The White House on Friday criticized tech billionaire Elon Musk for engaging with an antisemitic social media post this week and calling it the “absolute truth.”
“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.
The antisemitic post Musk appeared to endorse came in response to a user on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, who expressed concern about rising antisemitism.
The user posted, “To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say?” Another user responded, “Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”
Musk replied to that post: “You have said the actual truth.”
Bates said the White House will continue to condemn antisemitism, which has been on the rise since the war between Israel and Hamas that was spawned in the wake of the surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
“Like President Biden said weeks ago memorializing the victims of the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the October 7 ‘devastating atrocity has brought to the surface painful memories left by millennia of Antisemitism;’ and under his presidency ‘we will continue to condemn Antisemitism at every turn.’ We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans,” Bates said.
He added that Americans have the “responsibility to bring people together against hate,” as well as “an obligation to speak out against anyone who attacks the dignity of their fellow Americans and compromises the safety of our communities.”
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the White House’s statement.
The claim that Musk appeared to endorse echoes false conspiracy theories that Jews want to flood the country with minorities. The billionaire faced immediate scrutiny online for his post.
And, in a follow-up post on X, Musk went after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group that advocates against antisemitic and hate speech, saying, “The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.”
His post continued a longtime feud between Musk and the ADL, which has been a target of the billionaire’s ire as he blamed the league’s criticism for falling ad revenue.