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Karen Spilka leaves X amid Musk’s antisemitic controversies

“With Elon Musk’s endorsement of a monstrous and dangerous antisemitic lie, I can no longer justify using the X platform for any reason."

Nicolaus Czarnecki/Pool
Senate President Karen Spilka at a State House event in 2021.

Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka announced her departure from Elon Musk’s X on Tuesday, saying the social media platform puts religious freedom at risk.

Both Spilka and the Massachusetts Senate’s official account have now been deleted from X, formerly known as Twitter, she said in a statement.

“Elon Musk has long promoted and enabled hateful speech and it is clear that he is not committed to hosting a platform that builds productive, respectful dialogue,” Spilka wrote. “With Elon Musk’s endorsement of a monstrous and dangerous antisemitic lie, I can no longer justify using the X platform for any reason.”

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Last week, there was a renewed push for advertisers and others to leave X in protest of Musk seeming to endorse the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are attempting to fill western countries with non-white people to replace the white population.

An X user wrote on Nov. 15 that “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” He then referred to “western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”

Musk replied: “You have said the actual truth.”

Spika said this newest move from Musk was the latest in a series of unacceptable decisions.

She went on to ask her colleagues and constituents to follow her in departing the platform, while linking to her other social media accounts on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

“I hope you will follow me, and the Senate, on these platforms, and join us in leaving X,” she wrote.

Other accusations of antisemitism from X

Left-wing advocacy group Media Matters released a report last week that showed posts supporting Adolf Hitler and Nazism appeared on X next to advertisements from major companies like Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity. 

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Their report spurred Apple, IBM, and Walt Disney, among other companies, to pause advertising with X, The New York Times reported.

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