Attempted damage control
Funny, it seems I’m not the only credulous fool who thinks Musk’s horrible tweets are horrible.
Joe Biden has excoriated Elon Musk’s “abhorrent” tweets two days after the X owner posted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post.
…
Musk sparked backlash with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jewish people of “hating white people” and showing indifference to antisemitism. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in reply. X users, including many in the tech industry, lambasted the posts, though other users agreed with Musk and said they were gleefully watching him sink into their hateful worldview.
Well I doubt they said that exactly. I doubt they said “I am/we are gleefully watching him sink into my/our hateful worldview.”
The platform’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, attempted to do damage control after Musk’s Thursday post, though she did not say his name or reference his tweet. The accounts that Media Matters found posting antisemitic material will no longer be monetizable and the specific posts will be labeled “sensitive media”, according to a statement from X on Friday.
“X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on,” Yaccarino said in a tweet.
Yaccarino was hired by Musk to rebuild ties with advertisers who fled after he took over, concerned that his easing of content restrictions was allowing hateful and toxic speech to flourish and that would harm their brands.
If shame won’t stop him, maybe the bottom line will. Very trumpy.
Musk also said on Wednesday that the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights non-profit, was fomenting hatred. The ADL has previously accused Musk of allowing antisemitism and hate speech to spread on the platform, and of amplifying the messages of neo-Nazis and white supremacists who want to ban the group. In response, Musk has cultivated a months-long feud with the organization and threatened to sue.
Brilliant way to demonstrate how not hostile to the Jews the Jewish community he is.
So The Guardian are joining in the dishonesty? Well that’s not a surprise either.
Let’s be clear. Who is it who has been tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages on the streets of London, New York, and lots of other places?
Well, it is not — and this may surprise some people — the “far right, anti-Semitic white supremacists”. Other than a handful of fringe loons, they don’t really exist, except as a bogeyman in the minds of the woke left.
No, the people tearing down posters of Israeli hostages, and indeed denying that Hamas committed any atrocities on Oct 7 (suggesting that it was the IDF), are the woke left, and Muslims and indeed blacks. That might be an unpleasant truth to some, but it’s true. It is those communities in the UK and US who have displayed anti-Semitism.
This is illustrating the toxicity of woke CRT ideology, in which “whites” are demonised as “oppressors” and people “of color” can do no wrong.
But the woke left don’t want to admit that. They are trying to ignore the anti-Semitism from the woke left, from Muslims, and from blacks. (Who all now regard Jews as “white” and so abhor them.)
So, what do they do? They (including the ADL, aided and abetted by Media Matters, the BBC, Guardian, and anyone else woke) throw up a smokescreen to try to claim that the real problem is their pet-but-nearly-non-existent bogeyman, the “far right, white supremacist, anti-Semites”, and then they try to maintain that Musk is promoting them and perhaps is one of them.
It’s just ludicrously wrong. And it’s all to avoid admitting that the demonisation of “white” people (now including Jews) is coming from them.
And Musk is pointing that out, which is why they are attacking him.
@Ophelia:
And just to add:
See, they can’t even phrase their dishonest hit piece sensibly.
@Coel:
It’s a bit more complicated than that; in the United States out and out white supremacists (real ones, following the pre-millennial definition) outnumber Muslims, particularly in regions like the PNW. Now to be fair, some of them are pretty pro-Israel (and still anti-Jew) because they like the idea of separate ethnostates. The left wing anti-Semitism is definitely being driven by Muslims, blacks, and the perception that Palestinian == brown colonized/Israeli == white colonizer, but it’s further amplified by 180ism around Republicans being frothing at the mouth pro-Israeli (an attitude at least partially motivated by anti-Semitism because many of them see the Israeli state as a keystone in their plan to destroy the world, including most/all of the Jews living in Israel).
Europe has a Muslim problem; the United States has a white supremacist problem (though maybe less pressing than Europe’s Muslim problem). Also, Musk is persistently being dumb in the way only smart but stubborn people are dumb; he should just stop tweeting and let his PR people do their thing.
@Blood Knight:
How are you estimating numbers of “out and out white supremacists”?
Second, I admit to struggling with the idea that “frothing at the mouth pro-Israeli” attitudes are “at least partially motivated by anti-Semitism”.
Also, yes, you’re likely right, he should perhaps hire a PR guy to do the Tweeting, but that’s not his style, and one theme running consistently through his career is that he does things his way.
Coel, if any of those posters were put up in my town, I would tear them down.
Why?
1. None of the kidnapped people are likely to be held where I live, some 13,000 km (8,200 miles) away from Sderot as the crow flies.
