The head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) knocked outgoing Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday for comparing Democratic megadonor George Soros to the “Jewish supervillain” Magneto.
Musk tweeted Monday that “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” referring to the primary adversary in Marvel’s X-Men comics who is also portrayed to be a Holocaust survivor.
“You assume they are good intentions. They are not,” Musk later added of Soros in response to a reply from another user. “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
ADL Director and CEO Jonathan Greenblatt noted Tuesday that Soros is often “held up by the far-right, using antisemitic tropes, as the source of the world’s problems.”
“To see @ElonMusk, regardless of his intent, feed this segment — comparing him to a Jewish supervillain, claiming Soros ‘hates humanity’ — is not just distressing, it’s dangerous: it will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result,” Greenblatt added in a tweet.
Soros has been a frequent target of the right, most recently due to his connection with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D).
Bragg, who brought criminal charges against former President Trump over a 2016 hush money payment, received campaign contributions from a political action committee that Soros donated to in 2021. However, Soros never directly funded the Manhattan district attorney, according to The Washington Post.