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
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