By Jon Sutz
June 30, 2024
Continued from The ADL’s fraudulent war against Elon Musk & Twitter, Part 1: The Farrakhan Factor
Contents
Click the number to go to that section.
(1) The ADL was born of a need to help stand up against people and organizations that incite hatred against Jews — and later, Israel
(2) 2015-on: The ADL turns to the hard left — and begins systematically betraying its stated mandate, and the purpose for which it seeks financial donations
(3) November 4, 2022: The ADL declared war on Elon Musk — eight days after he took control of the site
(1) The ADL was born of a need to help stand up against people and organizations that incite hatred against Jews — and later, Israel
Here is a documentary, narrated by James Earl Jones, celebrating the ADL’s first hundred years:
The ADL served its purpose reasonably well, and when it came to the lone Jewish nation, Israel, it was delivered rigid, proud resistance against fevered lies and raw incitement, cooked up in the brains of demented anti-Semites.
Today, the ADL claims its primary mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people,” and that “for more than 100 years, ADL has been committed to fighting antisemitism and ensuring the security of the Jewish community” (source).
These claims, plus the fact that hatred of, and hate crimes against Jews in America and the West are skyrocketing, serve as the pretext upon which the ADL collects more than $76 million a year in donations. Learn more here.
June 26, 2024 ADL fundraising email.
(2) 2015-on: The ADL turns to the hard left — and begins systematically betraying its stated mandate, and the purpose for which it seeks financial donations
The ADL began shifting to the left during President Obama’s second term. This turn climaxed with the appointment, in 2015, of former Obama adviser Jonathan Greenblatt to become its new CEO.
Since then, the ADL has become the single greatest impediment to:
- Broad-scale public awareness of the (actual) dominant threats to Jews and Israel
- The development of knowledge tools and activism strategies to expose and combat these threats, those who incite them, and those who enable them
Here are a few reports that provide substantive documentation to support this contention — including one that I wrote, the earliest iteration of “The ADL Exposed” concept:
No More ADL: The organization now does more harm than good – by Liel Leibovitz, Tablet Magazine, November 7, 2022
The ADL Has Lost Its Way. Elon Musk Is Right to Stand Up to Its Censorship – by Ron Coleman, Newsweek, September 5, 2023
The Shame of the Anti-Defamation League – by Seth Mandel, Commentary Magazine, November 2018
The real lesson of 9/11 isn’t a story about Islamophobia (The ADL’s apology for its former director’s opposition to a Ground Zero mosque is one more way the anniversary is being used to change the narrative about the attack), by Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS News, September 10, 2021
The ADL Has Corrupted Its Mission and Betrayed the Jewish Community, by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, Newsweek, July 28, 2022
The ADL Exposed 1: Ignoring the anti-Semitic murder of an American college professor – Jon Sutz, Jon’s Essentialia, December 14, 2022
Replace American Jewish Communal Leadership: Look around at the disarray and the betrayal of Jews by alleged friends and allies, and you’ll see a bitter truth: Our leadership has gone bad, by Alana Newhouse, Tablet, November 08, 2023
After the ADL gets caught spreading woke ideology, Greenblatt must go – by Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS News, September 7, 2022
The ADL betrays history and the people it pledges to protect; It has formed an alliance with an antisemitic leader whose incendiary rhetoric against Jews helped lead to the worst pogrom in U.S. history– by Ezra Ben-Pesach, JNS News, September 12, 2023
The ADL Exposed 1: Ignoring the anti-Semitic murder of an American college professor – Jon Sutz, Jon’s Essentialia, December 14, 2022
in the late fall of 2022, however, the ADL broke the last strand of the tether that required it to focus on defending Jews and Israel, and instead, made a decision that could well lead to its financial and reputational destruction:
It declared war on the world’s richest man — over allegations that were either false, or wildly decontextualized.
(3) November 4, 2022: The ADL declared war on Elon Musk — eight days after he took control of the site
On November 4, 2022, eight days after Elon Musk took control of Twitter, the ADL publicly declared war against the site — and effectively, him — based on what it claimed were its “profound concern about antisemitism and hate on the platform” — and, for the first time ever, called for advertisers to boycott the site:
The ADL further alleged that this situation was caused by Musk himself — for “gutting staff that supported combating antisemitism and hate.” On this basis, the ADL openly called for advertisers to “stop hate for profit,” and “stop toxic Twitter” by stopping their advertising on the platform “globally”:
Hours after the ADL launched its war, however, Twitter’s (Jewish) Director of Trust and Safety publicly rebutted its central allegation, claiming “our core moderation capabilities remain in place.” One week later, on November 11, 2022, he published an editorial in The NY Times, expanding:
“Twitter [is] actually safer under Mr. Musk than it was before,” and that “[Musk] empowered my team to move more aggressively to remove hate speech across the platform — censoring more content, not less. Our actions worked.”
Despite this, the ADL neither retracted its allegations, nor apologized to Twitter/Musk, or stopped the war it instigated. To the contrary, one week later, on November 18, the ADL posted a Tweet in which it proclaimed itself “the global leader in combating antisemitism, countering extremism and battling bigotry”:
Many people and organizations — including the mainstream media, major advertisers and governmental agencies — perceive of the ADL based on what it claims to be: the gold standard in standing up for Jews. They believe this because they’ve never seen or heard anyone challenge it on a substantive and evidence-driven manner. As such, whatever the ADL says is, by default, assumed to be honest and verifiable, by a vast swath of America and the Western world.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt
Because of this unchallenged prestige, the ADL’s incendiary allegations against Twitter and Musk had widespread perceived legitimacy from the moment they were published. They quickly metastasized throughout our culture, and were taken seriously by advertisers and ad industry websites, without substantive criticism or analysis.
On September 4, 2023, however — ten months to the day after the ADL instigated its war against Twitter — Musk publicly announced his intent to sue the nonprofit, to (a) recover the staggering financial losses he claimed he’s suffered as a result, and (b) restore his site’s reputation. In a series of Tweets, Musk declared:
- “To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” (source)
- “Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, [the] ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss” (source)
- Twitter’s advertising revenue was down 60%, and it had lost approximately half* of its value, which he estimated at $22 billion (source)
[Update, October 4, 2023: Exactly one month after Musk’s announcement of his intent to sue the ADL, it falsely denied it organized an advertiser boycott of Twitter.]
The above facts are commonly known among those who’ve closely followed this conflict.
The nine facts in the next section of this report, however, reveal the fraudulent nature of the war the ADL instigated against Musk, and Twitter.
Continue to:
Previously:
Preface: A concept-framing thought experiment
See the master directory and descriptions of all of supporting documentation resource pages here.
This report is the first in a series.