After Auschwitz, Elon Musk Goes Full Crazy With New Claim About Holocaust
Elon Musk, who has used social media to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, is now arguing that had social media existed at the time of the Holocaust, it could have prevented the tragedy.
Musk visited the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday, as part of an apparent apology tour for his blatant antisemitism. Later that day, he participated in a conference on antisemitism organized in Krakow by the European Jewish Association.
Musk admitted he had been “somewhat naive” about the dangers of antisemitism. But he revealed how little he actually cares by sitting down for an interview with Ben Shapiro, a far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist. The two men then insisted that social media could have prevented the Holocaust from happening.
To prove their argument, Musk showed fake tweets he created of people sharing photos of Nazi attacks on synagogues, supporting Jewish resistance fighters, and pushing back against Holocaust deniers. There was even a tweet from the “official” Auschwitz account claiming Jews there were “thriving”—only to have a community note debunk that claim.
This claim holds very little water, for many reasons. A major one, as journalist Aaron Gordon pointed out, was that Nazi Germany revoked Jews’ right to free movement long before the death camps were built. So all those tweets from people urging Jews to leave Germany would have been meaningless.
Another reason is that many civilians were well aware of what Nazis were doing, or at least aware that Jewish people were being removed and never seen again. And they were perfectly content to let it happen.
In fact, if the current state of X (formerly Twitter) is anything to go by, social media could have actually made the Holocaust happen faster.
Since Musk took over the social media platform, X has been rife with hate speech. Musk himself is a major source of disinformation and hate speech, particularly antisemitism. He has also let multiple neo-Nazis back onto X, after previous leadership banned them.
In November, Musk backed a vile antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are getting what they deserve because they harbor “diabolical hatred against whites.” That, combined with the revelation that X was placing ads next to pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi content, sent advertisers fleeing the platform in droves (again).
Musk said Monday that his November post was “literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done,” which is saying something if you look at his X feed. He claimed he hadn’t understood the dangers of anti-Jewish sentiment because “in the circles I move in, I see no antisemitism.”
He said that “two-thirds of my friends are Jewish,” which actually undercuts his previous claim. Surely at least one of those Jewish friends would have been able to tell Musk about antisemitism.
Musk then claimed that thanks to all his information-hoarding friends, he is “Jewish by association.”
“I’m aspirationally Jewish,” he said, which holds all the gravity of someone calling themself “Jew-ish.”