in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.

In August last year, the Auschwitz Memorial criticized the X platform for failing to remove an antisemitic post on the site.

Original post:

Elon Musk visits Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro - The Jerusalem Post

Elon Musk, who has been accused of allowing antisemitic messages on his social media platform, X, visited the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musks visit to the most notorious site of the horrors of the Holocaust came before a scheduled appearance later Monday at a conference on antisemitism organised by the European Jewish Association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow.

The billionaire has faced accusations from the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights organisation, and others of tolerating antisemitic messages on the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since purchasing it in 2022.

He sparked an outcry in November, including from the White House, when he responded on X to a user who accused Jews of hating non-Jewish white people and professing indifference to antisemitism by posting, You have said the actual truth.

He later apologised for the comment, calling it the dumbest post that hes ever done.

Several big brands, including Disney and IBM, stopped advertising on the platform last year after liberal advocacy group Media Matters said that their ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.

X has since sued Media Matters, saying the Washington-based non-profit manufactured the report to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp.

Musk was photographed visiting the Birkenau site together with Jewish right-wing podcaster Ben Shapiro, who is set to attend the EJA conference.

Birkenau is a village near Oswiecim, in southern Poland, fenced off with barbed wire, where wooden barracks for the prisoners and the ruins of a gas chamber endure as evidence of Nazi crimes, and where a monument to the victims stands. International ceremonies are held there each year.

Elon Musks X tells watchdog it has shed 1,000 safety staff

Musk had been expected to make the visit on Tuesday and take part in a memorial service, together with political figures attending the EJA conference in Krakow, but showed up at the Nazi death camp on Monday instead.

Due to schedule concerns, before Elon Musks arrival to the European Jewish Association conference, he took part in a private visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with EJA chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, the EJA said in an email.

Musk laid a wreath at the wall of death and took part in a short memorial ceremony and service by the Birkenau memorial.

Musk was set to discuss antisemitism online with Shapiro at the conference in Krakow, which was held before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen at Auschwitz during World War II.

Most who were killed were Jews, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.

In all, about 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.

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Elon Musk visits Auschwitz after uproar over antisemitic messages on X - South China Morning Post

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) Elon Musk said that X, his social media platform, could have saved Jews from the Holocaust after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday.

Musk made the comment during a conversation with Jewish right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro during a forum of senior politicians and Jewish leaders from 25 European countries hosted by the European Jewish Association in Krakow. Speakers focused on a dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents across the world since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel responded with on a bloody war on Hamas in Gaza.

The tech mogul has drawn criticism over several antisemitism controversies in recent months, including his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, vicious spats with the Anti-Defamation League and a documented spike in antisemitic posts on X formerly known as Twitter since he took over the company.

But he was treated as a heroic figure at the EJA conference, in keeping with his reception among right-leaning Jewish audiences generally. To demonstrate how X might have mitigated the mass murder of Jews, EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin played a video that scrolled through an imagined X feed during World War II.

Set to dramatic music, the posts included messages such as, The Nazis told the Jews to get inside the synagogue entire families, infants in their mothers arms, right? Theyve closed the doors and windows with metal bars and then SET IT ON FIRE! OH. MY. GOD. The world must know!

Another post suggested that social media could have improved upon Jewish resistance efforts. Its time to fight back, it said. Join the Jewish Fighting Organization, under my command, and attack Nazis in Warsaw Ghetto!

When the video concluded, Margolin said about the platform, It could have saved millions of lives.

Musk endorsed this alternate historical universe. If there had been social media, it would have been impossible to hide, he said about the Nazis campaign against the Jews. If there had been freedom of speech, as well. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.

Historians have also pointed out that the Nazis were masters of using existing media to press their case against the Jews, suggesting that in this alternate universe, the Nazis might have weaponized social media as well as countries today have been accused of doing in their internal and external conflicts.

As a token of appreciation, Margolin, who is affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, also presented Musk with an art piece made from a Hamas rocket that fell on a kindergarten in Kibbutz Beeri, where about 100 residents a quarter of the population were killed on Oct. 7.

Never again was carved on the rocket, along with a plaque reading, Presented to Mr. Elon Musk in January 2024 in recognition and appreciation of your fight against antisemitism and to mark your visit to Auschwitz.

When asked about critiques that X is permissive when it comes to antisemitic content, Musk argued that the platforms community notes feature, in which users can attach context to others posts, counteracts hate speech.

If somebody tries to push a falsehood, like Holocaust denial or something like that, they can immediately be corrected, he said.

Despite the increase in antisemitic content under his watch, Musk said he was nearly unexposed to antisemitism in his personal life because of his personal Jewish circles.

Two thirds of my friends are Jewish, he said. I have twice as many Jewish friends as non-Jewish friends. Im like Jewish by association Im aspirationally Jewish.

Margolin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he did not know enough about social media to weigh in on specific policies at X but said he believes Musks visit to Auschwitz will help him combat antisemitism online.

I believe that he is absolutely against any expression of antisemitism and that the visit today helped him to understand it even better, he said. So I can only anticipate that we will see much less antisemitism on social media.

Link:

Following Auschwitz visit, Elon Musk says X could have saved Jews from the Holocaust - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency