Major Western companies, including Apple, Disney, IBM, Comcast, and Warner Brothers Discovery among others have decided to halt advertising on X following Elon Musk’s reply on Wednesday to a post alleged to share an antisemitic theory, commenting “You have said the actual truth.”
“Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” says the tweet in response to another tweet that asked people to justify their belief that “Hitler was right.”
What added fuel to the fire was the Media Matters report on Thursday that said X had been displaying ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to content promoting “Hitler and his Nazi Party.”
Immediately, IBM took a stand by being the first company to pull its advertising from X, commenting that the juxtaposition of its ads with Nazi content was an “entirely unacceptable situation,” Media Matters reported from The Financial Times.
The European Commission, TV network Paramount, and movie studio Lionsgate have also pulled ads from X, as reported by BBC. Axios also stated that Apple joined the campaign to halt advertising on the platform.
164 Jewish rabbis, artists, activists, and academics reiterated their calls for Disney, Amazon, and other advertisers to stop their ads on X, urging Apple and Google to remove the platform from their services.
“X has been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop,” commented Linda Yaccarino, X CEO.
The White House on Friday condemned Elon Musk’s support of antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, reported Reuters.
“It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie … one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” said Andrew Bates, White House spokesperson, as highlighted in the same source.
In response, Musk on Saturday announced that he planned to file a “thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.”
Promoting a premium version of his platform that bans ads from users’ feeds, Musk said, “Many of the largest advertisers are the greatest oppressors of your right to free speech.” k