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Slate  | To get this out of the way: I am still using the site formerly known as Twitter.

I have been posting regularly on what is now known as X since December 2011. The site brought me many things over the years—close friendships, news from around the world, a husband—but these days I mostly use it for one reason. That reason is that I am a freelance journalist, and Twitter—excuse me, X—is still the most useful place to share and get work. In other words, it helps me get paid.

But there is a certain tension in this. I regularly write on Jewish history and politics. This includes politics around antisemitism, and the threat posed by antisemitism. Increasingly, that means that in order to potentially have the professional opportunity to cover the threat of antisemitism, I use a social media platform owned by someone who, I would argue, is using the same platform to make the threat of antisemitism actively worse.

Twitter has long had its issues, but Elon Musk, since taking over late last year, has made existing problems more pronounced—for example, in allowing accounts that had been previously suspended for hate speech to come back—and has invented problems that didn’t need to exist, including by getting rid of check marks that verified identity (and also firing thousands of staff). Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, top advertisers have left the platform and ad sales have reportedly fallen dramatically.

But Musk has found someone other than himself to blame: the Anti-Defamation League, which he has now threatened to sue.

“Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” Musk posted on Monday. He added, “If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the ‘Anti-Defamation’ League.”

The Anti-Defamation League dates back to the 1910s, and per its founder, attorney Sigmund Livingston, exists “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Today, the organization tracks hate-crime laws in the United States and provides legal services, such as serving as co-counsel in a federal lawsuit against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their role in attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

That doesn’t mean the ADL is above reproach. Increasingly, it has come under criticism from the left for putting the fight against antisemitism and for civil rights second to the desire to defend Israel and Zionism. In 2021, progressive outlet Jewish Currents published a report based on interviews with former staffers that charged that “CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has repeatedly chosen to support crackdowns on criticism of Israel over protecting civil liberties, putting him in conflict with his own civil rights office.” Earlier this year, the New Republic ran a piece that took Greenblatt to task for not doing enough to tackle white supremacy, noting that his keynote speech at the ADL’s annual leadership summit this year “had virtually nothing to say about the rise of white Christian nationalism. … Instead, he focused his ire on what the ADL calls ‘hostile anti-Zionist activists groups’ like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which loudly criticize and protest against Israel on America’s college campuses, calling them ‘the photo inverse of the extreme right.’ ” Ironically, Greenblatt faced backlash last year when, on television, he said, “Elon Musk is an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator. He’s the Henry Ford of our time.”

But one does not need to think that Greenblatt is good at his job, or even to think that the ADL has any credibility as an institution, to be concerned that Musk appears to share with Henry Ford not only ownership of an automobile company, but also a penchant for blaming Jews. In looking for someone to blame for his troubles, Musk is lashing out at a Jewish institution that, at least in theory, exists to push back against antisemitism.

This encourages others to join in: Right-wing figure Charlie Kirk, who days earlier had posted that the ADL today is “a hate group that dons a religious mask to justify stoking hatred of the left’s enemies,” tweeted out a video of Greenblatt on MSNBC that Kirk said showed Greenblatt “bragging” about “how the group extorts every single tech company in Silicon Valley to censor Americans and ‘ban’ hate speech.” Stephen Miller, the former senior adviser in the Trump White House who was called an immigration hypocrite by his uncle, also chimed in, offering: “Speaking as a Jew: ADL is NOT a Jewish organization,” which was then reposted thousands of times. The idea that a person (or, in this case, institution) can be deemed “not really Jewish” and thus fair game for an antisemitic smear is a not uncommon one.