College student sues Musk for falsely calling him a “psyop” in neo-Nazi brawl

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles-based 22-year-old college graduate, Ben Brody, sued Elon Musk for more than $1 million. Brody’s lawsuit alleged that over a series of social media posts, the X (formerly Twitter) owner falsely identified Brody—described as a “shy young man”—as a participant “in a violent street brawl on behalf of a neo-Nazi extremist group” near Portland, Oregon, this summer.

Perhaps even worse, according to Brody’s complaint, one of Musk’s X posts also allegedly amplified conspiracy theories that “Ben Brody’s alleged participation in the extremist brawl meant the incident was probably a ‘false flag’ operation to deceive the American public.”

The lawsuit defined a “false flag” as a term that’s been “popularized among conspiracy theory media figures to mean a hostile or harmful action (typically an attack or other act of violence) that is designed to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the person or group responsible for it.” It also noted that a “false flag” is a “type of ‘psyop’ or ‘psychological operation,'” which the lawsuit alleged is “a concept which Musk has fixated on for several months.”