Elon Musk to visit Auschwitz ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla, on Nov. 2, 2023. Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh January 4, 2024
Billionaire Elon Musk, who has been accused of tolerating and promoting antisemitic posts on X, the social media platform he owns formerly known as Twitter, is expected to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland later this month.
Musk is listed among European and Israeli leaders who have confirmed their participation at the European Jewish Association annual conference in Krakow on Jan. 22-23 ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. The tour of Auschwitz will take place on the second day of the conference.
Musk is expected to discuss online antisemitism in a conversation with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, the EJA said.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who heads the Brussels-based organization, invited Musk to tour Auschwitz “to walk there, to feel it, to understand it” during a livestreamed event on antisemitism and free speech on X in September. Musk, who at first seemed to reject the invitation, saying that he had seen pictures of concentration camps and was well informed about the Holocaust, later in the discussion responded with a “tentative yes.” He said he was heading to the region anyway.
The online discussion and invitation followed a feud between Musk and Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, which demanded that he cease allowing neo-Nazis and others to air antisemitic views on X. They also lambasted him for his own seeming endorsement of antisemitism on the site. Musk in turn blamed the ADL for scaring away advertisers and a $4 billion loss in revenue. Corporations including Disney and Universal paused advertising on X after Musk endorsed an antisemitic post.
“To fully understand why we Jews are so worried about antisemitism, a visit to Auschwitz is a necessary and life-changing experience,” Margolin said.
Musk on X has promoted a QAnon conspiracy theory, quoted Nazis, engaged with antisemites, and compared George Soros, the Jewish billionaire philanthropist and Holocaust survivor, to the X-Men comic book villain Magneto. X also reportedly paid a Holocaust-denying account $3,000 in ad revenue.
The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum reported in August that X rejected the museum’s complaint about Holocaust deniers who tweet vitriolic, antisemitic messages. Officials at the museum said they’re seeing “much more antisemitic and denial content published” on the platform than in the past.
Musk visited Israel in November and toured the southern Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Aza, a Hamas target in the Oct. 7 massacre. He was joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had called him “a person whose intelligence and contribution to humanity I greatly appreciate.”
At the EJA conference, former President Reuven Rivlin will announce the establishment of a task force combating antisemitism, but conference organizers did not provide details.
This post was updated on 01-18-2024 to add more information about Musk’s appearance.
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