Elon Musk sued. With one post on X, he was supposed to turn the student’s life upside down

Elon Musk is known for many careless statements, especially on the X website, for which he has had problems many times. Now he will have to face a defamation lawsuit against a young California resident. The lawsuit may cost the billionaire dearly.

Elon Musk called a California student a “neo-Nazi.” He turned his life upside down

The case took place in June, when two far-right groups fought during the Pride Parade in Oregon City. Videos of the fight were posted on the X website (then Twitter), and users of the platform tried to unmask the fighting members of the groups. Some falsely identified one of them as 22-year-old Ben Brody, a student from California. According to them, he was a member of a neo-Nazi group in which he works on behalf of the government to incite fear of right-wing extremist groups.

Elon Musk himself also became interested in the matter and with a series of comments he increased the reach of the thread to over 147 million views – writes The billionaire suggested in one of them that the 22-year-old was actually working on behalf of the government (because he was supposedly applying for a government job) in a neo-Nazi organization. “One appears to be a student (who wants to join the government) and the other may be a member of Antifa, but regardless, this is likely a false flag situation,” Musk wrote about the brawl participants in a post that

Now for, among others, these words were sued by Ben Brody, whom he mentioned in the comment, as reported on X by Mark Bankston, the lawyer who will represent him. As Bankston writes, the life of a young student, and now university graduate, was turned upside down after more people heard that Brody was allegedly a neo-Nazi. The lawsuit states that the young Californian and his family had to move out of their home due to constant persecution.

The lawsuit alleges that on June 27, Musk – in another example of the growing trend of spreading misinformation – falsely told the world that there was evidence showing that Ben Brody was involved in a violent street fight on behalf of a neo-Nazi extremist group. Musk also falsely told the world that Ben Brody’s alleged involvement in a brawl with extremists meant the incident was likely a false flag operation intended to deceive the American public

– wrote Mark Bankston on X, justifying the submission of the document. The lawyer believes that Musk did not disclose his source of information in the posts, which told him that a random student from California was allegedly a member of one of these groups.

A lawsuit could mean multi-million-dollar damages

Mark Bankston became famous in 2018 for suing Alex Jones, a popularizer of conspiracy theories, on behalf of the parents of a child injured in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut. Jones falsely claimed the shooting never happened. Bankston won $45 million in compensation for his clients – reminds The Verge.

In the past, Elon Musk was summoned to court many times, including: for spreading unverified information. He lost most of his cases – but not all of them. At the beginning of September, however, he sued the American organization ADL (Anti-Defamation League) for defamation for claiming that Musk and Portal X turn a blind eye to the presence of content related to anti-Semitism on the platform – he reminds