Business magnate and now Twitter CEO Elon Musk, whom many left-leaning Jewish organizations have accused of antisemitism for his criticism of the Hungarian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor George Soros, responded last week to an interview with Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
In the CNBC interview, Greenblatt said Musk is not an antisemite. “There’s no question about that,” he said. “But it’s unmistakable that he is arguably the most influential man on the planet, controlling what’s essentially our public square.”
Still, said Greenblatt, it has an impact “when he repeats conspiracy theories, when he amplifies ideas like George Soros, who’s a polarizing figure, who supports policies that I don’t agree with … when you say he’s a supervillain trying to destroy humanity that feeds the extremists who want to kill supervillains and who think that George Soros embodies this idea of the Jewish conspiracy.”
Musk wrote in reply: “In fairness, I must concede that Jonathan has a good point, and I will endeavor to be more thoughtful in the future.”
Apparently, however, Musk couldn’t resist another related comment.
“Comic-book analogies are obviously imperfect, to say the least. Just because George Soros can bend metal using his mind doesn’t mean he’s Magneto!!” he added.
(It was pointed out that Musk chose to compare Soros to the comic-book character.)
He concluded that his “actual concern” with Soros is about the latter’s funding of “so many politicians and district attorneys who are soft even on violent crime, which has caused great damage to many cities.”
