Apple has paused all advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, after owner Elon Musk agreed with an anti-Semitic post on the platform.
Musk, 52, sparked a firestorm on Wednesday by responding to a man who claimed on X that, ‘Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.’
Musk, who has 163 million followers, replied: ‘You have said the actual truth.’
On Friday Axios reported Apple would pause its advertising on the platform after 164 Jewish rabbis and activists called on Apple, Google Amazon and Disney to stop advertising on X.
IBM, the European Commission and Lions Gate Entertainment have also suspended ads on the platform in response to Musk’s post.
The news came just after a crisis public relations guru claimed Musk was endangering his companies with his personal scandals.
Apple has paused all advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter , after owner Elon Musk appeared to agree with an anti-Semitic post on the platform
The news came just after crisis public relations guru Eric Dezenhall claimed Musk was endangering his companies with his personal scandals
Musk, who has 163 million followers, replied to the post with: ‘You have said the actual truth’
‘There’s an ongoing career death watch for Elon Musk. Has he finally gone too far? And the answer for 52 years has been “no,” there has not been any sanctions,’ Dezenhall Resources Chairman Eric Dezenhall said on CNBC.
‘So in terms of what to do, number one is a gut check – does Elon Musk personally feel – the way I’m sure a lot of his executives feel – that there is danger here, there is danger to X, there is danger to Tesla, there is danger to SpaceX?
‘If he personally does feel peril, he will have to face what every other company faces – the issue of, do you apologize, when do you apologize, when do you establish policies to prevent this sort of thing… but there is no sign that that’s where they are yet.’
On Wednesday Musk backtracked on his earlier endorsement of an anti-Semitic post, clarifying that he does not believe hatred of white people does not extend ‘to all Jewish communities.’
Musk, who has been strongly criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and Israel’s Foreign Ministry for his past remarks, then attacked the ADL, accusing them of racism, saying it ‘unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.’
‘This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.’ Musk added.
Musk doubled down against the ADL hours later, writing: ‘I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind. I’m sick of it. Stop now.’
IBM said this week that it stopped advertising on X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis — a fresh setback as the platform tries to win back big brands and their ad dollars, X’s main source of revenue.
The liberal advocacy group Media Matters said in a report Thursday that ads from Apple, Oracle, NBCUniversal’s Bravo network and Comcast also were placed next to anti-Semitic material on X.
‘IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,’ the company said in a statement.
The European Union’s executive branch said separately Friday that it’s pausing its advertising on X and other social media platforms, in part because of a surge in hate speech.
The White House issued a statement on what it called Musk’s ‘abhorrent’ promotion of antisemitism.
‘We condemn this abhorrent promotion of anti-Semitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,’ spokesman Andrew Bates said.
‘We all have a responsibility to bring people together against hate, and an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.’
Musk has a long history of toying with dog-whistle rhetoric about Jewish people, in particular George Soros, who enraged him in May by selling his Tesla stock.
He has also angered people with his response to the Israel-Hamas war.
In the days after the October 7 Hamas terror attack, Musk was forced to delete a tweet which recommended an anti-Semitic account and a promoter of debunked videos as reliable sources of information about the attack on Israel.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, faced a furious backlash after telling his 159 million followers that the accounts @WarMonitors and @sentdefender were ‘good’ for ‘following the war in real time’.
Followers were quick to point out that @WarMonitors has repeatedly used ‘jew’ as a term of abuse on the platform, telling New York supermarket boss Avi Kaner to ‘mind your own business, jew’.
‘The guy Musk recommends for information on the Israel-Hamas escalation is an anti-Semitic account with a history of spreading misinformation,’ wrote Sam Sokol of Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
On Halloween, Musk appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and repeated his long-running criticism of the 93-year-old billionaire financier, who has for decades backed progressive causes.
Soros, born in Budapest, survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and moved first to Britain, then the United States, where he began his hugely-influential philanthropy.
‘He is I believe the top contributor to the Democratic party,’ Musk told Rogan. ‘The second one was Sam Bankman-Fried.
‘And Soros, he had a very difficult upbringing.
‘In my opinion, he fundamentally hates humanity. That’s my opinion.’
Musk said that he was deeply opposed to Soros’ work backing progressive district attorneys, who pursued policies he saw as soft on crime.
‘He’s doing things that erode the fabric of civilization – getting DAs elected who refuse to prosecute crime,’ said Musk.
