After traveling to Israel in November, Elon Musk visited the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday and participated in a conference on anti-Semitism, which has worsened since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. In November he assured that his time in Israel “was not an apology tour,” but it occurred just after being accused of being anti-Semitic for a comment on X (formerly Twitter), which earned him the withdrawal of important advertisers. Musk, who says he has “Jewish aspirations,” has defended freedom of expression against any filter against hate speech on his platform, where he claims there are fewer attacks against this community than on other networks.
The technology magnate moves comfortably between far-right ideological positions, but rejects accusations of anti-Semitism. The owner of Tesla and SpaceX also attributes them to an attempt by the media to cancel X, because “it is direct competition” with them. “They look for any angle against us,” he said in a talk with conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro in the Polish city of Krakow after visiting the camp.
Musk has remained firm in defending freedom of expression on X against moderation or filters that limit hate messages. “The Nazis applied strict censorship in Germany to everything that was pro-Semitic,” he has argued. “Freedom of expression is one of the ways to defeat hate. Maybe the way,” he insisted.
As he explained to the participants of the conference organized by the European Association of Jews in Poland, the platform allows falsehoods to be pointed out and corrected by means of notes in the messages. “It is the greatest source of truth in the world,” she has defended, and aspires “to be as precise as possible and minimize the error between what is said and reality.” The account of X’s boss is one of the most corrected on the social network for misinforming, according to a classification made by an X user with data from the company itself. In the name of freedom of expression, Musk has reactivated accounts on the social network that had been canceled for being considered dangerous for spreading hoaxes, such as that of former President Donald Trump, who was permanently suspended due to the risk of inciting violence after the assault on the Capitol. on January 6, 2021, or recently, that of Alex Jones, a conspiracy theory theorist convicted for his hoaxes.
After visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau with his three-year-old son, a journey that he said will take a few days to digest, the businessman agreed with the organizers of the conference that if social networks had existed then, the Holocaust “would have been impossible to hide.” “If there had been freedom of expression…” he added.
Musk, who has criticized pro-Palestinian demonstrations in US cities and universities, has stated that X is the social network with “the least amount of anti-Semitism.” “It’s never going to be zero, but when you compare it to others like Instagram, TikTok. (…) I think TikTok has five times more”, he assured without giving any figure.
Controversial messages
The richest man in the world defines himself in his bio in X as the boss of trolls. Musk likes to generate controversy and the list of unfortunate messages from him is long, while he increasingly plays a prominent role in global geopolitics. In November he responded to a message from a user who accused Jews of hating white people and, in line with the white supremacist conspiracy theory of the great replacement, claimed that Jews are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “ flooding” the country. “You have spoken the honest truth,” Musk tweeted.
The tweet generated outrage and cost him the loss of advertisers such as Disney, Apple and IBM. That didn’t seem to matter much to Musk, because at a meeting organized in New York by The New York Times, he replied: “Fuck you.” Although he did acknowledge that his message was “one of the silliest.”
This Monday, Musk defended himself against any accusation of anti-Semitism by assuring that most of his friends are Jewish, that he went to a Jewish school as a child, that his name is “quite Jewish,” that he traveled to Israel when he was 13… “I am Jewish? “I am Jewish,” he said jokingly. In Israel, where he was received almost as a head of state, he granted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the power to authorize the use in the Gaza Strip of the connectivity provided by his Starlink satellite network. This Monday in Krakow, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, leader of the association of European Jews, defined him as “a strong voice in the fight against anti-Semitism.”
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