American businessman Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, the SpaceX company, and the Tesla automaker, has called billionaire philanthropist George Soros a villain.
Musk was accused of anti-Semitism, but the entrepreneur said that this does not bother him, and he will continue to write resonant posts on his social network, even if it causes damage to his company.
Source. This was reported by the BBC.
On Tuesday, Musk posted a tweet saying that Soros, who has donated tens of billions of dollars to charity, reminds him of Magneto, the Jewish villain from the X-Men science fiction films.
Soros was born into a Jewish family in Hungary in the 1930s and survived the Nazi occupation of his country. Magneto from the X-Men movies, according to the authors of these films, is from a German Jewish family and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a child.
Given that supporters of far-right conspiracy theories often portray Soros as a villain and call him a key figure in a global Jewish conspiracy, users accused Musk of anti-Semitism and aiding conspiracy theorists.
In particular, American journalist Brian Krassenstein wrote that Soros is "continuously attacked for his good intentions," to which Musk responded:
"You assume that these are good intentions. They are not. He wants to destroy the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity."
Given that Musk has almost 140 million Twitter followers, many are concerned about such statements and the consequences they may lead to.
"The far right, in accordance with an anti-Semitic cliché, often calls Soros the source of the world's problems. And the fact that Elon Musk, whether intentionally or not, is echoing these ideas – comparing him to a Jewish supervillain, claiming that Soros 'hates humanity' – is not just unfortunate, it's dangerous: it inspires extremists to invent anti-Jewish plots and attempt to attack Soros and Jewish communities," wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the Jewish human rights organization Anti-Defamation League.
Commenting on this reaction, Musk said in an interview with CNBC that he can say what he wants and is not afraid that Twitter continues to lose advertising, which generates the bulk of the company's revenue.
"I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it," the billionaire said. He added that he is not anti-Semitic at all, calling himself a "pro-Semite" on the contrary.
A few hours after the post about Soros, Elon Musk supported an affirmative comment on a post claiming that the online publication Bellingcat, which specializes in investigative reporting, is a "NATO propaganda project."
"Bellingcat has been somewhat discredited both for spreading disinformation and for being willing to provide reports to anyone willing to pay," Canadian writer Aaron Maté said in the post.
Commenting on this, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins responded: "I asked what the basis for this claim about Bellingcat was. I was told that it was based on an article by [russian state media outlet] Sputnik and a statement by a russian journalist."
Background. As a reminder, Musk introduced the new CEO of Twitter. He himself is stepping down from this position.