Elon Musk's new lawsuit against a media watchdog has been largely written off by legal experts as a clumsy attempt to bully a critic into silence, but if the complaint isn't dismissed in court it could open the X boss and his company up to potentially ruinous scrutiny.
The suit filed in federal court in Texas accuses Media Matters for America of creating an X account following only fringe content and refreshing the website over and over until it generated ads for major companies juxtaposed with pro-Nazi content, but the watchdog's president Angelo Carusone said they would probably pursue discovery if a judge doesn't dismiss the case first, reported the Washington Post.
"The lawsuit might get dismissed," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent. "But if not, Carusone said, Media Matters would probably pursue discovery, seeking to learn whether Musk and X executives 'knew internally' that these juxtapositions were happening, what they communicated with advertisers about this, and how Musk internally discussed procedures for handling extremist content."
Musk's suit doesn't deny the juxtapositions occur but claims they're “extraordinarily rare" and were deliberately engineered to harm X and drive off advertisers, but Carusone said his organization would seek evidence related to the social network owner's viewpoints on Jews and other minorities.
"Discovery would also seek communications about Musk’s public antisemitism, Carusone said," Sargent wrote. "Musk recently endorsed a posting that some Jewish communities are pushing 'hatred against whites,' resulting in 'hordes of minorities flooding' into Western countries — classic white genocide theory. Carusone noted that discovery could establish whether Musk’s 'seeming endorsement of the white genocide worldview' was a major reason for 'advertisers to reassess.'"
The X lawsuit has been endorsed by a number of Republicans, including Mike Davis, who's promoting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, and Sargent wrote that their eagerness to punish the liberal-leaning media watchdog with lawsuits or even jail point to the authoritarian direction the GOP is heading.
"When Republicans vow to use state power against critics of Musk, they aren’t merely promising to shield this billionaire’s business interests from his own expressions of antisemitism," Sargent wrote. "They’d also wield state power to corruptly protect someone who is marshaling his immense power over our information ecosystem to privilege and elevate that worldview."
"MAGA Republicans are now openly calling for the next GOP presidency to be staffed with lawyers willing to prosecute political opponents across the board," he added. "If you wonder what a future Musk-MAGA alliance might look like, this saga provides an unsettling glimpse."
