Holy shit, elon musk. Holy shit.

@Gargron I'm confused. Are you saying his question implies anti-semitism, or is it that he's said something outright anti-semitic?

It's just that the question actually has an answer here in the UK with nothing to do with anti-semitism, which is a small number of media barons (notably Murdoch) that have consistently pushed pro-brexit propaganda to avoid taxes.

@stevelord You see, the correct answer to who owns the media is Murdoch, Koch Brothers, & other rich conservatives. But the way his tweet was framed it could equally mean Jewish people ("Jews control the media") and so it's the perfect dogwhistle. What matters is not his intent, now, but that (as evidences by the replies) a lot of people heard the dogwhistle.

@Gargron I find it hard to work out how the content of his tweet constitutes a dog whistle. If you and I both know it's rich conservatives, and he's being maligned by a press run by rich conservatives, where does anti-semitism come into it?

If he didn't intend to be anti-semitic, then the people drawing that conclusion are wrong. Thats their fault surely for misinterpreting him, not his.

@stevelord @Gargron Speech isn't in a vacuum, and one has a degree of responsibility for knowing their audience and how their speech will be perceived in the societal context of the speech - what the speaker meant to say is meaningless, what the audience understood is everything.

In this case, Musk - whether intentionally or unintentionally - said something that could easily be taken - and in fact *WAS* taken by both Nazis and non-Nazis - as a reference to an ages-old anti-semitic meme.

@stevelord @Gargron The *best* case here is that his tweet wasn't intended as malicious towards Jews, and that he meant to imply rich corporatists (I refuse to use "conservatives" to refer to Murdoch, Koch, et. al.), but it was negligent in that it referenced those anti-semitic memes.

The problem, as I said elsewhere in the thread, is that dogwhistling has plausible deniability, you basically have to use heuristics like frequency of dogwhistles to determine whether they're intentional.

@bhtooefr @Gargron I would argue that if you don't like what he says, the block button is your friend.

People saying that, "Trying to speak out against an oppressive super-rich class constitutes anti-semitism through indirect implication regardless of intent" are doing precisely what that super-rich oppressive class wants - fighting against themselves instead of fighting against them.

@stevelord @Gargron That's... not what's being said, though.

What's being said is that if you're going to speak out against an oppressive super-rich class, maybe be careful about how you do it, or otherwise you'll accidentally speak out against a persecuted class *instead*. Speak out against the actual oppressive super-rich class.

(And, of course, there's an undercurrent here of... Musk is kinda super-rich himself, too, which makes class arguments weaker.)

@bhtooefr @Gargron It's fair to accuse him of hypocrisy (super-rich, exploiting workers, all of a sudden interested in our protection).

But he *was* speaking out against the actual oppressive super-rich class. He was obviously speaking out against the press that maligned him, as that's where his beef lies.

Screaming anti-semitism when there's no indication of such intent is crying wolf and runs contrary to fighting anti-semitism.

Has he recently made explicitly anti-semitic tweets?