This will take some explaining.

Chapter I: The inarticulate tweet.

On November 15, someone called “The Artist Formerly Known as Eric” on X put up the tweet above. It is, like so many tweets, poorly written and inarticulate, because it was probably composed in about 5 second. When it became famous, and I read it for the first time, I finally concluded that the comment was a shot across the bow of the segment of the liberal Jewish community which had closely allied itself with with the full panoply of minority victim-mongerers, particularly the black activists who have morphed from the days of the civil rights marches into anti-white bigots. These, as we have seen in the past two months, allied themselves with the Palestinians and their terrorist supporters while placing Jews in the roles of white oppressors. His message, then, though distorted by the hyperbolic “don’t give a shit” rhetoric, was “you should have seen this coming” and “your great pals and allies have turned on you, and that’s your thanks for supporting Black Lives Matter and the rest.”

But who knows? It is, as I say, a badly conceived tweet. However, as I read it, his general point has validity. The black community has always contained an excessive number of anti-Semites who do regard the Jews as “white” (as they are), and the support the civil rights movement has received from the Jewish community didn’t substantially change that animus. Thus Black Lives Matters chapters have been announcing their support for Hamas.

My conclusion: It was not an anti-Semitic tweet, just a sloppy one. Eric was clearer in a follow-up tweet, in which he wrote, “I support Jewish people’s right to self defense literally and ideologically. But I also, as a white person, have to acknowledge that it’s been depressing to see Jewish communities not take a stronger stance against anti white dialecticism that is basically just repurposed antisemitism.”

Chapter 2: Musk endorses it.

This is the kind of gaffe that leads me to warn my ethics seminar attendees to keep away from “X.” It’s too easy to write something on impulse and suddenly have it boomerang on you with severe consequences. I can picture Musk, who clearly has some ADD to cope with as the down-side of his creativity and brilliance, seeing this (Why is the richest man in the world following The Artist Formally Known as Eric?), letting confirmation bias dictate his interpretation of it without considering how such a sloppy tweet could be weaponized against him, and dashing off a tweet telling Eric that he had uttered “the absolute truth.”

Chapter 3. The Big Lie

The Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media) hate Musk because he has fought back against the censors and partisan bullies who turned the social media platforms, much of journalism and Big Tech into one-way propaganda machines for progressive policies, cant and narratives. Thus they predictably (yes, Musk should have predicted it when he handed them a metaphorical stick to beat him with) declared Musk an anti-Semite, linked him to white supremacy (he was endorsing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, wasn’t he?) and began beating the drums for a boycott of X, which allows too much conservative commentary and wouldn’t have banned today the equivalent of the Hunter Biden laptop story as the old, progressive-friendly Twitter did. The Axis wants “X” crippled or dead before the 2024 election gets too near. Virtually every news source has referred to Musk sending out an “anti-Semitic tweet.” That’s a lie.

Chapter 4. It’s “Jim Crow on Steroids” all over again.

Exactly like so many corporations did when the Axis, with Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden leading them, promoted a boycott of Georgia for its new voting laws because they were “racist” (the laws are fair, necessary, and only racist if you regard photo identification requirements for boarding an airplane as similarly racist), corporations started pulling millions of dollars of advertising from Musk’s adopted baby. Corporations have allowed themselves to become dupes, useful idiots and anti-free speech enforcers as well as tools of extremists on the Left (See: Bud Light, Target, Disney, et al.). Their knee-jerked reaction to Musk’s snap tweet and subsequent dancing to the tune whistled by progressive enemies of free speech was one more horrific example of their threat to our democracy. As with Major League Baseball beclowning itself by pulling the All-Star Game out of Atlanta because Abrams cried “Wolf!,” many of the boycotting companies probably never looked at what Musk’s “anti-Semitic” tweet was. It was enough that the Axis said it was anti-Semitic, and that enough customers might think it was.

Despicable.

Chapter 5. Musk refuses to grovel

Good for him.

The news media misinformed readers and listeners that he had “apologized,” which is a false characterization. At the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York, Musk said that he was “sorry” he posted it, which is not an apology. He also characterized his careless endorsement of an ambiguous and inflammatory tweet as “foolish” “and might be “literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” Both assessments are true, but Musk also said he had tried to “clarify six ways from Sunday,” that it “should be obvious that in fact far from being antisemitic, I’m in fact philosemitic.”

Then he had a few well-chosen words for the boycotting advertisers:

“I don’t want them to advertise. If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself.” Is that clear? Hey Bob (Iger, Chairman of Disney), if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel.”

A better, more ethical, more appropriate use of the expletive “fuck” may never have been uttered. That might have been the Ethical Quote of the Month. Or the Year.

Musk also said, “Hate away…There’s a real weakness to wanting to be liked.” It must be noted that those in a position to thrive without popularity cam make that statement with deceptive abandon.

Chapter 6. Gutfeld

After playing video clips of Musk’s performance, late-night Fox News talk show host Greg Gutfeld drew gasps in the studio when he said last night,

“The fact is, Musk may be the last man standing between real freedom of speech and the suffocating block of this censorship industrial complex, which is made up of government, media, and tech forces. He realizes that advertisers have no spine and can be easily cowed by special interest groups in cahoots with political allies. If you don’t believe me, I’ve got two words for you: Tucker Carlson.”

Everything Gutfeld said is correct, except the, perhaps,the last two words. Maybe Fox News did fire Carlson because of pressure from advertisers, which were indeed stampeded by the pundits progressive foes. Gutfeld works there; he has information I don’t. If Fox News was submitting to partisan censorship pressure, that was cowardly and wrong, but firing Carlson, a smug, reckless and irresponsible demagogue, was still the right thing to do, and should have been done long ago.