Elon Musk, who was given the task earlier this year of terminating numerous federal employees across the United States, recently shared a post that shifted blame onto “public sector employees” for the mass killings carried out under the rule of Adolf Hitler and other dictators.
The repost on Musk’s X account stated: “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.”
In addition to Hitler, the post referenced Josef Stalin, the communist leader 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 due to starvation and disease.
Musk eventually removed the repost, but not before facing criticism from X users and others for seemingly defending dictators who were responsible for genocide and mass murder.
The Anti-Defamation League stated, “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.”
Musk’s controversial repost targeting public sector workers comes at a time when the billionaire, now heading the new Department of Government Efficiency, has been involved in the dismissal of numerous federal employees, including those in crucial roles at agencies such as the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The ADL previously supported Musk when he appeared to make a Nazi salute at an inaugural event for President Donald Trump earlier this year, suggesting that Musk should be given “a bit of grace” or “perhaps even the benefit of the doubt.”
However, the ADL changed its stance after Musk made jokes about the salute, including a post on X that said, “Bet you did nazi that coming,” accompanied by a laughing emoji.
The ADL expressed, “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.”
Musk has previously endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and has denied neo-Nazi violence. He is also facing a defamation lawsuit from a recent Jewish college graduate after falsely claiming the man was a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi during a 2023 altercation.
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“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.
