On Saturday, the conservative satirical website Babylon Bee announced that it would spend a quarter of a million dollars on advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, amidst an ongoing effort by left-wing groups and major corporations to boycott the social media site.
As the Daily Caller reports, the Babylon Bee’s CEO Seth Dillon tweeted that “They attack [Elon] Musk because they hate freedom, and they hate freedom because it threatens their power to control the narrative. It really is that simple.” Dillon said that the boycott effort, which is ostensibly in response to claims of anti-Semitism, was really being carried out due to Musk being guilty of “the crime of letting free people speak.”
“Today I’m pledging $250,000 toward a new ad campaign on X,” Dillon declared. “It’s not a lot compared to the budgets of the anti-speech bullies, but it’s something.”
The anti-Semitism claims were first made on Thursday by the far-left publication Media Matters, which claimed with little evidence that advertisements by major companies, including Apple and Oracle, were appearing next to anti-Semitic content. As a result, multiple corporations, including Apple, Disney, and IBM announced their intentions to halt all advertising on the platform.
“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” the company announced in a statement.
Following the report, Musk announced that he would file a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for spreading false information that hurt the company’s business. In his post, Musk denounced Media Matters as “an evil organization.”
The accusations of anti-Semitism most likely revolve around discussions concerning the ongoing war in Israel, with users on both sides expressing their opinions on the conflict freely with little to no censorship, as part of Musk’s vow since taking over the platform to make it friendlier to freedom of speech. It is not clear which kind of anti-Semitism Media Matters was referring to, as more widespread displays of anti-Semitism such as far-left anti-Israel protests and riots have largely gone uncondemned by the publication.