Prominent “free-speech absolutist” threatens to sue Jewish anti-hate group because it engaged in free speech he didn’t like.
"Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
“The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by ‘falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic’.”
If your list of enemies includes the ADL, then there’s a more-than-reasonable chance that you’re an anti-semite.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/05/elon-musk-sue-adl-x-twitter
The thing is this shit works for right wingers. They genuinely believe that the ADL calling someone an antisemite, or even suggesting they might be, is the same as the government kicking your door down and murdering you because you used “free speech”
If there’s one characteristic I’ve found to be widespread among right wingers, it’s black-and-white thinking. They don’t do “sometimes” or “partially” or “60%”. They just do “is” and “is not”. Vaccines either work or they don’t. Immigration is either bad or it’s good. Climate change is either 100% there today or it’s not happening, and if not every climate phenomenon is humans’ doing then none of it is humanity’s fault. Either every government regulation and law is good or government is simply bad. Either everyone gets guns or no one does. They apply this same black-and-white thinking to free speech.
While I see where you are coming from, I don’t think this is a pattern of thinking that applies only (or primarily) to right wingers but rather to political radicals of all sorts. We see similar bullshit coming from the far left with “all straight white males are oppressors” and similar statements. Might also be a result of social media echo chambers, who knows…
It definitely happens with extremists on both sides, but I think it’s much more common on the right. Like, I encounter it on streets all the time from the right. I recently had a “climate change doesn’t exist because a day was cool last week” conversation with someone on the fourth-straight record high day in a row.
i’m looking forward to hearing his made-up defense against this made-up attack, like “this is hurtful, i am not antisemetic, i love the Jewish people”.
Elon, the federal court does not exist to validate your feelings. you are wasting peoples’ valuable time and resources.
