Elon Musk apologizes for his antisemitic message, but tells advertisers: ‘Go fuck yourself’

Elon Musk has a peculiar way of apologizing. The tech tycoon and head of the social network X, formerly Twitter, and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, admitted this Wednesday at a conference organized by The New York Times that he was wrong to agree with an antisemitic message that spread a conspiracy theory of white nationalism. But while acknowledging his mistake, he also accused advertisers who have withdrawn their advertising of “blackmail” and has raised the tone to address them: “Go fuck yourself,” he repeated twice, also referring expressly to Bob Iger, Disney CEO, one of the ones who cut the publicity.

Musk’s language, surprised those present at the formal forum which throughout the day included US Vice President Kamala Harris; Israel’s President Isaac Herzog; Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, via video conference; JP Morgan President, Jamie Dimon, or Disney’s, Bob Iger, among many others.

Advertising remains the main source of revenue for X and Musk has implicitly called on users to boycott companies that have decided to suspend advertising on the social network after his antisemitic message. Among those companies are IBM, Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner, Paramount and Lionsgate.

Musk sparked outrage with his own tweets in response to a message from a user accusing Jews of hating whites and professing indifference to antisemitism. The message subscribed to the conspiracy theory of replacement, according to which the Jews are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” the country to replace the whites. That conspiracy theory was the same that motivated the deadly shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted.

This Wednesday in New York, the tycoon was defiant when asked about that tweet: “I have no problem being hated,” he said. And that he didn’t care if people hated him, loved him or trusted him or not because SpaceX makes the best rockets and Tesla the best cars.

Then, however, he acknowledged that that message was “one of the most foolish” he has ever shared on X and apologized if that message encouraged antisemitism: “I am quite sorry,” he said. “I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular post.”

“Essentially I handed a loaded gun to the people who hate me,” said Musk, who also complained that the media ignored his attempts to clarify the meaning of his message. The owner of X also said that his recent visit to Israel was “not an apology tour” despite the fact it happened at a time when he needed to sanitize his image. On that trip, Musk also accepted to give Netanyahu’s government the faculty to authorize the use of the connectivity provided by his Starlink web of satellites in the Gaza Strip.

However, after acknowledging his mistake and saying he was sorry, he faced-off with the advertisers who decided to remove their ads from the platform for not feeling comfortable with a social network where many antisemitic messages were being shared, besides Musk’s.

Iger had justified a little earlier in the same event Disney’s own decision. “I have a lot of respect for Elon and what he has accomplished,” he said. “By him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us,” the Disney boss added.

When Musk was asked what he thought of decisions like that, he went off: “Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go-fuck-yourself, is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience.”

“What this advertising boycott is going to do is, it is going to kill the company,” Musk added. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company,” he continued, while among the crowd sat Linda Yaccarino, the CEO he hired this year to, among other things, fix the relationship with advertisers.

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