Elon Musk Suggested a Gay Former Twitter Employee Sexualized Kids. He’s Now in Hiding – Them

Nowhere in the dissertation does Roth advocate for the sexualization of children, but spreading the false claim that LGBTQ+ people are sexual predators who are “grooming” children has become a popular smear tactic for right-wing hatemongers, particularly after Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law went into effect in August. This is the exact kind of misinformation that’s led to devastating real-life instances of violence against queer and trans people throughout 2022.

CNN reports that Roth has recently had to flee his home due to an escalation in threats oagainst him.

Roth has been the target of attacks online since Musk began unveiling the “Twitter Files,” a set supposed excerpts from internal communications that Musk has been releasing with the help of right-wing journalists Matt Taibibi and Bari Weiss. On Monday, Weiss tweeted a screenshots that appear to show internal Twitter communications in which Roth and others deliberate whether to ban Donald Trump’s account. 

“Watching Elon launch a digital mob against his former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, an openly gay Jewish man, is one of the most vile and disgusting things I’ve ever seen,” Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, tweeted on Saturday. “He’s putting Yoel’s life in danger and he knows it. It’s sick, twisted, and sociopathic.”

Knowing the widespread discourse around grooming and that, as recently as one weekend ago, Proud Boys stormed a drag show accusing the queer people inside of grooming, it’s no stretch to say that Musk was fully aware that he was putting this former employee’s life in danger.

Musk even doubled down on his homophobic tweets on Sunday, when he tweeted that his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci.” The billionaire once claimed that his acquisition of Twitter wouldn’t turn the platform into a “free-for-all hellscape,” but based on recent events, it’s hard to believe. 

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