Elon Musk and the ADL: A Complete Timeline
The relationship between Elon Musk and the Anti-Defamation League is usually described as a feud. It is stranger than that.
He amplified a campaign to ban the organisation from X and threatened to sue it. He attacked it while endorsing an antisemitic post. Then, at the moment of his greatest exposure on this subject, the ADL publicly defended him — and was heavily criticised by Jewish commentators for doing so. Eight months later he called it a hate group.
2023: #BanTheADL
The sequence began with an attempted reconciliation. In late August 2023, X’s chief executive Linda Yaccarino met ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt to repair relations between the platform and the organisation, which had criticised X’s handling of hate speech since Musk’s acquisition.
Days later, the far-right Irish activist Keith O’Brien, who posts as Keith Woods, launched a #BanTheADL campaign. Musk amplified it, and floated running a poll on whether to remove the ADL from the platform. He later said he was pro free speech but against antisemitism of any kind.
He then blamed the organisation for X’s commercial position, saying advertising revenue was down 60% and that the ADL appeared responsible for most of the loss. On 4 September he announced his intention to sue:
“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!”
Greenblatt’s response, the following evening, described Musk as engaging with a toxic antisemitic campaign on his own platform while contemplating what he called a frivolous lawsuit:
Jonathan Greenblatt“this behavior is not just alarming nor reckless. It is flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible.”
Criticism was not confined to the ADL’s usual allies. Adam Milstein, a prominent Jewish Republican donor, objected to Musk blaming Jews for antisemitism. Other Jewish users on the platform sided with Musk, saying the ADL did not speak for them — a genuine division within American Jewish opinion that predates this episode and continues.
November 2023
In the same thread in which he endorsed a post about Jewish communities pushing hatred against white people, Musk turned again to the organisation, writing that the ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel, and accusing it of promoting what he called de facto anti-white racism.
That episode is documented in full on our page: What Elon Musk Actually Posted in November 2023.
January 2025: the ADL defends him
On 20 January 2025, at an inauguration event at Capital One Arena in Washington, Musk made a raised-arm gesture that was widely compared in international media to a Nazi salute. He rejected that characterisation. The dispute over what the gesture was has never been resolved and this site does not attempt to resolve it.
What is not in dispute is how the ADL responded. It posted that the gesture appeared to be awkward enthusiasm rather than a Nazi salute, that it appreciated people were on edge, and that all sides should extend each other some grace and the benefit of the doubt.
Anti-Defamation League“It seems that @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.”
Musk replied with a brief thank you and a crying-laughing emoji.
The backlash was immediate and came substantially from within the Jewish community and from the ADL’s own constituency. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the organisation had lost its standing as a reputable source. The journalist Mehdi Hasan objected publicly. One Jewish critic, descended from Holocaust survivors, told Al Jazeera he knew a Nazi salute when he saw one and called the ADL’s defence obscene.
Musk responded to Ocasio-Cortez by saying she had lost her marbles and was fully unhinged.
September 2025: hate group
The rapprochement did not hold. In late September 2025 Musk objected that Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk, was listed on the ADL’s website as an extremist group. On 27 September he posted that the ADL needed to change this immediately. He went on to describe the organisation as a hate group that hates Christians.
Greenblatt replied that the suggestion the ADL is anti-Christian is offensive and wrong, noting that many of its staff and supporters are Christian. The ADL turned off replies to its posts on the subject.
Others amplified the attack. Representative Anna Paulina Luna accused the organisation of running a targeted hate campaign against Christians. The activist Laura Loomer said it should be designated a domestic terror organisation.
The full sequence
On the January 2025 gesture
This site records that a gesture was made, that it was widely compared to a Nazi salute in international reporting, that Musk rejected that comparison, that the ADL publicly rejected it as well, and that many others — including Jewish commentators and elected officials — disagreed with the ADL.
We do not characterise the gesture ourselves. It is a physical movement lasting a fraction of a second, its meaning is contested by people acting in good faith on both sides, and no amount of assertion here would settle it. Everything documented on this site rests on words that can be quoted and dated. The gesture is not that, and we treat it accordingly.
Outstanding on this page
Sources conflict on whether Musk’s threatened defamation claim was ever actually filed. Contemporaneous reporting in September 2023 consistently describes a stated intention to sue. At least one later account states that he filed. We have found no record of a filed proceeding and have therefore described it as a threat, while recording the discrepancy here rather than resolving it silently.
None of the posts on this page have been archived by us. The ADL’s January 2025 statement and Greenblatt’s replies should be captured before they can be edited or removed.
Sources
- ADL blasts Elon Musk’s ‘profoundly disturbing’ behavior amid lawsuit threatsThe Daily Beast · 5 September 2023
- ADL CEO responds to Elon Musk’s lawsuit threatDeadline · 6 September 2023 · Greenblatt on CNN
- Musk threatens ADL lawsuit over advertising revenueFortune · 5 September 2023 · #BanTheADL origin, Milstein criticism
- ADL faces backlash for defending Elon Musk’s raised-arm gestureAl Jazeera · 22 January 2025
- Musk salute sparks uproar as ADL urges benefit of the doubtMalay Mail · 21 January 2025 · ADL statement text, AOC response
- The ADL defended Elon Musk’s ‘awkward gesture.’ Now he calls it a hate groupGizmodo · 29 September 2025
- Musk attacks ADL, calling it a ‘hate group’ that ‘hates Christians’The Times of Israel · 30 September 2025
- X CEO Elon Musk lashes out against ADLThe Jerusalem Post · 30 September 2025 · Greenblatt response
This article follows the standards set out in How This Site Sources Its Claims. If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, please use our corrections policy and right of reply. Corrections are published, dated and logged.