B’nai B’rith founded the ADL in September of 1913 to defend child killer Leo Frank.
Frank was the Atlanta president of B’nai B’rith and worked as superintendent of a pencil factory. He was convicted of strangling Mary Phagan to death, a 13 year old employee. Despite overwhelming proof that Frank was guilty, the ADL pushed a conspiracy theory that the real killer was a Black janitor. They falsely claimed that Frank had been framed because he was Jewish.
Today, the ADL is a well-funded, far-left censorship advocacy group. More recently, the ADL became well known for its attack campaign against The Passion of the Christ. In 2017, it was reported that Twitter was forming a partnership with the ADL to increase censorship on the platform.
Last night, ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt issued a press release attacking Elon Musk.
“Despite my reservations, I was cautiously optimistic that Elon Musk would take the concerns of civil society to heart, but developments over the past two weeks have been troubling. This includes, but is not limited to, Mr. Musk warmly welcoming back Ye to Twitter after Ye made antisemitic comments on Instagram and was booted off the platform. I worry that this will be indicative of Mr. Musk’s approach to content moderation on the platform.
Further, we are concerned that Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter may accelerate what ADL has seen repeatedly: the pushing out of marginalized communities from social media. As with Telegram, Gab, Parler, Rumble, and other platforms that refuse to address incitement and slander in the name of free speech, such platforms have become hotbeds for radicalism and hate. This invariably reduces the diversity of views on these services and narrows rather than expands the public conversation.
There are technical fixes and business model adjustments that truly could improve Twitter, but in owning a social media platform, I hope Mr. Musk will abide by the Peter Parker principle: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I was glad to see him tweet out to advertisers on Thursday that Twitter cannot become a ‘free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.’ But ultimately Mr. Musk will be judged by his actions, not his words.”
