editorials
Elon Musk’s Twitter
N o, Elon Musk is not a Jew. And
while his eye-popping $44 billion
purchase of Twitter may turn out to be
good for him, there are concerns that
it won’t be good for the Jews — or for
women, LGBTQ people, Muslims or
other targeted and vilified minorities.

Musk has said that he wants to
strengthen Twitter’s position on
“free speech;” that he wants Twitter
to serve as the “de facto public town
square;” and that he wants Twitter
to promote global democracy. But
Musk’s plans for how he will go
about doing each of those things
and administer the social media plat-
form are unknown. That is causing
mounting concern that Twitter could
become a platform for runaway
antisemitism and other expressions
of hate.

Musk has described himself as a
“free speech absolutist.” He advo-
cates for freedom of expression with
as few restrictions as possible. If,
as a result, he loosens or removes
Twitter’s current rules about what
may or may not be said on the plat-
form, that could spell trouble for
marginalized and vulnerable popu-
lations. There is good cause for concern.

Twitter’s status as the “influencer
of influencers” and its expansive
reach means that hate speech, con-
spiracy theories and targeted pro-
paganda that first appear as tweets
Most of us think of free speech as
an inalienable American right, guar-
anteed by the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution. But that “free
speech” right restricts the power
of government to limit the speech
of its citizens. It is an entirely differ-
ent concept in the world of social
Twitter could become a platform
for runaway antisemitism and
other expressions of hate.

could be picked up, disseminated,
adapted and taken as truth by mil-
lions of users at the drop of a simple
hashtag. Much of the uncertainty regard-
ing Musk and Twitter relates to the
meaning of the words “free speech.”
media – where it relates to “platform
moderation,” or the rules the social
media platform uses to monitor and
regulate what and how users may
say things on the platform.

On social media sites where there
are no rules or where there is lax
enforcement of prohibitions against
things like “doxxing” (giving out per-
sonal information for the purpose
of harassment) and posting false or
hateful information, some pretty ter-
rible things have followed. And on
those sites where anything goes — no
matter how hateful, violent or menda-
cious — the most prolific users tend
to be people who want no filters on
their speech, whose postings quickly
degenerate into a combination of
hate speech and wholly inappropri-
ate communication. No one wants
Twitter to go there.

Musk has attracted the world’s
attention with his purchase of Twitter
and his plan to run it privately. We
hope that as he rolls out his plan,
he chooses to improve modera-
tion standards in order to attract
more users rather than default to
free speech absolutism, which will
encourage hate and abuse and will
likely alienate most people.

For now, we hope for the best.

And we join an anxious world that
waits to see how things play out in
Elon Musk’s latest adventure. JE
Spotlight on Infertility
A cross the globe, developed
countries are experiencing
decreasing fertility rates and aging
populations. People marry later than
in earlier decades, delay childbearing
until later in life and have fewer
children. One result is an aging
population with fewer younger people
to support the cost of elder-related
government services and fewer
workers to care for the elderly.

In the United States, fertility
rate numbers have been in steady
decline. In 1960, our country’s fertil-
ity rate was 3.65 births per woman;
in 1970 it was 2.57. And now, the U.S.

fertility rate has fallen to 1.71 births
per woman. (The U.S. is not the
lowest — that “honor” goes to South
Korea, which has a fertility rate of 0.9
children per woman.)
The distressing U.S. numbers don’t
account separately for the problem
14 MAY 5, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
of infertility — an issue of concern to
Ashkenazi Jews and other minorities
which experience a lower fertility rate
than the general population. That
explains why this past week a long
list of national Jewish organizations
endorsed a bipartisan congressional
resolution declaring that “the United
States Government has a responsi-
bility to help examine, create, and
implement solutions to address and
alleviate the problems associated
with the disease [of infertility].”
By defining infertility as a dis-
ease, Congressional sponsors and
their supporters hope to open the
door for federally funded research,
which could be a game changer for
those trying to cope with infertil-
ity. Government supported medical
research could also lead to programs
which will alleviate the backbreaking
cost families must now pay for fertil-
ity treatment.

The nonbinding House resolu-
tion (H. Res. 338) was sponsored
by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a
Jewish Democrat from Florida, and
Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican.

Wasserman Schultz has been treated
for infertility, making her one of the
12% of women (one in eight) who
have received infertility services in
their lifetime. It is heartening to see
that organizations representing all
streams of Judaism have endorsed
the resolution, as did Jewish wom-
en’s groups, including Hadassah,
which has been lobbying for years
to classify infertility as a disease and
to raise awareness.

While the number of signatories
on the resolution is impressive, too
many local members of Congress
have not signed on. We urge them to
do so. And we encourage our read-
ers to share their interest in the issue
with their elected representatives.

Such efforts could make a difference
in whether government research and
assistance will be made available to
help address infertility issues expe-
rienced by members of our commu-
nity and beyond. As pointed out in
H. Res. 338, “regulatory disparities
and lack of access to health care
specialists cause inequities in the
financial burden carried by people
who seek diagnostic testing and
treatment for infertility, presenting
a barrier to health care and better
health outcomes.”
We strongly support the bipartisan
effort to ensure the availability of
infertility-related medical research
and the provision of services to
those who need it, and hope that
Congress will help get it done. It’s
the right thing to do. JE



opinion
Should Everyone Be Afraid of
Elon Musk Buying Twitter?
BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN
I n February, the Anti-Defamation League
announced that it had developed what it called
an “online hate index” to monitor antisemitism on
social-media platforms. The eff ort was conceived as
a way to adequately measure the amount of hate
speech being posted on sites like Twitter and Reddit,
which the group thinks are not vigilant enough about
detecting and removing such off ensive material.

