Elon Musk is being sued over amplifying posts that falsely identified a young Jewish man as a neo-Nazi on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which Musk owns. USA TODAY has a deep dive investigation into a website that has become the go-to resource for book banning attempts. And a new report examined Venmo records to find that Oath Keepers kept paying dues for months after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
It’s the week in extremism.
An activist attorney filed a lawsuit against the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, this week, claiming Musk defamed a young graduate by suggesting the man was a neo-Nazi who engaged in a fight with another right wing extremist in Portland earlier this year.
- The lawsuit, filed in Texas on Monday, accuses Musk of amplifying tweets and restating claims suggesting that 22-year old Ben Brody, who is Jewish, was involved in a brawl between two right wing extremist groups in downtown Portland in June.
- The lawsuit cites Musk’s “serial pattern of slander” and his “pattern of reckless false statements, promotion of disinformation, and denial of neo-Nazi violence.” It claims Musk libeled Brody by engaging with anonymous tweets claiming Brody was a left-wing activist or federal agent masquerading as a right-wing protester.
- The tweets are hardly Musk’s first engagement with right-wing conspiracy theories, and the lawsuit lays out the billionaire’s recent history, including doubting the Allen, Texas, mass shooter’s ties to neo-Nazism.
- The lawyer who filed the suit, Mark Bankston, successfully sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones earlier this year on behalf of parents of children who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, whom Jones defamed.