2. Therefore, this is propaganda, pure and simple, in an attempt to justify the killing of several thousand Palestinian children who have no guilt for the kidnappings.
3. I don’t like or want to have a war between believers of two branches of the same religion brought into my peaceful community, where Jews and Moslems seem few and far between, but Sikhs are valued contributors to the local economy.
3. It is visual pollution and illegal bill posting on public and private property, no better than graffiti. It is a blatant attack on private property rights to serve a political goal.
Let us be quite clear that while the supporters of Israel are up in arms over the atrocious Hamas attack, they are deathly silent about the daily evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, evictions to provide Lebensraum for newly arrived Jews from Europe. These evictions are at gunpoint, and if any Palestinian dares fight back, the IDF is swift to enact Capital Punishment without the benefit of trial. The IDF also has no qualms about shooting dead children who throw rocks while trying to defend their homes from armed invaders.
I hold no brief for Hamas, but if you can’t join the dots from an-Nakbah to today, then you are either ignorant of history or a one-eyed supporter of the far-right Likud and “settler movement”.
PS – Musk was wrong, but with great wealth often comes greater stupidity, cf Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, Clive Palmer, et al.
Better than you’d think… even in deep blue parts of Oregon I’ve probably seen more SS stickers/tattoos than Muslims if I’m not counting college students (the vile Saudis/UAE/Qatar send a lot of spoiled brats to the university) and that’s not counting all the militia fuckers we get around here (which are not universally white supremacist, but most are to varying degrees).
Are you not familiar with the whole “the temple must be rebuilt in Israel then Jesus will come back and all the Jews will convert/die/otherwise be erased because we’re the real chosen people thing”? That’s why modern Republicans like Israel so much, the prime reason even. In the past it was just taken as a given that the US would back Israel and both parties were down, but now Israel’s got Republican backing no matter what they do and Democrats are struggling with a variety of leftist that only understands the world a white/non-white framework, strongly reinforced by Muslim “leftist” barbarians who just hate the idea of infidels sitting on top of one of their second or third most sacred shrines.
I see no reason to take Coel’s frantic, forced and disingenuous attempts to defend Musk, or the boringly binary view of the world that pervades everything he writes (‘woke bad, unwoke good’), seriously. He is a silly and unserious person who affects to know more than he does know, and supposes that if he makes pronouncements in a sufficiently confident manner it will browbeat others into submission – for he does not appear to be interested in truth.
Once again, I hope he will respond to (and not studiously evade) my request that he should provide us with a brief, but clear definition of the word ‘race’ as it pertains to the human species, and a list of human ‘races’, with a brief account of how they differ from one another,. After all, he has proudly pronounced that ‘Race is real’.He needs to explain what he means by ‘real’ in this case, and why he thinks that race is real in the sense he in which he is taking it.
I should also say that I am singularly uninterested in the identity politics that obsesses certain people both on the left and the right, who merely mirror one another.
Sigh. The actual exchange in full:
[The inset ‘they supported’ was a correction made by that poster in a tweet that followed within a minute of the first.]
[Typos, punctuation etc. all from original source.]
There was no tweet higher in the chain than the one by Charles Weber. That was the start of the conversation: Charles asking ‘Hitler truthers’ to give their views openly. Mr. Formerly Eric replies, giving us some ‘truths’ about jews. Irrespective of whether his comments are actually true or not, he would have to be a fucking idiot not to realise his acceptance of that challenge implicitly accepts that he is a Hitler Was Right type.
But fine, that intro is just the framing. What about the content? Once Elon supplies some additional clarification, we see that the complaint here is that advocacy groups such as the ADL make lots of woke-style arguments about ‘whiteness’ and ‘decolonising’ and whatnot. Things we’re familiar with and have complained about ourselves. I think Elon and co. were inept in their wording and explanation, but I’ll point out that this is not so different from observations made here, e.g. that time a council made itself majority muslim and then was shocked that the muslims made rulings based on their deeply regressive religion.
Anyway, this is part of a trend – it’s fine, okay, and even good to castigate and cast all societal ills at the foot of ‘political whiteness’, but not okay to note that minorities can be regressive. I think the exchange started badly thanks to that uncritical acceptance of the framing, and continued badly with inept language compounded by conflating the ADL with jews in general, but all the same, I disagree with the consensus view that Elon ‘went full Hitler’ or whatever.
Fingers crossed that the formatting of those quotes is all correct…
Oh right, the spam safeguard. What’s the cutoff for links in a post that triggers auto screening? 3+?
@Tim:
Well I don’t see what this has got to do with the thread, but on the (optimistic) assumption that you’re actually interested in science and reality, I’ll answer:
As humans spread across the globe, we developed shared-ancestry clusterings. That is, gene flow was higher within clusters than between clusters, so cluster members came to share somewhat greater similarity in some bundles of traits with each other than with a random member of some other cluster.
