Elon Musk, the Anti-Defamation League and the Right: What's Behind the Latest Controversy?

The Anti-Defamation League, one of the well-known Jewish civil rights as well as anti-extremism groups in the United States, is now the center of a conservative pressure campaign that escalated this week when FBI director Kash Patel criticized the organization and stated the agency would sever relations with the organization.

Patel's announcement came after several days of attacks by conservative commentators and the X owner targeting the ADL over its online database on hate groups, which included a page on deceased far-right pundit the activist's Turning Point USA and the organization’s connections to far-right extremists. Earlier this week, the ADL removed its entire extremism database, a key initiative that contained over 1,000 entries on organizations and factions with connections to hateful ideologies. This action failed to quell the criticism.

The fury against the ADL this week has put the 112-year-old organization in a challenging situation. It has experienced a long period of internal turmoil along with allegations it has tried to placate the Trump administration and Musk at the expense of its core values. Currently it is under fire by many of the same conservative powers it previously supported.

What Sparked the Criticism Against ADL Begin?

Recently, a number of prominent rightwing accounts started sharing images of the ADL’s entry on TPUSA, criticizing the group for including the conservative organization in its extremism database. One of the first posts, from a so-called “Twitter troll”, accused the ADL of having “responsibility for violence”.

The organization had not classified TPUSA as an extremist organization, but instead documented events where its leadership and affiliated activists had both supported extremists or made “offensive statements”. Other conservative voices soon followed by posting about the ADL. Several shared a image of the league's entry on the Christian Identity movement – an extremist ideology that promotes a racial holy war against Jews and other minorities – to claim that the Anti-Defamation League was prejudiced towards Christians in general.

The online campaign against the ADL gained more momentum over the weekend after Elon Musk, who controls X and boasts more than 220 million users on X, began responding to comments about the non-profit and joining in on the criticism.

“This organization hates Christians, therefore it should be considered a extremist organization,” the billionaire responded on Sunday night to an X account that usually tweets xenophobic material. In another post, he suggested that the league's operations encouraged murder.

Following a period of conservative anger – that featured a Republican congresswoman – accusing the ADL of “developing a focused smear effort against Christian communities”, the organization stated this week that it had removed its complete glossary of extremism from its site – a resource it touted in 2022 as “the most comprehensive and intuitive guide on extremist speech currently accessible to the general audience”. The organization framed the decision to remove as a way to “explore fresh approaches and innovative methods to deliver our research and showcase our findings better”.

This group has weathered comparable backlash efforts from rightwing activists in the previous years, such as from an influential online figure of the influential Libs of TikTok in 2023, though these efforts did not lead to drastic deletion.

Inability to Halt the Backlash

In spite of the ADL’s seeming surrender to the billionaire and other critics, the rightwing campaign targeting the organization persisted. Within 24-hours after, the FBI director, wrote on the platform that his bureau would terminate its partnership with the ADL, accused the organization of monitoring conservative groups, and criticized ex-official a previous leader's praise of the league. The organization had long partnered with law enforcement to hold workshops on anti-Jewish bias, conduct historical lessons and share data on hate organizations.

“James Comey wrote ‘glowing reviews’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them – a organization that ran unethical operations spying on citizens,” the director posted on the platform. “That era is OVER. Our bureau will not work with political fronts masquerading as monitors”.

The ADL did not get any formal communications from the Trump administration about its ties with the FBI and is striving to learn more, the organization said in a statement on Thursday.

“ADL has strong appreciation for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and police personnel at all levels nationwide who labor diligently every single day to protect all Americans regardless of their heritage, religion, background, beliefs, political affiliation or any distinction,” the press release reads.

The campaign targeting the ADL has taken place amid a conservative movement that has aimed to punish individuals and organizations that have been critical of Kirk. Rightwing voices have claimed to have focused on many thousands of people who have allegedly criticized Kirk or applauded the activist’s death, with one group proclaiming: “We aim to change the membership of US organizations.”

Following the Anti-Defamation League removed its glossary of extremism, the billionaire and additional right wing influencers began shifting their focus to the SPLC – a different well-known human rights and anti-hate organization. He called for the the center, which also documented the organization's links to radical beliefs, an “harmful group” that “needs to be closed”.

Didn’t the ADL Support the Billionaire?

The entrepreneur's attack on the ADL recently is one aspect of a long-term, tense dynamic between the wealthy executive and the non-profit. The ADL has sometimes criticized Musk and his firms for events like his Grok chatbot promoting extremist views and calling itself “MechaHitler”; however, it also defended him when he faced claims of antisemitism.

The ADL CEO, ADL’s leader, commended Musk in 2023 for saying he would ban use of the pro-Palestinian slogan “from the river to the sea” on X. Shortly prior, however, Musk had endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the site that claimed Jewish people pushed animosity against white people. Greenblatt’s support led to an uproar inside the group, and one of its top executives stepped down after the event.

The organization defended Musk another time recently, after elected officials and advocacy organizations criticized what they called Musk’s fascist-style salutes on stage during a address following the election. The ADL posted: “It seems that Elon Musk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not an extremist signal.”

Supporting Musk yet again led to further turmoil inside the group, with media reports