Elon Musk has declared a legal and culture war on Media Matters with a promised “thermonuclear lawsuit” after the media watchdog reported that major advertisers were unwittingly running ads next to antisemitic content on his social media platform.

This bombshell investigation comes as a direct response to the exodus of heavyweight advertisers like IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Comcast. These advertisers have taken a step back from the platform, presumably to avoid the reputational fallout of being associated with hate speech.

Musk’s aggressive stance is his typical child-like moronic approach to crisis management, where he seems to prefer confrontation to contrition, and litigation over dialogue. Otherwise, known as a “loser”, in legal terminology. Musk’s social media platform, once a relevant digital town square, is now facing a crisis with the influx of hate speech, leading to a crippling loss of revenue. The Emerald Edgelord’s strategy to introduce a paid premium system to combat bots has done little to reassure advertisers or stem the tide of declining user numbers. In my personal experience, the bots are more aggressive and have larger numbers in the last year.

The situation with racism and anti-Semitism on Xitter has escalated to the point where even the White House has weighed in, condemning Musk’s own controversial tweet as an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.” When the US president comments on social media, the situation has really changed. Musk’s actions not only affect his company’s bottom line, but also ripple through American society.

At the heart of this crap is the tension between free speech and responsible platform management. Musk’s belief that his platform prioritizes the public’s right to free speech above all else, including profit, is entirely fictional.

Elon Musk isn’t concerned with free speech. He cares only for attention and to be thought of as a business genius, which he is not. The free speech angle is his way of attracting attention by co-opting something people care about.

— Me, knower of crazy people

Free speech is a cornerstone of democratic society, but it is not absolute, and it does not extend to hate speech that incites violence or discrimination. And now, with the fire hose of antisemitic content flooding onto Xitter, big money is being made by the bad guys who are posting this stuff, and advertisers are saying, fuck this, we out.

Media Matters had a great idea and executed it perfectly. Musk responded, and here’s a translated version of X Corp’s tone-deaf blog post:

To manipulate inform the public and advertisers, Media Matters created an alternate account and curated the followed posts and observed advertising appearing on the account’s timeline to misinform inform advertisers WTF is going on with their ads enriching hate speech. These contrived experiences simple experiments could be applied to any platform. Once they curated their feed followed accounts, they repeatedly refreshed their timelines to find a rare instance of hate speech ads serving next to the content they chose to follow. Our logs investigation (comprised of privacy violations) indicate that they forced a scenario resulting in 13 times proved advertisements the number of ads served compared to the median ads served to an X user appeared under xenophobic, racist X accounts.

Musk is losing the plot. He’s finally getting criticism from inside his circles. All this attention-grabbing bullshit led Tesla shareholder and long-time supporter, Ross Gerber, to declare that Musk has effectively “stepped aside” from his role at Tesla.

Gerber, who is the president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management and holds a substantial stake in Tesla, is fed-up-to-here with Musk’s behavior. He believes Musk is actively undermining Tesla’s valuation, and Gerber’s frustration is echoed by his clients who are now demanding to sell their shares, which Gerber admits he has never seen before.

The fallout from Musk’s comments is not just a matter of public relations; it is what happens when billionaires exist. When influential figures with unlimited cash like Musk engage in or support hate speech, it sends a message to the fascist chuds they are acceptable in society, and it fully emboldens others to openly broadcast their racism.

And that is the actual truth.