Ben Brody, a 22-year-old Los Angeles college graduate, has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk. The lawsuit claims that the owner of the X platform falsely accused him of neo-Nazism, writes Ars Technica.
The event that led to this accusation occurred this summer near Portland, where a violent street fight between two rival neo-Nazi groups took place during an LGBTQ pride parade. Subsequently, several participants in the fight were exposed, and information appeared on the Internet alleging that Ben Brody had participated in the fight and was a member of a neo-Nazi group.
Eventually, Elon Musk joined the discussion, which reinforced the false claims about the student’s participation in the fight. The situation became more threatening when the billionaire suggested that the fight was a “false flag operation.”
Ben Brody tried to resolve the situation by providing evidence that he was in California at the time of the incident near Portland. However, even bank receipts and surveillance video confirming his words did not help the student.
Now he is dealing with aggressive attitudes toward him and is worried about his future. Since he considers the information disseminated by Elon Musk to be slander, he decided to go to court. In his lawsuit, he demands $1 million from the billionaire.
“Musk made these ridiculously false and damaging accusations based on a tweet he had seen from an anonymous far-right extremist Twitter account,” the lawsuit said.
It also said that the false accusations led to serious personal harassment and irreversible damage to the student’s reputation.
“Musk’s personal endorsement of the false accusation against Ben Brody reverberated across the Internet, transforming the accusation from anonymous rumor to gospel truth for many individuals, and causing others to use Musk’s endorsement to justify their desire to harass Ben Brody and his family,” the lawsuit said.
In addition, it emphasizes that after Elon Musk’s posts, the student experienced emotional distress, including difficulty sleeping, panic attacks, headaches and fatigue, which disrupted his daily life and seriously affected his health.
Ben Brody is also worried that future employers may decide not to hire, for example, an employee who is associated with a strange dispute involving a neo-Nazi group.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that Brody has “Jewish roots,” which makes accusations of being a neo-Nazi particularly offensive.
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