Ian McKellen played Magneto in the X-Men films. (Courtesy 20th Century Studios)

By PJ Grisar May 16, 2023

On Monday night, Elon Musk, perhaps apropos of false reports that billionaire philanthropist George Soros suffered a heart attack (or news that he dumped Tesla stock), tweeted, “Soros reminds me of Magneto.”

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For the uninitiated, Musk was stating that, to his mind, Soros, a Holocaust survivor and frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, recalled a mutant supervillain-slash-antihero with the ability to manipulate metal with his mind. On the surface, the comparison is a bit puzzling, but if you know more than a bit about the lore of X-Men, it’s far more troubling.

Soros and Magneto do, in fact, have something in common: the Holocaust. 

In 1981, Marvel writer Chris Claremont established that Magneto, born Max Eisenhardt, was a survivor of Nazi genocide (establishing that he was a Jewish survivor took longer, at least in the comics). 

Soros, born György Schwartz, also survived the Shoah. Eisenhardt was sent to Auschwitz; Soros survived the war in hiding as an adolescent in Hungary. Both men were undeniably stamped by their wartime experiences, a fact that journalist Brian Krassenstein noted in a reply tweet to Musk.

“Fun fact: Magneto’s experiences during the Holocaust as a survivor shaped his perspective as well as his depth and empathy,” Krassenstein wrote. Soros, he added, “also a Holocaust survivor,” gets “attacked nonstop for his good intentions which some Americans think are bad merely because they disagree” with his “political affiliations.”

“You assume they are good intentions,” Musk wrote back. “They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity”

Is there something to this comparison?

Musk poked a hornet’s nest, both indulging in some plausibly deniable antisemitism while invoking comic book lore — naturally, Jewish nerds were all over this.

The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg noted how much Soros and Magneto diverge in their worldviews and reactions to the Holocaust.

 “George Soros is an avowed universalist who grew up speaking Esperanto, an artificial universal language that was meant to unite all people under one tongue,” Rosenberg tweeted. “Magneto is an avowed particularist who devotes all his energy to his own people, mutants. Literally ideological opposites!”

Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants is a separatist organization with shades of Kahanism, and so has nothing in common with Soros’ Open Society, which works internationally to promote civil society. 

While Soros is sometimes maligned by Jews for not focusing his giving on explicitly Jewish causes, or for giving to groups some deem to be anti-Israel, no one could say that Magneto is neglecting his people or a self-hating mutant. Indeed, he’s something of a supremacist.

In the comics, Magneto and his frenemy Professor Charles Xavier embody different views of how best to protect their people — through an ideology of supremacy or inclusivity and understanding. Some have, erroneously, said they are modeled after the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. In Claremont’s run, their approaches were inspired by Israeli leaders Menachem Begin and David Ben-Gurion. 

Soros isn’t Magneto — nor is he Begin — but that insight shows just how shallow a comparison Musk is making. 

Magneto is not the all-out villain Musk would have him be, just as Soros is not the universal boogeyman so many frame him as. 

Indeed, Magneto’s thinking evolves, as he comes to realize that his people are better served not in attacking humanity, but in working toward their own defense and even forming coalitions with those he disagrees with. Though he’s changed throughout the years, one relative constant since the Claremont years is his ability to empathize with others by extrapolating from the trauma of his early life.

We shouldn’t read too much into this, and yet … 

We get into treacherous territory when we parse Musk’s tweet that “Soros hates humanity” next to an analysis of a mutant’s justifiable enmity for non-mutants who want to see him destroyed. What is Soros in that analogy? A mutant? Non-human? What does that say about Jews?

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt chided Musk Tuesday morning, tweeting that “claiming Soros ‘hates humanity’ — is not just distressing, it’s dangerous: it will embolden extremists who already contrive anti-Jewish conspiracies and have tried to attack Soros and Jewish communities as a result.”

On a separate tweet, Musk commented“ADL should just drop the A.” 

It’s entirely possible Musk didn’t spare much thought for how his comments about Soros play into dangerous canards. Forward columnist Alex Zeldin summed up Musk’s likely reasoning rather succinctly in a tweet: “‘Jew I don’t like reminds me of a comic Jew people are told it’s fine not to like’ was the beginning and end of that thought process.”

But as with all things Musk, the sophomoric and thoughtless soon gave way to something potentially incendiary. Comic books are one thing, but claiming Soros is out to destroy the “fabric of civilization” is quite another.

“Just so we’re clear, this is antisemitic incitement,” Zeldin quote-tweeted Musk’s response to Krassenstein. 

Jews: We can’t bend metal with our minds, but we can hear your dog whistles as loud as a shofar call.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include tweets from Jonathan Greenblatt, Elon Musk’s tweets about the ADL and news that Soros sold Tesla stock.

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