In a Tuesday interview with David Faber of CNBC, tech billionaire and soon-to-be-former Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he would not stop sharing his controversial beliefs on the social media platform he owns, mere hours after posting a tweet about liberal billionaire donor George Soros that was widely criticized for deploying antisemitic tropes
"I'll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of doing that is losing money, so be it," Musk told Farber during the sitdown interview, broadcast live from a Tesla corporate facility in Texas.
Musk went after Soros in a series of tweets on Monday, comparing the Hungarian-born businessman and philanthropist to the Marvel Comics supervillain Magneto, who like Soros is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
"Soros reminds me of Magneto," Musk wrote on Monday evening. In a separate tweet, Musk claimed that Soros "hates humanity" and "wants to erode the very fabric of civilization."
Soros reminds me of Magneto
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2023
You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2023
During Musk's tenure at Twitter, antisemitic speech and related conspiracy theories have spread rapidly, according to The Washington Post. A study first shared with The Technology 202 determined that Twitter posts appearing to contain antisemitic language increased by 105 percent between Musk's takeover on Oct. 27, 2022, and early February.
When questioned by Faber about the tweets, Musk described himself as "prosemite." His attacks on Soros, however, drew the attention of David Saranga, an official at Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry, who wrote that Twitter is "filled with AntiSemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews around the world."
"Unfortunately Twitter does nothing to address this problem," he added.
When questioned about his George Soros tweets, Musk responds that he's "pro-semite" and says he doesn't want this to turn into a "Soros interview." pic.twitter.com/aJxJZgdtMP
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) May 16, 2023
“The Jews” is trending right now on #Twitter and it’s filled with AntiSemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews around the world.
— David Saranga (@DavidSaranga) May 16, 2023
Unfortunately Twitter does nothing to address this problem.
It reminds me of Niemöller's words which are prominently featured on a wall of… pic.twitter.com/igT3RsrViq
Faber also questioned Musk about his reluctance to believe that a mass shooter who recently killed eight people at a mall in Allen, Texas, held white supremacist views, as now seems glaringly obvious. Musk had appeared to imply that the Latino background of the shooter, Mauricio Garcia, meant that he could not be a white supremacist and evidence to the contrary could be a "bad psyop," or psychological operation. After the open-source intelligence group Bellingcat shared information about Garcia's white supremacist and neo-Nazi beliefs, Musk claimed that the Netherlands-based research group "literally specializes in psychological operations."
"This is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!" he added.
Didn’t the story come from @bellingcat, which literally specializes in psychological operations?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2023
I don’t want to hurt their feelings, but this is either the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!
"I think it was incorrectly ascribed to be a white supremacist action," Musk said to Faber. "Do you know what Bellingcat does? Psyops."
"I'm saying that I thought ascribing it to white supremacy was bullshit," he continued.
"There's no proof, by the way, that he was not," Faber said, referring to Garcia.
"I would say there's no proof that he is," Musk replied.
Musk doubles down on his claims that there's no evidence the Allen, Texas mall shooter had white supremacist beliefs, and that @bellingcat "does psy-ops" professionally. pic.twitter.com/60yvbbspYZ
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) May 16, 2023
On this issue at least, the evidence appears overwhelming. The AP reported last week that Texas Department of Public Safety regional director Hank Sibley said at a news conference, describing Garcia, "We do know he had neo-Nazi ideation. He had patches. He had tattoos."
On the less urgent topic of remote work in the tech industry, Musk said, ""People who make your food that gets delivered — they can't work from home. The people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? That's messed up."
"You see it as a moral issue?" Faber asked.
"Yes. It's a productivity issue, but it's also a moral issue," Musk said.
In a rare admission of error, Musk conceded during the interview that he should not have fired so many of Twitter's employees. He has reduced the workforce by around 80 percent since purchasing the company last fall for $44 billion.
"There's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go," he said. "We certainly did not have the time to figure out — we had to make widespread cuts to get the run rate under control."
"We absolutely need to hire people," he said. "And if they're not too mad at us, probably rehire some of the people that we let go."
Musk added that he envisions Twitter as "a cybernetic collective mind for humanity." When asked by Faber if he is worried that his opinionated posts might be affecting the financial welfare of his companies negatively, Musk responded with a quote from "The Princess Bride": "Offer me money. Offer me power. I don't care."
When asked if he's worried his tweets are hurting his companies Musk compares himself to Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride pic.twitter.com/X6HE3bc3at
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) May 16, 2023
