Front Burner - Elon Musk, Nazi accusations, and the ADL

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

On Monday night, tech billionaire Elon Musk spoke at President Trump's inauguration rally in Washington. In the middle of that speech, he slammed his right hand onto the left side of his chest and thrust it out into the air in a straight line. Then he turned around, and made the gesture again.The backlash was immediate, with many people accusing Musk of making a Nazi salute. But the Anti-Defamation League, an organization founded to combat anti-semitism disagreed, and came to Musk's defence, calling it "an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute" on X. Its defence of Musk would have been nearly unthinkable even a year and a half ago, when Musk threatened to sue the group for defamation. Mari Cohen has been covering this evolving relationship between Musk and the ADL for Jewish Currents. She spoke to host Jayme Poisson about that, and how it fits into ongoing criticisms the organization is facing.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

What does a mummified Egyptian child, the Parthenon marbles of Greece and an Irish giant all have in common? They are all stuff the British stole. Maybe. Join me, Mark Fennell, as I travel around the globe uncovering the shocking stories of how some, let's call them ill-gotten, artifacts made it to faraway institutions. Spoiler, it was probably the British. Don't miss a brand new season of Stuff the British Style. Watch it free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, it's Jamie.

And real quick before today's show, can you hit the follow button? Just asking because we may have just come up in a search you did for info about today's topic. Well, we do this five days a week. And in the next little bit, we'll be hitting our Canadian election and US politics news pretty hard. So please follow us, it helps us a lot, and you also won't miss anything.

Okay, thanks so much. Hi, I'm Jamie Plussell. On Monday night at President Donald Trump's inauguration rally, Elon Musk thanked the crowd. You know, there are elections that come and go. Some elections are, you know, important, some are not. But this one, this one really mattered. And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you."

He then thumped his right hand on the left side of his chest and thrust it into the air in a straight line. Then he turned around and made the gesture again. The backlash online was immediate. Claire Obwin, a historian specializing in Nazism in the US, said that the gesture was clearly a Nazi salute or a sick aisle. My professional opinion is that you're all right. You should believe your eyes, she said.

Ruth Ben-Giott, a history professor at New York University, posted, historian of fascism here, it was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too. But the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL for short, an organization that was founded to combat anti-Semitism, disagreed. It posted on X, It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute. But again, we appreciate that people are on edge.

In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a new beginning. Let's hope for healing and work toward unity in the months and years ahead. Musk responded, thanks guys, with a laugh crying emoji. On X, he also posted, frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The everyone is Hitler attack is so tired.

The ADL is well known for its advocacy, not only around antisemitism, but also around civil rights issues. Their work often gets referenced by government agencies, corporations, and the media. Its defense of Musk would have been nearly unthinkable even a year and a half ago, when Musk threatened to sue the group for defamation. Mari Cohen has been covering this evolving relationship between Musk and the ADL for Jewish currents.

She's here to talk about that, and how it fits into ongoing criticisms the organization is facing. Hi Mari, thank you so much for coming on to Frontburner. Hi, thank you so much for having me. All right, so let's start with Elon Musk here. As I mentioned in the intro, he's essentially said that the everyone is Hitler attack is tired. But tell me a bit about how much traction his gestures from earlier in the week are getting online. Who have we seen respond to what he did with, I don't know, let's say enthusiasm. Yeah, absolutely. So whatever Elon Musk intended with his gesture, it's obvious that certain members of the far

right who have been known to express neo-Nazi views or affiliate with white supremacism and anti-Semitism have obviously been very happy to see what Musk did. So there was a helpful roundup from Rolling Stone about how some of these far-right figures have responded. For example, Andrew Torba, founder of this Christian nationalist social media platform, Gab, shared the clip and said, incredible things are happening already. LMAO. You've got this Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, posted the

clip on Telegram and said, I don't care if this was a mistake, I'm going to enjoy the tears over it. So there's already like a roundup of figures who are very appreciative of what Musk did. Yeah, let me add just two to that pot. White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes said that the move was a quote, straight up, um, sick Kyle, like loving Hitler energy. It wasn't even like a, like a subtle, like a wave, like one of these, like a, uh, Laura Ingram number one, Laura Ingram did that.

