Elon Musk visits Auschwitz following accusations of antisemitism on X

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - US tech billionaire Elon Musk, the owner of X, visited the site of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on Monday after being accused of allowing antisemitic messages on the social media platform.

Musk visited the site before attending an anti-Semitism conference in the nearby Polish city of Krakow organized by the European Jewish Association ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the Polish Press Agency reported

He visited Nazi Germany's World War II extermination camp.

In mid-November, Musk posted that he supported a core tenet of an antisemitic conspiracy theory that has motivated past hate crimes against Jewish people, including a 2018 attack on a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania synagogue in which 11 worshippers were killed.

The X post Musk responded to claimed that Jewish communities "have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them." It further accused Jewish people of supporting "hordes of minorities" being relocated to Western societies.

The X user alleged that “Western Jewish populations” are “coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.”

"You have said the actual truth," Musk responded.

His remarks were also denounced by the White House, which called then "unacceptable."

"We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans," spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Facing a public backlash and an exodus of major advertisers, Musk later tried to walk back his response, expressing regret over what he called his "dumbest" ever social media post.

"Essentially, I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me, and arguably to those who are anti-Semitic, and for that I am quite sorry," he said in an interview with The New York Times, adding "that was not my intention."