Silicon Valley’s Keith Rabois defends claim Musk’s X is preventing a Holocaust

This week, that position has Rabois backing X, formerly known as Twitter, amid an advertising backlash, and blasting media outlets like the New York Times for their coverage of Israel and Gaza. On Nov. 29, the so-called “PayPal Mafia” member wrote in a post on X, “Without X, we would almost surely be confronting another Holocaust now. So thank you @elonmusk.”

But since Oct. 7, when the militant group Hamas attacked Israel, the conflict and its discourse in America have captured Rabois’ attention — he regularly posts about it on X to his 354,000 followers. Advertisers have been pulling out of the platform after Musk endorsed a post that contained an antisemitic conspiracy theory. On Nov. 27, Rabois cited Musk’s trip to Israel, made amid the backlash, as the reason he’d be buying a Tesla Cybertruck. Two days later, Musk swore at advertisers during a publicly televised interview.

A Vice reporter asked Rabois to explain how X was preventing a large-scale murder of Jewish people, as well as what group or state would carry out that act, according to an article the outlet published Tuesday.

“If people were dependent on the news from outlets like the NYT BBC or the Washington Post they would be utterly ignorant of the atrocities,” Rabois responded, according to a screenshot in the article. “One of the biggest reasons Hitler was able to get away with murder (and Stalin too) was the complicity of the media. Fortunately, regular citizens can report the truth and bypass these gatekeepers who are mostly interested in serving as stenographers for the terrorists vs journalists.”

Vice, per the report, then rebutted Rabois’ claim, sending coverage from the three outlets that detailed various aspects of Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel — including a BBC interview with a survivor and a Times piece about the “trail of terror.” He responded, according to Vice, “OMG you are even worse than I assumed. you obviously lack any knowledge of history.”

In another response, he added, “Without X, American support for Israel would be dangerously low because the atrocities would have been hidden or sanitized,” according to Vice.

Asked by SFGATE about his assertion, Rabois wrote in a Wednesday email, “There is at least one to two articles published per week in the NYT that prove my point. Canceling NYT subscriptions is now a popular meme.”

He added, “NYT employed a photographer who is a Hamas lover, hired a journalist who praised Hitler to cover the conflict and fabricated the story that the IDF bombed the Gaza hospital.”

The Times has said there is “no evidence” for “insinuations” made about one of its freelance photographers, and told Fox News Digital that a freelance videographer who had alluded positively to Hitler in multiple social media posts had followed the outlet’s steps to assuage its concerns and has since “maintained high journalistic standards.” The Times addressed the reporting around the Gaza hospital explosion in an Oct. 23 Editors’ Note, admitting that it “did not make clear that [Hamas’] claims could not immediately be verified.”

The Times, which did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment, has also been facing criticism from those who see it as covering the conflict with an Israel-biased perspective. The Associated Press reported on Nov. 9 that protestors at the Times’ headquarters called for the outlet’s editorial board to back a cease-fire.

Hear of anything happening at a Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.