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Musk can probably take Greenblatt’s on this, I expect him to win against the ADL. Kanye was only cancelled after he went full schizo Nation of Islam, ranting-homeless-black-guy-in-Central-Park, you could see how much all the Jewish people in his agency, label, at Yeezy, his public celebrity friends mostly waited until he started talking about Hitler, black Israelites, lost tribe, Jewish doctors poisoning him etc. That was more toxic for Adidas than it would have been for an American brand by itsef. Mel Gibson was cancelled, but he said all the wars in the world were the fault of the Jews, and he also made threatening comments about his then-girlfriend and mother of his child deserving to be ‘raped by a pack of…’ etc, and it was in any case as much his alcoholism (which makes productions hard to insure and is the big reason eg. Johnny Depp has had less work recently) that was the problem as it was anything else.
Musk’s hmmposting doesn’t even remotely rise to that level. His top few tweets today are him praising Walter Isaacson, him looking forward to Lex Fridman’s interview with him, and him praising…uh…Chuck Schumer for some congressional hearing on AI. Plus most of the more powerful Silicon Valley Jews are, if not friendly with him (although some are), not going full death con 3, if you will. Hoffmann criticized him for his Ukraine comments, and Zuck has for backing out of their fight, but neither has said anything about antisemitism. Neither Page nor Brin, who would both have reason to hate Musk (in the former case for their longstanding feud over poaching Sutskever, in the latter for [allegedly] fucking his now-ex wife lol), have called him out on it.
The Times of Israel reports today that “the billionaire’s [Musk’s] Jewish friends” set up a meeting with Netanyahu to put allegations of antisemitism to rest. So either Musk has much better Jewish friends than Kanye, or he’ll probably be fine, unless he goes full Keith Woods, and he’s slowed down his retweets of and engagement with him and other dissident right adjacent people now, and has largely gone back to retweeting Fox boomercon takes on the southern border migrant situation. The board of the ADL are largely comparative nobodies, they can be influenced by bigger voices in the community if Greenblatt becomes a liability.
Currently he hangs on because, as a former Obama staffer, he’s considered well-connected in the present administration.
Really?
I expect the ADL to get some of the best lawyers in existence and also pull out all the stops shaping the landscape, so to speak. It's not that Musk himself is as outrageous as Kanye, of course: the case against him is flimsy. And sure, there are many Jews who'd rather he wins. But I don't think they'll affect the proceedings much; and Netanyahu himself is anti-popular with American progressives. The problem is that that the precedent of some hmmposting tech bro legally defeating the ADL on their very field is undesirable.
I also think you underestimate the damage from engaging with Woods at all. Screenshots go a very long way, and Woods has written a great deal on the JQ.
I'd like to be wrong, of course.
It tends to be more direct than that, people who merely associated (or even still associate) with Kanye haven’t been cancelled, various progressives have associated with people with kooky views (of either the Islamic or black varieties) on Jews, Trump has met or been seen around various unsavory characters including Fuentes and for all the regular criticism he can’t be cancelled as an antisemite (despite it occasionally being thrown in with the other stuff) because everyone knows that, like Musk, he isn’t one.
US defamation law, unlike the British equivalent, is extremely hard for those bringing a suit, it’s very unlikely the ADL could bring a libel claim against him and if they did, they would lose. You can’t usually be cancelled as an antisemite unless it’s undeniable, Corbyn and his faction weren’t cancelled until they lost an election and then got purged as the losers with antisemitism as the thin veneer of excuse.
For Musk to be cancelled, his Jewish peers would have to turn on him and decry him specifically as antisemitic, and so far, that hasn’t really happened.
Sure but Musk has visibly endorsed Woods' comments, even if those were constrained to the topic of ADL and not joos generally.
As for the defamation law, I mean specifically Musk's threat to sue the ADL. It'll probably not happen, but then he'll just have to lick his wounds and accept X never becoming profitable. This would of course be a massive, massive win for Greenblatt – the world's richest man gets cold feet after briefly daring to go against his libel.
Oh yeah, for sure, I didn’t mean to suggest that Musk would scalp Greenblatt by literally winning against the ADL in court. That’s unlikely for the same reason I described. But Musk doesn’t follow through on 99% of his ideas and I expect that much like he listened to his trainers that he would definitely lose against Zuck in a fight, he’ll listen to his lawyers that he would definitely lose in a lawsuit against the ADL for first amendment reasons.
I mean that if he keeps making this much drama, and can get a few powerful Jews on his side (including Bibi, and obviously plenty of Jews on the right aren’t particularly fans of the ADL since Foxman left and it became more overtly progressive) then the board is liable to remove him. Foxman is writing op-eds criticizing Biden for not inviting Bibi to the White House now. Greenblatt is now directly criticizing the Israeli government in a way the organization specifically resisted for a very long time.
You don’t stay in that job for ten years without making a lot of enemies, there are also people want to get rid of Greenblatt for much more mundane reasons than that he’s increasing antisemitism. He doesn’t have Hoover-tier control of the institution.
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