Musk defames the ADL

If ever there was a case to be made against the wild excesses of social media, consider Elon Musk’s latest attack on one of the most venerable civil rights organizations in America, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, last week, Musk “liked a tweet by an Irish white supremacist calling on the platform to #BanTheADL” and then “asked users whether he should put such a ban to a poll.” The hashtag been used increasingly by white nationalists and raging antisemites. On September 4th, he threatened to sue the ADL for his own company’s revenue losses.

For the uninformed, the Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 to “stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” The mission was made clear in the trial that same year of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old female employee in Georgia. Frank’s trial is a case study in antisemitism advanced and accelerated under the cloak of law. When the governor reduced Frank’s death sentence to life in prison, a hate-filled mob, including many paragons of the community, dragged Frank from his prison cell and lynched him.

For over a hundred years, the ADL has commanded the respect of Republicans and Democrats, the left and the right, Jews and gentiles, leaders foreign and domestic. It hasn’t confined itself solely to combatting antisemitism, but has fought for civil rights across the board. The organization stood with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s. It helped to mobilize support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In the 1980s, it worked with the Japanese and Asian and Pacific American communities to highlight Japanese relocation and incarceration in internment camps during World War II.