Elon Musk Visits Auschwitz With Ben Shapiro After Antisemitism Row
The trip came weeks after the billionaire apologized for boosting an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Yoav Dudkevitch/European Jewish Association via Reuters
Elon Musk visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland on Monday weeks after the tech billionaire backed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on his X platform.
Musk was joined on his trip to the Nazi camp—where at least 1.1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust—by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, with the pair set to take part in a European Jewish Association (EJA) event discussing online antisemitism later on Monday.
Musk tentatively agreed to visit Auschwitz in September during a live discussion on X with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who invited the Tesla boss to “walk there, to feel it, to understand it,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
Two months later, Musk publicly endorsed an antisemitic post on his platform claiming that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” “You have said the actual truth,” Musk wrote in reply. Musk separately attacked the Anti-Defamation League, accusing the Jewish advocacy group of “unjustly” attacking “the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel.”
His comments provoked widespread condemnation, including from the White House as well as major companies like IBM, Apple, and Disney, which halted advertising spending on X in response. In turn, Musk made headlines with a sweary tirade accusing businesses of attempting to “blackmail” him. “If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself,” Musk said in November. “Go fuck yourself. Is that clear?”
Musk nevertheless described his post endorsing the conspiracy theory as “one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish” thing he’s done since taking control of the social media site, formerly known as Twitter.
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His time running the platform has also been marred by allegations that antisemitic rhetoric has been allowed to flourish there. Even the Auschwitz Memorial—the museum that now stands on the site of the concentration camp—tagged Musk in a post asking why a message denying the Holocaust was being permitted by X’s content moderation rules. “Leaving such language unchecked perpetuates the cycle of hatred and reinforces the idea that such hateful language is acceptable on this platform,” the memorial wrote in August. The post was eventually removed after two reviews.
On Monday, Musk used his visit to Auschwitz to deny allegations of antisemitism against him once again. “Elon was never an antisemite,” an X user wrote in reply to a video of the Tesla boss at the death camp. “It was always a political attack.” “Correct,” Musk replied.
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