That was a straight up like sick Sig-Hail, like, loving Hitler energy. That was like a straight up with intensity Roman salute. And then Andrew Tate, I saw last night, talked about bringing back the Nazi salute. You know, I'm kind of thinking we should bring the Nazi salute back. Because the people we've been arguing with for the last four years have no interest in objective truth. Hail SpaceX! There's some context here to get into with you. Can you tell me more about how Musk has been criticized for essentially opening the floodgates

of hate speech and in particular anti-Semitic speech in recent years following his purchase of Twitter. And maybe if you could give me some examples there as well. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big reasons that Musk wanted to take over Twitter in the first place in 2022 and part of the reason that he started his bid was that he claimed that Twitter was clamping down on free speech unfairly. And he believed that Twitter's moderation policies, which often did involve kind of banning any

kind of, you know, super hateful, white supremacist, neo-Nazi content. Tonight, a new phase of fallout in the stunning incendiary wake of Kanye West's actions. The artist now simply known as Ye once again banned from Twitter after another anti-Semitic post, this time a now deleted image of a star of David enveloping a swastika. He believed that this was stifling conservative speech. And when he took over Twitter in fall 2022, he immediately started relaxing some of those standards. And the other thing he allowed was that anybody could become a blue check kind of verified account as long as

they paid for it. And so anybody could pay for this account and then have their replies prioritized and boosted, which meant that people promoting often this kind of harassment were able to get verified and then have their content boosted and prioritized. And you can just see that. Like anyone who uses the site now, I think it's pretty easy to see that happening, which is that you'll go to a tweet and in the replies there'll be a bunch of people with blue checks and often some of them will be saying nasty stuff about minorities or about Jews or about women and that stuff is all over the platform. This was something that a lot of groups started

tracking pretty quickly after Mesk's takeover in 2023. I think there was a report by Media Matters saying that X had been running its ads for major companies right next to the neo-Nazi posts, which is something that actually really upset a lot of the major companies and led some of them to pull advertising. And then also the ADL itself actually was tracking some of this stuff because they have a technology and society division that kind of reviews content on social media platforms. And I think they tracked like a 60% increase in anti-Semitic content just a few months after Musk's takeover. Right.

I remember some of the criticisms at the time. There were like these accounts that would just broadcast Hitler's speeches and praise like his genocidal regime. So talk to me a bit more about what the ADL did here, right? So they're tracking this, they see this increase and in November 2022, the ADL along with a number of nonprofits, they start an advertising boycott. And then about a year and a half later, Musk actually threatened to sue them, right? And so what was the accusation at the time? How did the ADL respond? How did that all shake out? Yeah. So basically, what happened was, yeah, the ADL with a coalition of other, I think, kind of civil rights or minority groups started the boycott campaign called Stop Hate for Profit, where they said they wouldn't advertise on X. And I believe they were trying to encourage

businesses and corporations not to advertise. Although it should be said that many of these businesses and corporations were stopping advertising of their own accord because they didn't like having their posts next to neo-Nazi posts. And Musk was upset about this. So I think, yeah, in fall 2023, I think it's like September 2023 maybe, he's tweeted about it. And he tweeted, since the acquisition, the ADL has been trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it and me

of being anti-Semitic to clear our platform's name on the matter of anti-Semitism. It looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League. Oh, the irony. So that was kind of, he's like, they're defaming me by saying that I'm anti-Semitic and so I need to sue them. And he starts kind of like, just I think on Twitter slash X at the time, he starts supporting this online campaign of people complaining about the ADL. That's basically complaining that the ADL strangles

hate speech and that they support civil rights and diversity and social justice efforts. And so the ADL needs to be banned. And it really kind of the implication here was that the ADL had been the sort of instrumental organizer in this advertising boycott and that it was sort of behind any advertising revenue that Twitter was losing. And then they patch it up, right? The ADL and Elon Musk.

And tell me how that even happens. Yeah, so well, first of all, in response, the ADL had actually resumed advertising on X at this point. It had some of its own advertising for its own anti-antisemitism programming. And then they stopped advertising again after Musk was attacking them. And then a month later, they actually started again.