These clusterings are fractal branching patterns (so are not countable), and are fuzzy edged rather than being discrete (since humans are all the same species and clusters interbreed). It is these clusterings that are referred to by the common-language term “races”.
As I said, they are fuzzy edged and fractal, which means they are not countable. In the same way, one could not count the branches of a tree (branches that is, not twigs, not trunks), and yet the branching structure of a tree is real.
As for differences, well those tend to be minor, such that variations in any given trait are usually larger within a group than any differences in group means; though, nevertheless group differences are real as correlated bundles of traits.
It’s real in the sense that the shared-ancestry clusterings are a real feature of humanity. Companies like 23andme, analysing genes, can readily and easily tell you your ancestry (correlating better than 99% with people’s self-described ancestry, and where they differ, it’s usually the person’s account of their ancestry that is wrong).
They are real in the sense that (to give just one of many examples) AI analysis of a medical X-ray can discern the person’s race.
They are obviously real in that anyone looking at photos of people of Norwegian ancestry (all great-grandparents Norwegian), and Japanese ancestry (ditto) and Bantu ancestry (ditto) can tell with 100% accuracy which is which (oh yes you can, unless you are deliberately trying to get it wrong, which no doubt woke people would).
But again, the clusterings are fractal and fuzzy edged. (Fuzzy-edged categories are still real; for example “adolescent” is a real and meaningful concept, despite there being no clear line between “adolescent” and “adult”.)
And of course, races can mix. Owing to migration, some populations (e.g. parts of South America) are a mixture of ancestry-clusterings, such that it’s not sensible to regard them as a “race” (the US term “Hispanic” is not a sensible label in shared-ancestry terms). And as transport and migration gets easier, it may be that shared-ancestry clusterings become increasingly washed out. Nevertheless, the pattern is obviously real and discernable across the world today.
All of the above would be accepted by any scientist (unless they’re a virtue-signalling wokie, more interested in ideology than reality).
There you are. Happy?
I hope the dots being connected aren’t all from left-wing or Palestinian propaganda.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/sol-stern/palestinian-nakba-narrative-wants-israel-dead/
I read something today about Deir Yassir, and how false stories about what happened there are apparently still going around.
https://www.camera.org/article/hey-new-york-times-where-are-the-fact-checkers/
Musk is now intending to sue Media Matters “and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company”.
If what Musk is saying is true, then the Media Matters article was indeed a fraudulent hit job (assisted by the gullible hacks at the BBC, Guardian etc).
Read his statement in this Tweet.
The part headed “Here are the facts on Media Matters’ research” is the most substantive.
And yes, anyone who thinks that free speech matters (including, as just one example, the right to “misgender” someone) should be siding with Musk in this.
Good article by Christian Buttons showing that anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment is actually far more widespread on places like Instagram and Tik Tok, and is coming primarily from the woke left.
… and yet the media is far more interested in taking Twitter down through manufactured controversies in order to generate an advertising boycott … all because Twitter won’t impose the same woke bias.
Just from my own experience on Twitter, and I remain there so I because it is far more interesting than the more blatantly ideological socail networks that sprung up out of protest (I’m looking at you, “Threads.”) But it also gets tiring because the preponderance of posters still only accept sources of info that confirm their biases, Musk and his supporters included. I plead also guilty because I am human. But one thing that I do know from personal experience is that no matter how many nakedly nasty anti-semitic posts I report, I am always only informed that the posts didn’t break the rules, while even the most snarky and sideways posts of mine regarding trans issues are accepted as violating the rules and I have to delete or stay banned.
There is no restraint on social media, people repost and take umbrage based on their ideology.
So, just like the acronyms “RINO” and “DINO,” the terms “Woke Left” and “Far Right” really are becoming terms that are used to poison the well of any discussion. If we could get people away from labeling, we can actually discuss issues in a way to solve them. Using that terminology is a good blanket application to dismiss anything you disagree with. It’s a trap. Nobody uses the term “politically correct” anymore, and the reason is that it’s meaningless because it was applied to everything perceived as liberal. While there are people who identify themselves that way, the applying them to everyone who expresses a liberal position is not Woke Left. I am not woke left, but I have some positions that would be considered traditionally liberal.
But many consider me a communist who wants to destroy “our way of life” simply because I think that Lara Trump shouldn’t make money from “I Won’t Back Down” since the Petty Estate has clearly stated they will not grant her the rights to record it. Also, because I challenged someone who wanted to know why progressives hate America and are hellbent on destroying it. (When I asked her if she thought I am vermin who should be stomped out, she replied without answering directly but asking why true Americans should simply watch while we burn it down.) You can’t have dialog with people like that.
