It appears to be like like Elon Musk‘s unfold of politically charged conspiracy theories on X, the platform previously often called Twitter, has lastly landed him in some authorized bother.
On Monday, legal professional Mark Bankston of the legislation agency Farrar & Ball introduced on Musk’s personal social media platform that he has filed a lawsuit in opposition to Musk on behalf of Ben Brody, a 22-year-old current faculty graduate from California.
In June, Musk had helped unfold wild conspiracy theories falsely accusing Brody of being a “fed” or federal agent who was supposedly posing as a neo-Nazi, resulting in the doxxing and harassment of the younger man and his household.
As first reported by The Huffington Post, Brody is in search of greater than $1 million in damages. Brody’s legal professional, Bankston, is probably going finest identified for profitable $45 million in damages for Sandy Hook dad and mom in opposition to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who had unfold false claims that the 2012 faculty capturing that left 26 useless was a hoax.
Musk’s feedback have been associated to a viral video posted on-line that confirmed a road struggle between the far-right group Proud Boys and a neo-Nazi group often called Rose City Nationalists. During the brawl, one of many neo-Nazis was unmasked, resulting in a web-based hunt for the identification of the person.
Musk based mostly his evaluation that the unmasked neo-Nazi was Brody based mostly on claims by different conspiratorial and right-wing accounts that Musk often interacts with. These claims appeared totally based mostly on opinions from people who discovered Brody’s Instagram and thought he appeared just like the neo-Nazi unmasked within the video. The lawsuit particularly names X customers like Matt Wallace, a crypto promoter and conspiracy theorist, and Zero Hedge, a conspiratorial web site, as accounts that Musk interacted with to disseminate the false claims about Brody.
Right-wing customers of then-Twitter and different Musk followers proceeded to unfold these conspiracies, resulting in Brody and his household being doxxed and harassed, and finally forcing Brody and his household to flee their dwelling.
Brody, who additionally occurs to be Jewish, was not even within the state of Oregon the place the brawl between the Proud Boys and the neo-Nazi group had occurred on the time. Brody, his mates, and others on Twitter tried to refute the claims from Musk and others by posting safety digital camera footage and receipts inserting Brody in a restaurant in California on the time the brawl video was taken. Unfortunately, their makes an attempt have been fruitless because the false claims and harassment in opposition to Brody continued.
In a thread on X, Bankston broke down precisely what Musk stated about Brody that resulted within the lawsuit. While Musk had continued to push right-wing narratives in regards to the brawl, in keeping with Bankston, he defamed Brody when he formally referred to the school grad.
“Looks like one is a university scholar (who desires to affix the government) and one other is possibly an Antifa member, however a possible false flag scenario,” Musk tweeted in response to a Zero Hedge publish in regards to the unmasked particular person. In his publish, Musk is referring to Brody and the right-wing conspiracy that the neo-Nazi group was made up of federal brokers.
The lawsuit additionally references Musk’s propensity to unfold lies, like when he accused British cave diver Vernon Unsworth of being a “pedo man,” and conspiracy theories, such because the time he shared homophobic allegations within the aftermath of the house assault in opposition to U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
This lawsuit comes simply days after Musk’s handpicked CEO for X, Linda Yaccarino, was interviewed at a tech convention that has been extensively panned by the business as being a catastrophe. During the interview, Yaccarino additionally shared new analytics for the platform that reveals that X has misplaced tens of millions of every day lively customers since Musk acquired the corporate final 12 months.
