Elon Musk: Genocidal terms like ‘from the river to the sea’ to result in suspension
Under fire for endorsing antisemitic post, X owner says won’t tolerate ‘clear calls for extreme violence’ on social media platform such as ‘decolonization’
Elon Musk said Friday that X users who deploy the terms “decolonization,” “from the river to the sea” and other similar euphemisms that “necessarily imply genocide” will be suspended from the social media platform.
“Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension,” Musk wrote on the platform, formerly known as Twitter.
“Anyone calling for a genocide of any people will be suspended,” he replied to a user who asks, “So many influential accounts here support Hamas’ massacre. Will you suspend them?”
In his post Friday, he quoted a post from two days ago that said “Yes, ‘decolonization’ necessarily implies a Jewish genocide, thus it is unacceptable to any reasonable person.”
It came in response to a user for wrote that “‘decolonization’ is the woke version of jihad, and it should be viewed and treated that way.”
The tweets came two days after Musk faced backlash for endorsing an antisemitic post on X that accused Jewish people of driving hatred against white people.
“You have said the actual truth,” Musk responded from his personal account on X.
As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide.
Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. https://t.co/1fCFo5Lezb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 17, 2023
Musk has faced multiple accusations that hate rhetoric and antisemitism have grown significantly on X since he took over the company in 2022, as well as accusations of having using antisemitic tropes himself. Global antisemitism has spiked after war erupted between Israel and Hamas when the terror group carried out a devastating attack that killed some 1,200 people in Israel — mostly civilians — and took some 240 hostages.
Musk made the comment Wednesday when a user posted a video that is part of a campaign against antisemitism, depicting a father reprimanding his son for making antisemitic remarks on the internet.
Another user responded, “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.
“I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”
Musk responded that it was “the actual truth.”
In follow-up posts, Musk wrote that he doesn’t believe that “all Jewish communities” hate white people but said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) “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.”
“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,” he wrote. “I’m sick of it. Stop now.”
Musk and the ADL have been at odds for about a year. Soon after Musk’s takeover of the platform in 2022, the ADL encouraged companies to pause their ad spending on the site in protest of Musk removing guardrails against hate speech, though the ADL resumed its own paid ads on the platform.
IBM, EU and Lionsgate said they would pause ads on X on Friday amid a surge of hate speech. In IBM’s case, the multinational said it stopped advertising on X after a report said its ads were appearing alongside material praising Nazis.
“We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Friday in response to Musk’s tweet.
On Friday, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on X after Musk’s post to suspend users who call for genocide: “This is an important and welcome move by [Musk]. I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.”