So, whatever points you want to make, Coel, I simply don’t read what you write anymore due to your reliance on painting with that broad brush of “woke left.” All I hear are the same trombone sounds that Peanuts movies use for adults speaking.
It’s possible that you have valid points. I just can’t get past that. On X I have come to mute people who rely on it, too.
Holms @ 10 – yes, I think 3+ is right. Sorry for the delay!
@Mike Haubrich:
OK, noted, but what terminology would you like me to use to refer to the “woke left” in distinction from the left in general or other forms of left-wing thought?
“Wokeism”, or “Critical Social Justice”, to give it an alternative label, really is a distinctive strand of left-wing thought. We’re told that “woke” is pejorative and divisive and we shouldn’t use it (despite “woke” being a term they originated for themselves), so what do we use instead?
[NB My bad for typing “Christina Buttons” as “Christian Buttons” above.]
Identity synthesis works just fine…
“Identity synthesis” has only been used in this sense for about six weeks, having been coined by Yascha Mounk in his recent book.
As of yet it isn’t widely used or understood. If it came to be I’d be happy to use it (and shortly thereafter it would be denounced as pejorative and I’d be told not to use it).
My point is not about a specific label. It’s about broad brushes.
Thank you, Coel, for that. You have been very careful, and have clearly done your homework, and your account is much the same as Adam Rutherford’s in his ‘How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race & Reality’. Well done. There then come the questions where lines may be drawn, how many ‘races’ there are, and how much and what sort of importance should be attached to ‘racial’ differences, and by whom. In which last connexion, the word ‘race’ in the sense you are using it certainly does not have the same sense as it does in common usage, as you suggest (‘It is these clusterings that are referred to by the common-language term “races”’); something that suggests that in science a better term should be found than ‘race’, which bears within it still all the sorry history and prejudices of a Western pseudo-science and is understood in that way by most ordinary people.
But I wonder how much of what you have set down above, and its implications, have genuinely become part of your thinking, considering your constant ‘broad-brush’ (to borrow from Mike Haubrich) approach, and your obvious readiness in the past to deny the effects that European colonialism and slave-holding continue to have in the present, declaring, as you have, that these effects no longer exist, and irresponsibly assuming that anyone who points these effects out is ‘woke’ and ‘anti-white’ – for you seem extremely exercised on the part of ‘whites’ when you think there might be racism directed at them, and indifferent when racism is directed by whites towards others. What is wrong with looking about you, and recognising truth? That principles, whether scientific or ethical, should be universal or as general as the situation demands is a lesson that you seem not to have learned.
Having been married to a Japanese and lived in Japan for more than fifty years, I can assure that I am able to distinguish between Norwegian & Japanese people, as well as, generally, between Japanese and Chinese people, and your immediate recourse to your favourite charge of ‘wokery’ is silly and infantile.
@Tim Harris:
Well that’s rather patronisingly phrased, but still …
No, we don’t need to address those things. Why would we? Public policy should not treat people differently according to race. As I said to you last time you asked, MLK had it right (“content of character”, treating someone on their individual capabilities, not their group identity).
Sometimes we do need to draw lines, even with fuzzy-edged categories. For example in legal terms we need a hard line distinguishing “minor” from “adult”, because those are treated differently, even though, biologically, there’s little difference between someone aged 17 years and 11 months versus 18 years and 1 month.
But I see no reason why the law should treat a “Hispanic” differently from a “white”, and thus, no, we don’t need to distinguish between them.
I don’t agree. I think that, taken over different times and different cultures, that is the concept underlying the term “race”. But, yes, on top of the underlying biological reality, there is then an added layer of social construction in how terms are used in a particular time and place. For example, the “one drop rule” is purely a social convention.
All of it; and it hasn’t “become” part of my thinking, it always was.
A complaint that is over-blown. Any reasonably brief comment has to simplify and generalise a more-complex reality. A good-faith reading accepts that.
No, I have attempted an evidence-based discussion of what lasting effects do exist.
No, though I might have applied such words to those who merely assert, based on no evidence, the prevalence of such effects. Your phrase “points out”, is argumentative, begging the question of what effects exist.
And now, as you usually do, you’re just being snide.
What truth, that you are providing evidence for, are you wanting me to recognise?
I can supply you with ample evidence of the “truth” of rampant anti-Asian-American bias in admissions to elite US universities, but you’re just going to discount that, aren’t you?
Nasty. Snide. And unsupported by evidence.
Excellent. So you agree that all the woke people who intone “race is a purely social construct” are wrong?