Elon Musk And The Gates of Bad-Faith Hell

It was so terribly easy to predict if one understands the mindset of the bad-faith free speech warrior, the brave First Amendment enjoyer who pretends all speech is equally good and bad because that's the only way to funnel hateful ideology into the cultural and political mainstream.

When Elon Musk accidentally spent $50 billion to buy Twitter two years ago, I wrote that the transaction completed our descent into the hottest depths of bad-faith hell. Musk being in charge of the digital town square would unleash an army of bad actors who had largely been barred from the square under previous ownership. Musk had complained for years that far-right speech had been unfairly squelched across the internet, even as mass shooters cited hate-infested far-right talking points in their manifestos, and even as lawmakers took cues from a constituency that had been bombarded by hateful, discriminatory propaganda.

This kind of speech – the kind that seeks to intimidate and threaten its opponents, including, naturally, historically marginalized groups – must be free to flow, Elon decided. And so it was. Today, folks openly touting race science and some of the ugliest politics of the 20th century run rampant in Elon's town square, the way he intended when he bought the thing as an epic joke.

(This is where I sheepishly remind you that I can no longer post Bad Faith Times links to the X platform without vicious and sometimes frightening backlash. This has slowed BFT's growth, you as might imagine. I would greatly appreciate any support you can offer, and I've made a $3 support level for those who can't do the $5 level).

It's a terrifying development for anyone and everyone hoping to live or raise a family in a somewhat fair and decent society free of the horrors of fascist thought run amok. Having no limitations on the spread of hate is a formula for cultural decay: We already see it in the online posts of a sitting U.S. senator urging people to "take matters into your own hands" to stop their political opponents. Musk's frequent interactions with fascist X accounts suggests he sees them as part of a legitimate free speech ecosystem. That, of course, is the kindest interpretation.

NBC New reported this week on the extent to which neo-nazi accounts have proliferated and garnered enormous followings on Elon Musk's social media site.

The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece. X’s policies ban glorifying violence — a broad prohibition that X has sometimes used to take down pro-Nazi content and accounts. The rules also ban “praising violent entities” and say the platform will apply labels to hate imagery like swastikas. But NBC News found that X does not appear to be enforcing those policies consistently. ... One such account, using the name The Impartial Truth, posts recycled and remixed Nazi propaganda content, and its X profile links out to a donation site. 

The acceptance of nazi-adoring social media users has effects that reach far beyond the bounds of online. It influences Real Life, and serves as a valuable recruiting tool for some of the most dangerous groups in the US.

“For those who are already driven by hate, it is a big warm hug,” Patrick Riccards, executive director of Life After Hate, an organization that helps people disengage from extremist groups, told NBC News. “They’re wanting to find individuals to take physical action when the time comes."

How committed is Musk to protecting the most vile forms of speech? When X officials asked NBC News for examples of pro-nazi posts, the outlet provided them and the social media company did not remove them.

The transformation of Twitter into a right-wing cesspool is evident with every post, every reply, every interaction. On Wednesday I posted about former Patriots head coach Bill Belichick getting rejected by the Atlanta Falcons after Belichick had assumed he had the job in the proverbial bag. The Falcons hired Raheem Morris, who once was the Bucs' head coach. Morris, in case you're not football-obsessed like many of my readers, is black. My posts about Morris landing the Atlanta gig over Belichick (who is white) prompted a string of replies saying, essentially, that Morris was a so-called DEI hire – a smear used by white supremacists who dismiss people of color in prominent positions as inherently unqualified and undeserving.

It didn't stop there. In an act of pure self hatred, I clicked through to several profiles of people who had ripped the Falcons' decision to go with Morris over Belichick. I was greeted with a hodgepodge of far-right filth: Memes suggesting white European invaders had done Africans a favor by enslaving them; reposts from accounts promoting the Great Replacement Theory, another favorite of mass shooters; and posts calling for the militarization of the southern border, among other nauseating shit.

Every time I post an innocuous joke about Aaron Rodgers and his harebrained conspiracy theories, I'm met with far-right invective the likes of which I never saw on the pre-Musk Twitter. If I dare post about vaccines, I am immediately swamped by crypto bros furious that I would buy into the Big Lie that vaccines actually work. The tenor is different now. The language is different. These folks have been let off the leash by Musk's fake free speech crusade. They have heard his dogwhistle and have acted accordingly.

I don't have an immediate solution to this vexing problem of weaponizing free speech because, well, I don't have billions of dollars. I would like to pretend folks could stage a mass exodus of Musk's X platform – perhaps for a site where fascist nonsense is not tolerated, like BlueSky (where I post frequently) – but that's almost silly considering the career investment people have put into growing their Twitter/X audiences over the past decade.

I would suggest Democratic lawmakers and campaigns pay closer attention to this intentional proliferation of hate, because without shutting off this spigot of shit, we will never be able to cleanse the discourse. And in a murky discourse, the nastiest, most determined bad-faith actors win.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @cdcarter13.bsky.social and on Threads and X at @CDCarter13.