A Jewish congressman says Twitter has become a 'hate-filled playground for Nazis and antisemites'

• A Jewish congressman spoke out against antisemitism on Twitter at a House Oversight hearing last week.
• Rep. Jared Moskowitz said his Twitter was flooded with antisemitic comments afterwards, per CNN.

A Jewish congressman told CNN that Twitter has become a "hate-filled playground" for Nazis and antisemitism since Elon Musk took over in October.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz made the remark in response to a barrage of online abuse he got after he told a House Oversight hearing last Wednesday that new Twitter owner Elon Musk "is allowing Nazis and antisemitism to perpetuate on Twitter."

Moskowitz said during the hearing that "since Elon Musk 'set it free,'" there had been a huge surge in antisemitism on Twitter, citing data from the Anti-Defamation League.

The hearing was focused on Twitter's role in suppressing the New York Post's article about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. Twitter restricted the circulation of the article, citing policy on the "distribution of hacked material."

"What happened on Twitter directly after the hearing proves my exact point that antisemitism is real and Twitter has become a hate-filled playground for Nazis and antisemites," Moskowitz told CNN.

CNN reported that Moskowitz sent a letter to Musk on Thursday, informing him that after he shared a clip on Twitter of him speaking during the hearing "the reply section of my post was flooded with hateful, antisemitic comments and images."

This includes dozens of Twitter users posting pictures of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes with the caption "You are Jewish." One user called Moskowitz "ethnocentric" and another said he was a "total clown complaining about jokes."

Moskowitz also wrote that he had received antisemitic comments in response to unrelated tweets, including a video he posted honoring the victims of the 2018 Parkland mass shooting. One Twitter user said in response to that video: "You are the reason anti-semites exists. You are a danger to this country."

"These incidents prove the point that I made at yesterday's hearing, that Twitter has allowed hateful rhetoric to run rampant without consideration of the real and dangerous consequences," Moskowitz added in his letter to Musk, per The Hill.

"This place is crawling with Nazi termites," Moskowitz tweeted on Friday. "Twitter needs to be tented."

Twitter did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about Moskowitz's comments.

Since taking over Twitter in late October, Musk has allowed controversial figures like conservative satire site The Babylon Bee and former president Donald Trump back onto the platform. He's also laid off more than half of the company's workforce. Reports have suggested a rise in hate speech on the site, causing some advertisers to leave.

Musk, for his part, has claimed that fewer people are viewing content containing hate speech since he bought Twitter. The self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" said in early December that the number of hate speech impressions was down by a third.

The Twitter account of Ye – formerly known as Kanye West – was restricted in October after the rapper tweeted he would go "death con 3" on Jewish people. He returned to the platform in November, after Musk took control, but was swiftly blocked again.

"I tried my best," Musk said. "Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence."