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Enough is enough.
For many years The Eye have been publishing the latest stories on X (formerly known as Twitter), however following the most recent anti-Semitic controversy to engulf its owner Elon Musk, we will now no longer do so.
Nothing either will be posted on the social media site by our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry.
Mr Musk had allegedly agreed with a post on his site that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people.
He said that the user who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was speaking “the actual truth”.
The conspiracy theory holds that Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations with non-white immigrants that will lead to a “white genocide”.
Major firms including Disney, Warner Bros and Sky News’ parent company Comcast have pulled their advertising.
Lions Gate Entertainment and Paramount Global also said on Friday they were pausing advertising, and it has been reported that Apple, the world’s largest company by market value, was pulling ads too.
IBM also halted its advertising on X/Twitter after a report by Media Matters (MM), the US media watchdog, found that its ads were placed next to pro neo-Nazi content.
These are only the latest challenges to face Mr Musk, and he has always possessed a well-known propensity to turn to the law to resolve them.
It has now emerged that Mr Musk has sued MM alleging it manufactured the report showing advertisers’ posts alongside neo-Nazi content.
In a lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Texas, it was claimed that MM “knowingly and maliciously” portrayed ads next to hateful material “as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform”.
This has come after figures released a few weeks ago, showed that the monthly US ad revenue at X/Twitter has declined at least 55 per cent year-on-year each month since he bought it.
The company has struggled to retain some advertisers since the takeover, and the Chief Executive, Linda Yaccarino, met bank lenders who helped finance Mr Musk’s acquisition to outline the company’s business plans.
The present extraordinary row is not the first time Mr Musk has been accused of being anti-Semitic either.
He has, though, always firmly denied it, and it has seemed appropriate to give Mr Musk the benefit of the doubt.
He declared: “To be super clear: I am pro free speech, but against anti-Semitism of any kind“.
Yet to Mr Musk’s critics this is pure humbug because he has described George Soros (the 93 year old Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, and a frequent victim of anti-Semitic attacks), as ‘reminding him of Magneto’ (a Marvel comic villain who is also a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust).
Mr Musk has also engaged in a very public spat with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is a high-profile organisation opposing anti-Semitism and racism.
He has threatened the ADL with legal action, blaming it for a collapse in advertising revenue, when it could, in fact, be to do with the nervousness of companies associating with him (as today).
Of course, we are under no illusions that our stance is likely to make any difference whatsoever – X/Twitter is still (even after leading firms pulled their advertising), a gigantic business.
We know that The Eye not using X/Twitter will almost certainly have no impact at all.
However it appears to be the right thing to do – and you never know, it could prove to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!
The memories of Phil’s decades long award-winning career in journalism (when he always avoided making anti-Semitic comments) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how after a 23 year career in television, Phil is disturbed by research which indicates the high-water mark may have been reached in edgy, boundary-pushing, broadcasting.