So already the ADL was like not taking a super confrontational approach. But the way that things really get patched up has to do with Israel. And basically what happened was, soon after this whole dispute, October 7th, 2023 happens, Hamas attacks on Israel and then Israel immediately starts with this onslaught on Gaza, which

quickly as the casualties pile up, many people start calling it a genocide. There's an eruption of protests and student movements against Israel, people calling for a ceasefire. The ADL comes out very strong, criticizing those movements, criticizing people who are opposing Israel's war as anti-semitic. There's a lot of debate over certain phrases and as they're used in the student movement. One of those phrases is, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. The ADL has been against that for a long time

and called it anti-semitic. I think in November 2023, Elon Musk made a tweet that was basically like, we're going to ban from the river to the sea, and the term decolonization, because a lot of people use this kind of colonial or decolonial analysis of Israel's position with respect to Palestinians. He said that they're going to ban those phrases. Basically, he said that they were going to ban users who use them or suspend them. I don't think they've done this. I don't think Musk followed through on that. It didn't seem like that happened. But he said they were going to, and Greenblatt was happy. He responded to it and said, Elon Musk is being a leader in the fight against

hate. That was their rapprochement. -♪? -♪? And when you say Greenblatt, this is the CEO of the ADL. And just tell me a little bit more about him and why he is at the heart of the recent criticisms that the League has been facing. So Jonathan Greenblatt is the CEO of the ADL. He's been in that position, I believe, since 2015. When he came on, he was considered to be kind of like a sort of young, new, progressive

guy bringing new energy to the ADL. He didn't have a ton of experience. One of his big areas of expertise, things that he did before coming to the ADL was he was involved in an effort to sell socially responsible water, but he also had briefly served as an Obama staffer. People associated him with Obama politics and the Obama administration. Over time, Greenblatt really has distinguished himself. He's basically the face of the ADL everywhere. He's making his own tweets. He's going on TV, on CNN, on MSNBC to talk about the ADL's perspective. He really has distinguished himself for starting a new policy where the ADL is going to target anti-Zionist politics

as anti-Semitism. Much of what he's doing in these public appearances and on Twitter is really calling out people that he perceives as criticizing or protesting Israel. I'll tell you, as I think about corporations, first I'll just mention universities, because I think we saw at Harvard the total utter failure of leadership for days after the massacre. And the students who came out with this bizarre, bewildering piece, Yale University, the secretary and dean of academic life, put out a piece on the 9th which is truly ghastly in the passive voice, we deplore the loss of life on all sides. Like, this was a massacre of civilians. And if Yale University, like Harvard, like so many others,

can't speak clearly when they have in the past, about, and appropriately, by the way, about Black Lives Matter and stopping Asian hate and climate and so many other issues. And so he's really distinguished himself in that way. And it's quite different than what people originally thought that he was gonna do at the organization. And just to be really clear here, the main criticism here is that he's using his voice in the organization to equate anti-Semitism with anti-Israel sentiment, right?

Yeah. And as you explained, there's a lot of controversy over that. It just, maybe you want to talk a little bit more about that, this idea of whether or not anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, a lot of the debates over Israel and Palestine in the US and Canada and many other places today really comes down to this question. And basically, the argument that groups like the ADL make

is that they say that it's okay to criticize Israel and the Israeli government, but it's just not okay to criticize Israel's status as a Jewish state. In practice, even a lot of people who criticize the Israeli government come under scrutiny from groups like the ADL. Basically their argument is that Israel is a representation of self-determination for Jews. It's Jewish nationalism. It's a place where a representation of self-determination for Jews. It's Jewish nationalism. It's a place where a lot of Jews live. And so to call out Israel or to oppose the

idea of a Jewish state in the land is to basically single out Jews as not being deserving of a state. Now, what a lot of other people say, including a lot of progressive Jewish groups, which are growing in number, as well as Palestinian groups, other groups on the left, is that, well, at the end of the day, Israel's status as a Jewish state means that there are all these Palestinian people who live in the land who actually don't have voting rights, don't have citizenship. And Israel's have voting rights, don't have citizenship, and Israel's constitution in this way basically requires there to be a large number of people in the land who are oppressed, who in terms of the occupied territories are often under military rule, don't have access to full civil rights, don't have passports, and also will always require Israel to exclude certain people

from its borders if it's defined as a Jewish state. And that this doesn't have anything to do with opposing Jewish people, it just has to do with opposing a state formation that is kind of anti-democratic at its core. I'm Natalia Melman-Petruzzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme, Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks it will take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. There's another criticism of the organization that I know that you've reported on quite a bit.

