Yair Rosenberg writes:

Last night, Elon Musk made two rookie social-media mistakes: He tweeted after 10 p.m., and he echoed paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. “George Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he declared, likening the financier to the Marvel supervillain, both of them Jewish Holocaust survivors. In case the meaning was unclear, Musk quickly clarified to another user, “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”

Criticizing George Soros is not inherently anti-Semitic. He is one of the world’s richest men and most influential philanthropists, as well as the Democratic Party’s largest single donor, and his views undoubtedly warrant scrutiny and debate. But Musk was not taking issue with a particular statement or position put forward by Soros; he was presenting him as an avatar of evil. He painted Soros as a literal comic-book villain.

This is the language of anti-Semitism through the ages, which perpetually casts powerful Jewish actors as the embodiment of social and political ill. Rather than treat Jews like humans, who are fallible and often mistaken, this mindset refashions them into sinister superhumans who intentionally impose their malign designs on the masses. In recent years, Soros has been a particular target of this treatment, but any Jew or Jewish institution that accumulates some measure of wealth or status tends to attract it, whether the Rothschilds or the state of Israel. In such cases, legitimate criticism is overtaken by conspiracy; the issue is no longer the conduct of the Jewish actor but their very essence. [Continue reading…]

JTA reports:

Hours after tweeting that George Soros “hates humanity,” drawing rebuke from Israel’s Foreign Ministry and many others, US billionaire Elon Musk bashed the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), appearing to draw praise from a series of white supremacist accounts on Twitter, which he owns.

On Tuesday afternoon, Musk tweeted: “ADL should just drop the ‘A,’” meaning that the group, which is the most prominent antisemitism watchdog in the United States, should instead be named the “Defamation League.”

Musk’s tweet came after ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Musk’s remarks about Soros, marking the latest chapter in the roller-coaster relationship between the ADL and the Twitter CEO. When Musk was poised to buy the social media platform, Greenblatt praised him. But in the months since that acquisition, the ADL has been increasingly critical of Musk, accusing him of taking a lax attitude toward policing hate speech. [Continue reading…]