When Elon Musk gave two Nazi-style salutes the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) came to the billionaire’s defense, saying it was just an “awkward gesture.” But Musk clearly doesn’t have the same kind of affection for the ADL.
“The ADL hates Christians, therefore it is is a hate group,” Musk wrote in a tweet Sunday.
The ADL hates Christians, therefore it is is a hate group — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 28, 2025
The billionaire Tesla CEO was responding to a tweet from an account called @iamyesyouareno, which has about half a million followers. The pseudonymous account wrote, “The ADL considers Christianity a hateful terrorist extremist belief. You don’t hate the ADL enough.”
Christian Identity (notice the capitalization of the I in Identity) is an extremist ideology that believes Jews are the Satanic offspring of the biblical Eve and the Serpent from the Garden of Eden. All of that is explained in the ADL’s page for Christian Identity.
It’s not clear if Musk understands the difference between Christian Identity as a specific extremist ideology and small-i Christian identity. The far-right billionaire often operates in bad faith while discussing politics on X, the platform he owns, but he also simply isn’t that smart when it comes to many topics.
Reached for comment over email, the ADL pointed Gizmodo to a statement from the ADL on the organization’s X account explaining the Christian Identity ideology. Replies for that tweet have been turned off, perhaps because X has itself become an extremist platform filled with anti-semitic hate since Musk bought the site in late 2022.
The ADL also sent Gizmodo a link to a tweet from CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who wrote that the idea ADL is anti-Christian is “offensive and wrong.”
“Many of our staff members are Christian. Many of our supporters are Christian,” Greenblatt tweeted. “We are blessed to work with many Christian brothers and sisters in the shared fight against antisemitism and all forms of hate. In contrast, the Christian Identity movement is an antisemitic, racist, and unambiguously poisonous ideology. Its values bear no resemblance to those of any mainstream Christian denomination.”
Replies to Greenblatt’s tweets have also been turned off, and the ADL didn’t specifically address Elon Musk in its tweets.
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