And that's how they collect and present statistics on anti-Semitic incidents. And just tell me a little bit more about that briefly. It's both related to the anti-Zionism criticism and also a little bit broader. Every year the ADL does this audit of anti-Sionism criticism and also a little bit broader. Every year, the ADL does this audit of antisemitic incidents and they kind of count up all the reports that they have taken over the year of antisemitic incidents that have happened in different places and then they put them all in a report and they count them and then they say, this many happened this year, this many happened last year, that means there's an X percent rise in antisemitism. By any measure, 2019 was a devastating year for the Jewish community in New

York. At the ADL, we tracked more than 300 antisemitic incidents, including acts of harassment, vandalism, and violence. And often what they do is they, like, especially for the past few years, they've really used it to show that anti-Semitism is exploding all over the U.S. They said there's a this percent rise. They said this is why we really have to be on guard. Yeah, you know, we know that social media is a super spreader of anti-Semitism and bigotry of all forms. And I think what we're seeing now, Becky, is it's just exploded. Events in the Middle East, polarization here in America,

and as you said, 18 to 22%, half of teenagers between 13 and 17 report having been harassed online. The numbers are staggering. But if you look at the statistical methods, a lot of sociologists, et cetera, are actually quite critical because oftentimes the methodology will change year over year. For example, I think it was maybe from 2021 to 2022,

they added a bunch of new partners who were bringing them data. So they had a bunch of new sources of data compared to the year before, but they were still reporting as if they could do an apples-to-apples comparison from the previous numbers. And then also just in general, it's a pretty tough way to try to understand anti-Semitism because there's all different types of incidents that are lumped together in one report. So you say you've got a white nationalist handing out a flyer plus

somebody punching somebody and calling them a dirty Jew, plus somebody drawing a swastika on a wall. It's all just kind of lumped together in one report, so it can be really hard to tell what these different things mean. Some things might be more severe than others, how to understand them. Also, historically, the ADL has sometimes included anti-Zionism in these reports, which is obviously quite contested, as I talked about. And then actually, since October 7, 2023, they have started including basically anti-Israel rallies in their reports. So they've actually increased the statistics in that way. And one of the reasons for the criticism is, it's not that it's necessarily wrong

to try to measure antisemitism in American life, which is what they're doing, focused on the US. Statistics do show that there has probably been a rise in antisemitic incidents like over- And very high profile ones too. I'm thinking here in Canada, police are investigating fires at a synagogue in Montreal, Jewish school that has been shot at twice.

Please continue. You know, there are studies that do show that when Israel is in the news and, you know, there's news of Israel committing certain brutal actions that that often does tend to result in more violence against Jewish communities and the diaspora. So this is something that we're seeing and it's not to trivialize it, getting certain brutal actions that often does tend to result in more violence against Jewish communities and the diaspora. This is something that we're seeing and it's not to trivialize it, but the way that the ADL does its audits seem often to focus on being able to put out a press release, especially

as an organization that relies on donations, needs a lot of support from people who are scared about anti-Semitism, but without really being able to break down the incidents in a clear way that really shows what's happening. And also, these statistics are often used then to target the pro-Palestine movement. So Greenblatt will be in one of his appearances and he'll say, well, anti-Semitism has increased this percent, so that's why it's not okay for there to be a protest against Israel. And so even if they are capturing some real anti-Semitic incidents in the reports, then they're being used for this criticism of the pro-Palestine movement. Marie, I'm so interested. How has all of this controversy borne out in this, you know, 100 year old organization? I know there's been reports of staffs quitting

over what they see as ADL's pro-Israel advocacy. Yes, there definitely, it definitely has caused a lot of dissent within the organization. That's something that my colleague and I have reported on. You've seen some resignations, people leaving. Alex and I reported a year ago that three people had left since October 7th, like over the course of fall 2023, just from the Center for Technology and Society, which does the social media stuff. And one of the more high profile things is that Yael Eisenstadt, who had come in, I think like a year and a half before, to lead that Center for Technology and Society, it was kind of a had come in, I think, like a year and a half before to lead that Center for Technology and Society, it was kind of a big name in fighting online hate.

