Tesla billionaire Elon Musk shared a post on his platform X this week that declared Hitler “didn’t murder millions of people,” but that public employees did.
Musk shared the post Thursday from an account named “TheAliceSmith” without comment, but was clearly trying to hype his work at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has fired thousands of federal employees.
The image Musk shared read, “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.” The original poster later wrote on X, “After the Nuremberg trials, the so-called ‘superior orders’ defense – ‘I was just following orders’ – is considered invalid under international law. Individual rather than collective responsibility for your actions is enshrined in law.”
Musk has stirred controversy in recent months for his outlandish rhetoric and behavior including making a gesture, twice, that looked similar to a Nazi salute at President Donald Trump’s inaugural festivities. The Anti-Defamation League defended Musk at the time, but has long warned against using Nazi-era comparisons in modern day political rhetoric.
Musk responded to the firestorm surrounding his gesture by attacking the media. As part of that response, Musk posted the following message to X:
Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations!
Some people will Goebbels anything down!
Stop Gőring your enemies!
His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler!
Bet you did nazi that coming
The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt replied to Musk’s post and wrote, “We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it.”
“@elonmusk, the Holocaust is not a joke,” he concluded.