ADL CEO and national director Jonathan
Greenblatt conceded that Twitter had “made
substantial strides” towards shutting down those
posting vile content; still, he believed they had
a lot more to do in order to address a growing
problem of online hate. The index was intended
to assist the social-media giants in policing their
users. It was just the latest evidence of the ADL’s
support for more online censorship. Actor Sacha
Baron Cohen caused a stir with a 2019 tweet and
a subsequent speech at an ADL event where he
was honored, in which he torched Facebook for
allowing its users to post antisemitic context. The
internet and social media had helped heretofore
isolated extremists to amplify their voices. And a
time when antisemitism is on the rise — largely
fueled by hatred for Israel on the left as well as
traditional tropes of Jew-hatred on the far-right
— most Jews agreed that something ought to be
done to crack down on those who spread it.

In the years since then, ADL has been increas-
ingly vocal about the issue and sought to pressure
Big Tech companies to engage in more content
moderation that would silence bad actors. It has
also devoted more of its resources to techno-
logical fi xes that would create partnerships with
Internet giants that would, at least in theory, guide
them towards creating a less friendly environment
for neo-Nazis.

So the news last week that the richest man
in the world is trying to buy Twitter in order to
reverse the company’s embrace of censorship
would seem to be bad for the ADL.

To date, ADL has kept quiet about Musk’s bid,
but the group has become a pillar of the left/
liberal consensus about the need to squelch free
speech on the internet. As part of its general shift
from a Jewish defense agency to a highly partisan
liberal advocacy group, the ADL’s traditional stand
in favor of curbing hate has been weaponized in
order to support Silicon Valley censorship.

Were the targets of this eff ort solely neo-Nazis,
far-right extremists or their counterparts on the
far-left, along with Black nationalists and Islamists
who also spread hate and antisemitism, the ADL’s
stance in favor of restricting online speech might
be more defensible, though such power could just
as easily be deployed against pro-Israel Jews.

But as some of us predicted only a few years ago,
legitimizing censoring of speech never stops with
just the most egregious speakers. The slippery
slope from censoring Nazis to shutting down any
political speech or reporting that powerful people
dislike was always apparent. And the trip down
the slope was faster than many of us thought.

While conservatives are the main targets, it’s
clear that no one can be considered safe from the
same treatment if their views fall out of fashion.

That’s where Musk comes in. The 51-year-old
native of South Africa has successes at PayPal,
Space X and Tesla that have given him an esti-
mated wealth of $270 billion. Musk is far from a
doctrinaire conservative. His mostly libertarian
beliefs are hard to pigeonhole, and at various
times, he has shown as much sympathy for the
Democrats and the left as Republicans and the
right. But he does seem fairly consistent in his
belief in free speech. While it’s diffi cult for most
people to muster much interest in a battle of bil-
lionaires, there is more at stake here than just the
considerable egos of those involved.

For the fi rst time in American history or that of
the world, almost the entire means of mass com-
munication are now under the control of only a
few people. While early 20th-century media bar-
ons like William Randolph Hearst were immensely
powerful, their stranglehold on communications
seems paltry when compared with the owners of
Twitter and Facebook. And given the political/cul-
tural bias they have demonstrated, the question is
now not so much whether, as the ADL claims, they
are allowing outlier extremists to vent their spleen
but the threat posed to democracy by the ability
of these oligarchs to shut down political speech
they don’t like.

We can’t know whether Musk would keep
his word to make Twitter a free-speech-friendly
forum. But the fact that supporters of censorship
who claim that defending democracy requires its
destruction — such as The Washington Post’s Max
Boot or a George Soros-funded leftist website like
Free Press — are so frightened by his eff ort makes
it diffi cult not to root for him.

Whatever we may think of Musk, his bid for
Twitter highlights both the dangerously untram-
meled power of Big Tech and the need to ensure
that they are not controlled by anti-democratic
forces determined to shut down public debate
in order to advance a specifi c political agenda. It
was already obvious that ADL’s partisanship and
dangerous advocacy of censorship had little or
nothing to do with the best interests of Jews. It’s
equally clear that their stand is harmful to democ-
racy unless you defi ne that as the ability of leftist
idealogues to control public discourse. As much
as we may view the ability of antisemites to post
hate on Twitter with dismay, the survival of free
speech is far more important to defending both
democracy and Jewish security.

It’s a shame that we must currently depend on
a single wealthy individual to try to protect those
values. But in 2022, Elon Musk may be all we’ve
got. JE
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.

letters New Format a Winner
Congratulations on your new format. The
Exponent has transitioned into a serious publica-
tion that addresses the issues of the day. There is
something in every issue worth reading. Keep up
the great work.

Even though I have not lived in Philadelphia for
more than 60 years, I am delighted that I still get
the Jewish Exponent. I’m so glad the print edition
survives. Stanton C. Selbst, White Plains, New York
Response Merits a Response
In response to Solomon Stevens’ April 7 op-ed
(“The Holocaust is Not a Metaphor”), Henry
Steinberger wrote a response on April 21 that
declares that “The Left Hijacks the Holocaust.”
The left is no more homogeneous that the right.

Just because someone on “the left” called
someone a Nazi doesn’t mean that all in that
grouping would use that term. No more so that
just because a politician on “the right” calls every-
one who disagrees with him a socialist or commu-
nist doesn’t mean everyone on “the right” should
be tarred with that broad brush either.

Peter Whitman, Glen Mills
Letters should be related to articles that have run in the print or
online editions of the JE, and may be edited for space and clarity
prior to publication. Please include your first and last name, as
well your town/neighborhood of residence. Send letters to
letters@jewishexponent.com. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
15