Elon Musk says those who push racism should be ‘shunned’ - despite backing antisemitic tweet

Elon Musk, whose company X has long been accused of allowing “hate to prosper” on the platform, has faced criticism after falling for a fake article and claiming those who push racism “should be shunned” – less than 12 months after he apologised for backing an antisemitic tweet.

Musk shared the comment on Saturday (October 5) evening in response to a fake article – purporting to be from ProPublica writer Emily Goldstein – titled “yes, diversity is about getting rid of white people (and that’s a good thing)”, which states the author is “extremely glad that the white race is dying” and that “white people do not have a right to exist”.

ProPublicashared a statement condemning the “hateful disinformation” and stating Goldstein “has never been employed by or contributed work to Thought Catalog”, an online blog.

The person behind the post was actually an online troll named Joshua Goldberg from Florida, who in 2019 admitted he was behind 27 different Reddit accounts as well as the aforementioned article.

He also pled guilty to the charge of “attempted malicious damage and destruction by an explosive of a building” in December 2017, before being sentenced to 10 years in prison and then a lifetime of “supervised release”.

According to the US Office of Public Affairs, Goldberg stated he was “thinking of pipe bombs at a large public event” in August 2015, going on to suggest “a pressure cooker bomb may be better”.

Later that same month, he told a confidential FBI source that he had found the “perfect place” for the attack – a Kansas City firefighters’ event on September 13 2015 memorialising those who lost their lives in the 9/11 terror attacks.

Referring to the article on diversity, he wrote in a Medium article: “I assumed the alt-right would be stupid enough to fall for it, and I assumed correctly.”

Musk’s post has since been issued with a Community Note pointing out his error, while his remarks about those pushing racism needing to be “shunned” come less than a year after he admitted he made a “mistake” in saying that Jewish communities have a “dialectical hatred” of white people was “the actual truth”.

Multiple brands went on to pull ads from Twitter/X in response, a situation which Musk addressed by telling those advertisers to “go f*** yourselves”.

Professional…

Speaking in November 2023 about the tweet, he said it was a “mistake” and “foolish”.

“I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what I meant.

“But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic. And for that I’m quite sorry, that was not my intention,” he said.

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