Earlier on Friday, Elon Musk shared a post written by X users about the actions of three dictators in the 20th century. It then promptly removed after causing repulsion.
The post was falsely argued by Joseph Stalin, the Communist Party leader of the Soviet Union until 1953. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the German Nazi Party. And Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic of China, did not cause millions of people to be under surveillance. Instead, their public sector workers said they did so.
Musk shared the post without any other comments. He deleted it shortly after X users criticized the post, saying it was anti-Semitic and denies genocide. Historians have extensively documented that millions of people died under Stalin, millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust, and millions of Chinese were evacuated or killed during the Mao Cultural Revolution.
It was the latest post left to controversy by Musk. In 2023, Musk approved anti-Semitic posts against X as “actual truth” of what Jews are doing, urging advertisers to flee. And after the attempt to assassinate Trump last year, Musk wrote a post suggesting it was strange that he never tried to kill former President Joseph R. Biden or former vice president Kamala Harris.
Musk has long appeared to support strong people and has promoted modern right-wing leaders. He repeatedly used X to support politicians such as Javier Milei of Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India. Recently, he held an online town hall for the prime minister's candidate, throwing support behind right-right alternatives for the German party.
“To raise the kind of rhetoric that can help undermine the severity of these issues, it is deeply disturbing and irresponsible for those with large public platforms,” Musk said in a statement about sharing his post.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk frequently uses X as a megaphone to share everything from boys' memes to major US policy proposals, blowing his opinions to over 219 million followers. But his perspective has sparked more scrutiny as he has become a close adviser to President Trump helping to overhaul government spending.
Musk transformed X, removing many rules regarding hate speech and misinformation, allowing thousands of accounts banned by the company's previous leadership to return to the platform that includes Trump.
At about 2:30am on Friday, Musk shared a post written by X users. Their public sector workers did. ”
Musk has been fighting public sector workers in Washington in recent weeks as part of his work with his cost-cutting initiative known as government efficiency. He accused federal workers of trying to hide the fraud and encouraged them to quit their jobs.
This post sparked a backlash, especially from the federal employee unions.
“American public service workers — nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians — have chosen to make our community more secure, healthy and rich. They are not genocide killers, as the wealthiest people in the world suggests,” Lee Sanders, president of the U.S. Federation, county and city employee, said in a statement.
Musk on Friday defended himself against anti-Semitism accusations and shared several comments on X that his critics claim to be in line with Nazism. Musk recently fired for making a gesture similar to the Roman salute, also known as the “fascist salute,” which was later adopted by the Nazis.
“Look at what they did to President @RealdonaldTrump,” Musk wrote in one post. “He was loved by the Democrats until he ran for president. Now they call him Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and others, and try to kill him,” refers to another dictator, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.