She left because of Green Black praising Elon Musk. She didn't say that publicly. She said she was just taking another opportunity, but we kind of heard from sources inside that it was over this disagreement. For some of these people, it's not necessarily about the Israel related advocacy. It's more about this idea of cozying up to Musk, but it's all a little bit connected.

And then I think for many people in the organization, there's a perception that when a college student is saying something about Israel, the ADL is gonna go full turbo mode, calling them out, doing everything to stop them. And then when somebody like Elon Musk, you know, richest man in the world, close associate with the president, is doing a Nazi salute, the ADL is going to say, oh, it's okay, take a deep breath, don't criticize him too much.

And there's a lot of disagreement with that within the organization. Has Greenblatt and the ADL responded to all of these criticisms that they've been getting? Publicly, no. I think, you know, my understanding is that whenever there's a leak to the press, if like, you know, for example, Jewish Currents publishes things from employees have told us, or, you know, Vice and the Daily Beast did some reporting last year. I think that there's a lot of, I think that they're really trying to stop those leaks and they really don't want people to talk to the press about it. So we know that they're concerned about getting this press. But then obviously we know, I mean, even before October

7th in 2022, when Green Black kind of announced a big policy change that the ADL would officially define anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, there was a meeting where some employees were expressing dissent with that. We obtained the audio and Greenblatt was very much like, well, you need to think about whether this is the right place for you. And if you don't agree with us about anti-Zionism, maybe you don't want to work here." So he obviously is kind of dismissing a lot of those concerns. And last year also, he gave a speech at Brown University at one point, Greenblatt did, and he made a mention in there to, you know, no matter what you hear from socialist magazines that very few Jews actually read, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And so it seemed like he was making a reference perhaps to us at Jewish

Currents. Yeah, as the socialist magazine. As a Jewish socialist magazine that has done a lot of reporting on him. And it seemed like he was basically saying, whatever they say, that's not, we don't agree with that or that's not true. I think there's like maybe sometimes when there's enough of an uproar, they'll do something. In fall 2022, Greenblatt went on TV and it was after Musk had taken over Twitter and Greenblatt, he was supposed to, his staff had prepared talking points for him to talk about some of Musk's problematic history with racism. And instead he praised Elon Musk

as the Henry Ford of our time. And people thought that was really ironic, because Henry Ford was like a very well-known anti-Semites. But he was saying it in a positive sense. And I think at that point, there was enough backlash that Greenblatt apologized and said he had misspoke and Henry Ford was bad and whatever. But it's, you know, most of the time, no, there isn't a response and they definitely are not changing their policy direction. Okay. Marie, just before we go, and I don't want to put you on the spot here, but I wonder if we could kind of end where we started with

what we saw this week with Yulon Musk and also the ADL's response. I just, you are a Jewish person and I just wonder what that's like for you to watch all of this play out. I'm quite used to the ADL operating in this way after reporting on it for a while so it's hard to be surprised but I honestly think it's really disappointing. It's's hard to be surprised. But I honestly think it's really disappointing. It's really disappointing to know that there's not an organization that can actually speak up about anti-Semitism in a clear way and can see how it operates when it actually is operating at high levels of power and to say something about it. It

just feels like there's a total void where this organization that's supposed to be the main organization fighting anti-Semitism just doesn't care as long as these people agree with their goals in Israel and are in power. That feels pretty disappointing for me as a Jewish person that this organization that's supposed to represent me is so acting in such a way that's so opposite in what I believe in terms of both my own safety and justice for other people. And I think it's just, it's really disappointing and really sad for me to see that, you know, Jewish history and Jewish politics and Jewish subjectivity is being used in that way. So it's really heartbreaking.

Okay. Thank you so much for that. Really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, thank you so much for that. Really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Okay, so before we go today, a quick update. In the aftermath of all of the criticism that he's been facing, Elon took to the platform that he owns and posted a series of Nazi jokes. They're all one-liners, and I'm not going to repeat them, but Greenblatt replied, quote, We've said it hundreds of times before, and we will say it again. The Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it. Elon Musk, the Holocaust is

not a joke. Frontburner was produced this week by Ali Jains, Karen Outtorn, Lauren Donnelly and Mackenzie Cameron. Sound design was by Sam McNulty and Marco Luciano. Music is by Joseph Chabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McKay-Blocos and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for following us this week.

We really appreciate it. And we'll talk to you next week.