Elon Musk, tasked earlier this year with firing thousands of federal workers across the United States, shared a post that blamed “public sector employees” for mass killings committed under Adolf Hitler and other dictators.
The Thursday repost on Musk’s X account read: “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.”
Along with Hitler, the post referred to Josef Stalin, the communist dictator of the Soviet Union until 1953, and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions through starvation and disease.
Musk later deleted the repost, but not before X users and others condemned Musk’s apparent defense of dictators responsible for genocide and mass murder.
“It is deeply disturbing and irresponsible for someone with a large public platform to elevate the kind of rhetoric that serves to undermine the seriousness of these issues,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a statement.
Musk’s disturbing repost targeting public sector workers comes at a time when the billionaire ― now in charge of the new, so-called Department of Government Efficiency ― has been responsible for the firing of thousands of federal workers. This includes workers in critical positions at the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and more.
The ADL had previously defended Musk when he appeared to give a Nazi salute at an inaugural celebration for President Donald Trump earlier this year, saying Musk should be given “a bit of grace” or “perhaps even the benefit of the doubt.”
However, the ADL changed its tune after Musk made jokes about his salute, including a post on X that said in part: “Bet you did nazi that coming,” with a laughing emoji.
“Making inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that trivialize the Holocaust only serve to minimize the evil and inhumanity of Nazi crimes, denigrate the suffering of both victims and survivors, and insult the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah,” the ADL said in a statement at the time.
Musk has previously endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and has outright denied neo-Nazi violence. He is also being sued for defamation by a recent Jewish college graduate after Musk falsely said the man was a federal agent pretending to be a neo-Nazi during a 2023 brawl.
“I certainly — I would say that I — you know, I’m guilty of many self-inflicted wounds,” Musk testified during a deposition in the case last year.
