Elon Musk’s Latest Target Hits Back
Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have lambasted a Jewish organization that many people are only vaguely aware of: the Anti-Defamation League. The #BanTheADL campaign, started by overt white nationalists and later boosted by Elon Musk himself, accuses the Jewish civil-rights group of seeking to censor the site’s users, intimidate its advertisers, and generally abrogate American freedoms in service of a sinister liberal agenda.
I’m pretty familiar with the ADL. Like many reporters and subject-matter experts on anti-Semitism, I’ve spoken at some of the organization’s events. I haven’t always agreed with its approach, whether on social-media moderation or Israel. But though the ADL doesn’t get everything right, it has a better batting average than most organizations in this difficult space. In any case, as I wrote earlier this week, none of what is happening to the group today has much to do with the specific policies it advocates, whatever their merits. Rather, the ADL is being scapegoated on Twitter for the platform’s own failings, and attacked as a stand-in for supposed Jewish power.
In an effort to disentangle criticism from conspiracy, I spoke last night with the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, about his organization’s approach to free speech, how he attempts to represent a Jewish consensus in such a polarized time, and whether the ADL is secretly trying to strangle Twitter.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
This all started after you had a conversation with Twitter’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, about the company’s approach to moderating hate speech. You subsequently tweeted about the exchange, “frank” and “productive.” To most people, this might
