A college kid swept up in a false online conspiracy theory involving neo-Nazis perpetuated by one of the most powerful people on Earth will have his day in court after filing a defamation suit against Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Ben Brody was just a college kid at the University of California when he was falsely identified as taking part in a scuffle between two neo-Nazi groups in Oregon back in June. Elon Musk retweeted the false information several times. Citing that Brody wanted to work in government, his supposed attendence was at the brawl was used as proof of a so called “false flag” event, according to the Daily Beast:
A recent college graduate who became the target of a bizarre Twitter-based conspiracy theory this summer is suing Elon Musk for defamation, after Musk appeared to endorse the hoax.
Ben Brody, 22, claims his life was upended in June when right-wing accounts falsely identified him as a participant in a neo-Nazi brawl in Oregon. Musk amplified those false allegations, repeating them days after people told him that Brody was uninvolved with the group.
[…]
The fight was not a “false flag” but a real slap-fight between two feuding far-right groups, The Daily Beast reported in June.
While protesting outside an Oregon City Pride event, members of the extremist groups the Proud Boys and the Rose City Nationalists put their ideological similarities aside to sling slurs and punches at each other. During the spat, Proud Boys pulled off the ski masks that two RCN members were wearing, revealing their faces.
Representing Brody is Mark Bankston, the lawyer who successfully argued a $49 million settlement for Sandy Hook families after Alex Jones, his staff and listeners terrorized them for years. That settlement against Jones would later reach $1.5 billion as the result of a second trial in Connecticut. The radio talk show host spent years pushing the story that the school shooting as a “false flag,” and that no one died in Sandy Hook and the grieving parents were just actors.
During the period in June when he made the tweets Musk even retweeted Zero Hedge, a right-wing conspiracy site that Jones also used as a “source” for his harmful Sandy Hook theories. It’s no surprise that Brody describes a similar experience following Musk’s repeated references to the conspiracy theory on Twitter even after the billionaire had been informed that the information was true.
Brody still lives with the effects of Musk’s allegations, the lawsuit claims.
“When Musk fully endorsed the accusation on June 27th, Ben felt like his life was over,” the suit reads, adding that Brody is worried his dreams for a public-facing government career might be in jeopardy.
“Ben worries that future employers may decide that it’s simply not worth it to hire an employee in a public-facing position who is connected to a bizarre controversy involving a neo-Nazi group,” his lawsuit claims.
That’s always the excuse when these Nazis show their faces and do something violent; it’s a “false flag.” Maybe if Musk wasn’t rushing to post in defense of these right wing nutjobs he could have thought this thing through a little before ruining some random kid’s life.
This isn’t the first lawsuit Elon Musk faced due to his erratic Twitter usage. Back in the innocent days of 2019 Musk actually won a lawsuit brought against him by a man who rescued children from a flooded cave in Thailand. Musk called him a pedophile on the social media site, but was not found liable for any damages.